By Helen Maynard-Casely

We return to AB field with the conditions bright and with the heat building. Both Queensland Fire and South Australia put out unchanged teams from Tuesday’s match. South Australia won the toss, and captain Jemma Barsby decided to keep to the winning tactic from the previous match and put Queensland into bat.

South Australia would have been happy after 10 overs, chipping Queensland down by three wickets for only 40 runs. Opening bowlers Darcy Brown and Megan Schutt kept the batters pinned down, restricting them from finding the rope. Queensland struggled to steady the ship from the early wickets, as the innings progress to the middle overs Barsby came into bowl. In her first over she forced Sianna Ginger to send a shot uppish to backward point to a waiting Courtney Webb. Barsby continued in this vein, bowling very tightly and keeping the Queensland batters from getting the ball away.

In the 17^th over, Barsby executed a caught and bowled to remove left hander Bourke, bringing Laura Harris to the crease. Harris was not to be cowered by Barsby’s bowling, and in the remaining 4 balls of the over she muscled off 13 runs – forcing Barsby to finish her spell. But as it turned out Harris was only to be an entertaining cameo, and despite looking like she was about to put on a massive total, she was felled by what may be the catch of the season so far. Amanda-Jade Wellington had just had a catching opportunity put down at mid-on, and the next of her deliveries Harris lofted over her shoulder – it looked destined for the boundary except for a diving superwoman Courtney Webb catching in from over her shoulder in the air.

At this point Queensland were 6/82 but as SA looked to tighten the screws by bringing back the strike bowlers, O’Neill and Hancock worked Schutt’s balls around the field, so it was back to spin. After a steady passage of play it was Barsby again who bowled the dangerous looking O’Neill.

With Brown removing Hancock in the next over it looked nearly all over for the Queensland innings, but for Ruby Strange and Grace Parsons. Perhaps inspired by the gritty partnership put on by their rivals on Tuesday, they held steady being content to punt the odd badly bowled ball for 6. South Australia threw all of their bowlers (including adding in Madeline Penna to chance her arm at the pair) but they persevered to put on a 70 run 9^th wicket partnership. Though the resistance came to an end, when a returning Brown cleaned up Parsons and the 10^th wicket of Berry in the 42^nd over. Today it was Darcy Brown’s turn to lead her team off the field, finishing with 5 wickets off of 8 overs for 45 runs. Another tough day for Queensland batters, with Ruby Strange the top scorer on 39 not out, setting South Australia target of 195 to win.

South Australia batter Emma de Broughe contemplates the innings ahead.

Like Tuesday, with a relatively low total to defend, Queensland bowlers would have had the mindset that they needed the 10 wickets for victory. They got their dream start again, with Sianna Ginger removing Emma de Broughe for a duck with a LBW delivery. Bridget Patterson followed a few overs later courtesy of a two-fielder catch. Harris had got a hand to the ball, sending it up where Lucy Bourke was able to snatch it before it hit the ground.

South Australia’s thrilling chase from this point came down to a series of partnerships – each having to start afresh as batters seemed to fall in pairs. First was Webb and Penna, whose 70 run partnership formed the backbone of the innings. After surviving an attritional powerplay, they steadily accumulated even pinching the odd 6 off wayward deliveries. The partnership was brought to an end in the 21st over when Ruby Strange bowled Penna for 37, with Webb following her to the pavilion in the next over after just passing her 50. This left Tahlia McGrath and Holly Armitage at the crease as fresh batters, where they steadily built a useful smaller partnership over 5 overs until T-Mac chipped a delivery into Redmayne’s waiting gloves off of Ginger’s delivery. Ginger followed it up to get a hat trick ball in her next over, taking Armitage – and again a fresh pair of batters Wellington and Barsby were there to rebuild. Again this lasted a while before Barsby was bowled by Ginger.

At this point the momentum had swung away from SA, who needed 50 more runs compared to Queensland needing 3 more wickets. Nicola Hancock had a stunning over in the 34th to remove Wellington and Megan Schutt. SA innings was in disarray, 40 runs still to get with only one wicket left.

What followed was a tense 45 minutes as Elanor Larosa and Darcy Brown played their socks off to stay the course, putting on a record winning 10th wicket partnership in the WNCL. Helped by some strange bowling choices (including a further Laura Harris cameo!) towards the end of the innings, as Ginger, Parsons and Hancock were bowled out. South Australia clung on to reach the 195 run target.

Having let this win allude them, Queensland have suffered a sizable snag in their chase to the top of the leaderboard, and are now behind NSW who have games in hand to boot. South Australia will be sizing up their next opponents, they will be hosting Victoria at Karen Rolton Oval, with a hope to further climb the ladder.

Helen (Crystallised Cricket) is a writer based in Dharug and Gundagarra country, and here is writing about a game played on Ngunnawal country. She acknowledges the traditional owners of the lands that she writes from.