Surrey Hills win Sturgess Shield Grand Final

Surrey Hills have won the Sturgess Shield A Turf Grand Final in a hard fought win over Hawthorn Boroondara at Surrey Park. Hawthorn Boroondara elected to bowl at the toss and were immediately rewarded when Nick Buckley claimed the big wicket of the Surrey Hills skipper Will Hale, caught behind for a duck. Buckley and fellow opener James Duhig continued to attack the stumps in the opening spell but opener Jack Redshaw and Henry Brown safely navigated Surrey Hills to the drinks break wihtout further loss while keeping the score ticking along. Hawthorn Boroondara made a double change, bringing on spinner Tharindu Rudrigu from the southern end and Matthew Carlyon. Redshaw and Brown put together what turned out to be the partnership of the match (66) before Brown was also caught behind for 34 (from 68 balls). Redshaw went onto dominate the scoring for the rest of the innings as he could not find another partner to stick with him. Ben Douglas (3/27) and Rudrigu were miserly and scoring dried up. Redshaw fell three runs short of a deserved ton when Rudrigu had him caught with the score at 160. Surrey Hills went on to post just 167 on what looked like a pacy and fair deck at Surrey Park. It was excellent and excellent sustainted bowling and fielding effort by the visitors.
In response, Surrey Hills made a double strike before the close of day 1 - with Jack Redshaw, who was opening the bowling, dismissed Sam Culham in the first over, while Nathan Whelan picked up (probably the night watchman) Matthew Carlyon. When play resumed on day 2, Redshaw stuck again, picking up Max Chivers and HB were in strife at 3/9. Ollie Chauhan and skipper Nathan Douglas ground out a partnership to put the chase back on track. But in a devastating period, Surrey Hills struck a triple blow to have one hand on the shield. However the Hawthorn Boroondara lower order were not going to roll over Joshua Chivers (17) teamed up wiht Ollie Chauhan to push the score to 7/107. But a brilliant bit of fielding by Will Hales resutled in a direct hit run-out of Chivers which was a huge blow for the visitors. Tharindu Rudrigu and Chauhan frustrated the hosts with another 30 run partnership to put them within striking distance at 137 before Sabir Mahmood (3/37) got the nod for his LBW shout. #10 and #11 were dismissed shortly after which left Ollie Chauhan stranded on 62* from 203 balls. Jack Redshaw with 97 and 2/32 was awarded Player of the Match by the Umpires Greg McLeod and Jack Krohn. For Hawthorn Boroondara, even though it was a disappointing result, they had a great season - the first as the newly merged club where a number of players transitioned from synthetic to turf cricket.

Thanks to Barry Cull for his contribution to this match summary.