Hills flattened

By Gavin Staindl
AFTER stumbling to 44 and losing first innings points last week, Endeavour Hills has given up an outright loss to Preston in their sub-division clash at Sydney Pargeter Reserve.
Endeavour Hills needed 84 runs to force Preston to bat again and although the second innings total of 132 achieved that, it did little to hold the Preston offence from securing the second North/East XI outright victory of the season.
In the second innings, the Hills fell to 5/43 before captain John Hayes (35) and Lenny van der Werff (43) put on a 50-run partnership.
However, their stint was not able to hold out the Preston bowlers and the remaining five wickets fell for 34 runs.
In response, the Preston top order reached its outright target of 52 in 11 overs.
Endeavour Hills’ coach John Hayes believes his side, especially the bowlers, will learn much from the match.
“They (Preston) are an experienced team and we got a good lesson on where to bowl the ball,” Hayes said.
“But our batting needs to fire … We fell for the same card trick as in the first innings and if our batters start firing then the bowling will come,” Hayes said.
The loss is made worse by the ladder position that, at the beginning of last week, saw the Hills with a chance to reach fifth, but now has them sitting in 12th position and nine points behind the top four.
The 10-point win also took Preston from equal second last to sixth position.
Although dropping to 12th, Hayes believes the Christmas break will do wonders for his young side.
“It will be nice to have a break and collect the thoughts … I told the boys to rest and go off and enjoy themselves and don’t even think about cricket,” Hayes said.
On a lighter note, in the Endeavour Hills fourths fast bowler Mitchell Quain not only took 9/9, the fourth-best figures in the country for last week, but he took a double hat-trick on the way to bowling Elsternwick out for 42.