The Cobar Bowling and Golf Club Cowboys senior representative cricket team travelled to Dubbo last Sunday to play the third round of the Macquarie Valley Brewery Shield competition. Both teams knew they had already qualified for the semi- finals but were playing for a home-game advantage in the semis.

With an understrength team missing Doug North, Craig Dillon and Paul Gauci, Cobar’s captain Phil Harley started the day on a high by winning the toss and batting first.

Cobar’s opening batsmen Stewart Fraser and Jake Harbison started cautiously, however, were doing their job building an innings and at the first drinks break were still unbeaten with the score at 65 from the first 17 overs.

The partnership was broken with the score at 71 when Fraser was given out lbw for a well-compiled 34. Matt Nicholson was then dismissed cheaply and Harbison was joined by Peter ‘Con The Fruiterer’ Neale. Their partnership of 51 was broken when Neale was dismissed for 19.

Jake Harbison soon followed when caught out on the fine leg boundary for an excellent 68.

The team’s score was progressing quite well at 4 for 140 with 15 overs still to bat, however, wickets fell at regular intervals and Cobar’s innings ended at 9 for 199 off their 50 overs which was still a satisfactory total and meant Dubbo would have to score at a rate of four runs per over for victory.

Phil Harley with 25, Damien Harbison with 16 and Mal Hillier 10 not out were the other batsmen to reach double figures. Jake Harbison has had a stellar season to date in representative cricket, scoring 250 runs at an average of 83 in Brewery Shield and 129 runs at an average of 43 in the Country Plate for a total of 379 runs at an average of 63. Well done Jake.

Dubbo sent two pinch-hitters in to open their batting and they batted as if it was a Twenty/20 match with Cobar’s opening bowlers being hit for 19 and 10 respectively off their first overs.

Only needing to score at a run- rate of four per over the Dubbo batsmen achieved the target of 200 for the loss of three wickets after only 21.3 overs at the staggering run rate of over nine runs per over.