A FIRST ever hat-trick and nine wickets for the day wasn’t on the bingo card for Coomealla Wentworth fast bowler Liam Freeman.
His best ever day bowling wise on the cricket field has coincided with the Blues taking a strong position against Merbein at George Gordon Oval, and in the race for valuable second innings points.
Freeman’s first innings 5/18 helped skittle the Magpies for 66, before skipper Luke Cullinan called an aggressive declaration at 5/179, a 113-run lead.
Freeman’s four wickets and a hat-trick to start the second dig sees Merbein at 5/37, trailing by 76 as play resumes on Saturday.
“It turned out to be a pretty good day,” Freeman said.
“We had a plan going in, really it was just about bowling good lines, placing the field to suit and try to be consistent with that line and length.
“It all just worked out really well from our point of view.
“We thought the declaration would just give ourselves the most possible time to try and go for second innings points as well.
“Nothing is a guarantee but we already had a lead of over 100 runs so we thought it might be a chance for it.”
As it stands Freeman has 15 wickets for the season, making the jump from six prior to the start of the match.
Freeman said a hat-trick wasn’t on his radar at all in he second innings.
“The pitch had flattened out a bit compared to the first innings but it was just one of those times where things worked for us,” he said.
The Blues are currently in sixth-place on the ladder, some 22 points behind fifth-placed Mildura West and more than 30 outside the top four.
An innings victory however has the potential to cut that margin leading into the final six rounds of the season come the new year.
Saturday will be the last match-day before the Christmas break, with action to resume on January 11.
“Obviously we’ve dropped a few games that we didn’t want to so any bonus points we can secure will be helpful,” Freeman said.
“We’ve played both our games against Nichols Point and Gol Gol so there’s couple of good teams out of the way, hopefully we can build a bit of momentum after CHristmas.
“We’ve had to work through some injuries to our bowling stocks and we’ve had multiple guys chip in with the bat, but we just haven’t had the consistency across the board yet.
“If we can get those things right hopefully we’ll have a good second half of the season.”
