An unlikely club sits at the top of the Bellarine Peninsula Cricket Association A2 Grade ladder after causing one of the biggest upsets in recent seasons on Saturday.
After thrashing one of the premiership favourites in round 2, Newcomb leads a remarkable ladder that has all eight sides sitting on one win and one loss.
The Bulls were very competitive in their season opener against Portarlington, but nobody saw the Wallington result coming – not even new captain-coach Dylan Ryan.
“We’ve had a couple of tough games to start – Portarlington and Wallington,” Ryan said.
“The way they (Wallington) took care of Collendina last week, I just didn’t really have either of those games penciled in. I thought we’d be competitive.
“We’ve added a lot over the off-season, a lot of batting depth, which shows posting two pretty good scores, but that was not quite what I had on my radar.”
Wallington batted first and apart from UK import Max Roxburgh (47), failed to get going, being dismissed for 127.
The Bulls’ attack was ruthless with Shane Healey going for just 14 from eight overs, Sean Anderton taking 2/20, Jack Scanlon and Randika Mudiyanselage grabbing three-fors and Ryan taking 2/25.
Ryan said the loss against Portarlington was mainly due to his bowlers not making inroads, something that his squad worked on during the week.
“It was probably the area we had to work on last week,” he said.
“I felt like the score was enough against Port, but we just let ourselves down in the first 20 overs and it sort of hurt us a bit.
“But we did show that we could do it. We fought back pretty well and worked on it a fair bit at training during the week and that showed yesterday.”
When Newcomb’s best batter, Shane Healey, was bowled on the first ball of Newcomb’s run chase, not too many would have predicted a Bulls’ win.
But Randika smacked 27 from 11 balls and then fellow Sri Lankans Singhara Kumar (65 not out) and Thisum Hapugodage (31 not out) put on 92 to guide Newcomb home by eight wickets with 10 overs to spare.
“Losing Shane first ball, I think a lot of people would have looked at the live score and thought that we were going to roll over and fold,” Ryan said.
“But Pradeep and Thisum were both brought in this year and showed a lot. I think they both suit two-day cricket more, but Pradeep’s got enough shots and he played the anchor role perfectly.
“Randy, who opened the batting, we gave him a bit of a license. He tends to go pretty hard and bats a little bit further down the order, but we thought with a low total we’d try and get some quick runs early on and it paid off.”
