Melbourne and Coburg to meet in Premier Seconds T20 Final

Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) will take on Coburg Cricket Club in the Women’s Premier Seconds T20 final on Saturday at Greenvale Reserve.

This fixture will be a rematch from last weekend’s T20 which saw Melbourne come out on top and record a 31-run win over Coburg.

Melbourne’s captain Charlotte Killeen, has led from the front this season scoring 210 runs at 35.00 across Premier Firsts and Seconds cricket.

Her high score came in a second round fixture against Ringwood as she hit 59 off 52, an impressive knock which included nine fours.

Like Melbourne’s Firsts, their Seconds is a young side and U15 Victorian player and member of the U16 Metropolitan South East Bayside team, Clementine Ryan-Fuller, will be hoping her experience at the Under 15 National Championship and VicSpirit U16 State Championships will help her put in a match-winning performance for her club.

In last month’s State Championships, Ryan-Fuller played well and averaged 41.50 with the bat, boosted by a third round score of 41.

In the same tournament she also contributed with the ball claiming 2-7 in the semi-final as she dismissed numbers two and three with the score on just one.

Another young MCC player who has represented the state is Jacinta Goodger-Chandler, who was part of the successful Victorian U18 side which won the Betty Butcher Shield last month in Canberra.

She has been a useful bowler for the club this season and helped to secure an emphatic 93-run victory over Prahran, dismissing four of the top five batsmen to finish with impressive figures of 4-14 from her four overs.

Batter Kyra Black who has come in at any position from one to four for the Firsts and Seconds this season has had a fair season with the bat, scoring 237 runs at 19.75.

Black’s high score of 41 came in a Firsts one-day match against tough opposition in Box Hill and so their 43-run win was even more enjoyable.

Coburg will look to their captain, Catherine Morrow, to bring her season’s form through to the final as the club looks to win the title for the second year running.

Morrow has taken 12 wickets at 8.42 with the miserly economy rate of 1.83.

She has also scored 157 runs at 52.33, an impressive average helped by four unbeaten innings, and in Premier Seconds cricket has a top score of 55 not out this season.

Opening batsman, Nathalie Tuilagi, has had a good season for Coburg both at Premier and Shield level.

In Premier Seconds she has accumulated 253 runs at a good average of 36.14 with a top score of 79.

This came in an 80-run win over fellow finalists, Melbourne, in a one-day fixture.

Courtney Coghill has been a strike bowler for Coburg this season, claiming 22 wickets at just 6.45 this season with impressive best bowling of 4-6 which came in an eight-wicket win against Dandenong.

Coburg also have a key young bowler in their armoury in Erika Quinn who was part of the Victorian U15 National Championships which finished third this season.

Quinn also represented Metropolitan Inner South East and South East Metro at the VicSpirit U16 and U18 State Championships respectively.

Quinn has taken 13 wickets at an average of 13.62 with her best figures of 3-7 coming in last weekend’s defeat to Melbourne.

With Melbourne in both the Seconds’ and Firsts’ finals there is likely to be a lot of support for the recently established Premier sides looking to win their first flag or ideally flags.

But Coburg will probably go into the match as favourites as they finished top of the season and currently hold the T20 and One-Day titles.