Cardinia rebounded in a big way and pushed Pakenham’s season to the brink on day one of round 13 in the Casey Cardinia Cricket Association (CCCA) Premier Division.
The Bulls sent a statement to the league by decimating the Lions and already securing first innings points at Gunton Oval.
A remarkable day that saw three batting innings began with Cardinia taking the ball after winning the toss.
And it was a decision that proved fruitful for the hosts as Josh Browne and Trishane De Silva got stuck in early to dismiss Zach Flaxman (0), Imesh Jayasekara (1) and Mitch Varty (5) to have Pakenham 3/19.
A settling partnership between Jason Williams and Sendhil Naidu quietened things down momentarily, before Lachie Volpe not only broke the stand but began shredding the remaining batting order.
He bowled Williams (33) and trapped Nicholas Sadler (0) in front the next ball before skipper Jack Anning bravely clipped away the hattrick delivery for two.
But the Lions found no refuge as Matt Welsh then secured the wickets of Naidu (25) and Anning (6).
From there it was a Bulls frenzy with Volpe and Welsh making quick work of the tail as Cardinia took 5/8 to suddenly move Pakenham from 6/72 to all out for 80.
Volpe had his fingerprints all over the game with 4/16, while Welsh managed 3/19 and De Silva chipped in as he took 2/16.
“I think we went out trying to prove that we can get back to where we were, especially coming up to finals,” star pacer Welsh said.
“Coming off the two losses in a row, I think we’ve been average in the field, both bowling and fielding.
“We needed to get back to how we know we can play.
“It was good, everyone bowled well.
“It’s good when you can get a lot of dot balls, especially with Lach bowling from one end.
“A lot of people see he’s a spinner so they try and score off him but he’s very hard to score on, he’s a very good bowler.
“It helps him get a lot of wickets because they tried to attack him with all the pressure we were building.
“We didn’t give a lot of bad balls for them to score off and it was one of those days.”
It certainly was one of those days as the momentum flowed over into the batting, even completely shrugging off two early Lions breakthroughs.
Tom Tyrrell claimed two wickets to have the hosts 2/19 but Bradey Welsh (52) and Yohan Arumadura (64 not out) then took full control of the match.
Cardinia rocketed past the total, bagging the initial points before declaring at 2/126 after 35 overs to have one more crack at Pakenham and kickstart the outright quest.
And once again, Volpe came through to snag a late scalp when Flaxman (3) was caught by Travis Wheller.
The Lions skidded through to 1/28 at stumps, still trailing by 18 runs.
“We didn’t do much wrong, it was one of those days,” Matt Welsh said of his side’s all-around performance.
“Yo and Bradey batted awesome, they started a bit slower and then got themselves in and started attacking.
“It’s huge, you could tell everyone was stoked.
“We had our past players day too so you could see everyone was up and about because we’d been bit down the last couple of weeks.
“It was good to see everyone buying in and we put the work in and got the results.
“It was huge coming up to finals.
“We need to keep performing how we did on Saturday.
“I think we need to stay up in the field, we’ve had patches where we die down so we’re trying to stay up for the whole innings.
“Our batting has been pretty good, we batted well against Tooradin, I think it’s just a matter of trying to bat time and keep doing our job with the ball.”
