Wham bam, Celebrations Fam!!
After suffering a close defeat in the last round, Sydney Lions C Grade team returned to winning ways with a comprehensive win over Hornsby District Green in Round 4 of the HK&HDCA competition.
Winning the toss, Sydney Lions chose to bowl first and the decision was justified instantly by star bowlers Kapil Sharma and Nuwan Fernando who took wickets of their last ball and first ball respectively of their first overs. However, Hornsby batters dug in nicely after that until a 53 run partnership was broken adeptly by Thaveen Weerasinghe in the 27th over. Harsimrat Singh Sandhu took the other half of this set pair out bowled shortly after in the 30th over of the match at 4/67.
However, the ever resilient Hornsby continued to fight back with another 50+ partnership which was broken only by some good bowling from none other than the Captain Courageous Chandra Gunarathne. This was the start of the Hornsby collapse led by the pacey Menuja Goonaratne with a 4 wicket haul leading to Hornsby being bowled out for a modest 153.
The chase was started adeptly Nalin de Silva and Centurion Jaliya Goonaratne with an opening stand of 39 runs. Afterwards, Nuwan Fernando joined Jaliya to nibble away at the total and end the day's play with no further hiccups.
Day 2 started with the same approach by both batters leading to a 65 run stand when Nuwan was finally dismissed edging a ball. Another quick wicket followed with Gaurav Bhatia unlucked his way to a hit wicket.
But that started the Goonaratne Fireworks show, with Menuja Goonaratne joining Jaliya in the middle. Both batsman 79 runs in 9.4 overs. Along the way, Jaliya completed yet another century for Sydney Lions ending his innings on 101 (107).
Man of the Match Menuja continued his hitting after Jaliya's departure and reached his 50 in 51 balls. Late contributions from Kalutara Fonseka, Harsimrat Singh Sandhu and debutant Ethan Sebastian propelled the lead to over 100 runs giving Sydney Lions a sniff of an outright win.
Unfortunately, Hornsby again showed its resilience to stop the outright but not before losing 2 wickets.
All that followed some family building time with a team barbecue and birthday celebrations for Harsimrat Singh Sandhu ending an already great day in an even better fashion.
Onto the next round now!!