With three Saturday’s remaining until finals, the equation for East Ballarat is becoming clearer – but there will be no getting ahead of themselves, says Hawks captain Josh Brown.
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As fifth-placed Golden Point’s season looks to be over, East Ballarat poses the biggest threat to what has been a consistent top four for many weeks.
Defending its 212 runs against Brown Hill is step one, gaining an outright victory would be the ideal and perhaps ambitious hope before taking on Darley in the final round – which could possibly be a play-off for a finals spot.
But Brown said the side’s only focus at the moment was one defeating the Bulls, who will resume at 0-7, on Saturday.
“We have to focus on this game, if we don’t win this game, that’s it for us. You can’t look any further than a week at a time,” Brown said.
“A couple of results could go our way which would make it helpful, but either way we have to win our games - all has to go right for us.”
Brown felt last week’s total was at least 50 runs short of where he would’ve liked.
However, he had full faith in the bowling line-up to get the result. Brown said he and in-form quick Oliver Hayes would be searching for early wickets to put East Ballarat in a strong position early in the day.
The Hawks have bowled out top four teams Mt Clear and Darley for scores of 141 and 143 respectively, as well as defending their total against Golden Point since its round six loss to Brown Hill.
“We probably didn’t make enough runs.
“Our strengths’ been bowling, so we’ve just got to do a better job with the ball now. I always back the bowlers that we have, we’ve got plenty of variety.
“Hopefully we get wickets at the right time and don’t let them build too many partnerships – that’s the key. Our bowling stocks are good enough to do it, but it’s session by session this week. We afford to leak too many runs, but we’ve got to be attacking enough to take the wickets.”
Brown concedes it may have left its finals race too late, but a good performance Saturday and there is still hope.
“We’ve left it a bit too tight, but we’ve still got the opportunity to win and get into the finals.
“If we can get two or three cheap wickets, that’ll be very helpful. They bat pretty deep...they’ve definitely got damaging batsmen the whole way through so you can’t let off at anytime.”