By David Nagel
CASEY-South Melbourne’s (240) remarkable resurgence continued on Saturday when the visiting Swans defeated Ringwood (206) to sneak into the top eight of Victorian Premier Cricket.
After a slow start to the season the Swans are now playing with extreme confidence and continue to win the close encounters.
Day two action saw the home side resume on 3/74 and the Swans had a new look attack after Jade Dernbach and Damien Wright were both unavailable. Matt Hawking and Ash Perera came into the side as replacements.
State representative Jayde Herrick (5/85 off 30 overs) made an immediate impact when he struck without addition to the overnight score and when Perera (2/21 off 12.1) added another the Swans were right on top. Herrick found an edge that flew to keeper Nathan Hibbins and all of a sudden the Rams were 6/107.
No wins have been easy in the Swans’ recent run of form and any thoughts of an early afternoon were quashed when the home side fought back. A 72-run partnership between Ian Holland (36) and Brendan Walsh (45) put the match back in the home side’s favour.
Herrick took on a massive workload throughout the afternoon and his hard work was rewarded when he claimed Holland to make the score 7/179. Another to the hard-working quick made it 8/191 and the Swans were finally back on top.
The two replacements finished off the job with first Hawking (1/21 off 13) and then Perera taking wickets to give the Swans another satisfying result. Clive Rose (1/27 off 18) held up an end beautifully but his main achievement for the match was his momentum swinging wicket in the last over of day one.
The eighth-placed Swans return home this week to take on sixth-placed Dandenong in a battle between two of last season’s top-four teams.
Dandenong has class in-form players in Tom Donnell and Brett Forsyth both sitting inside the league’s top five run-getting list so the home side will need to be at the top of its game to keep its winning streak alive.
The match starts at Casey Fields this Saturday at 11am.