Tiger Ticker
The Tassie Tigers have had to fight their way out of a hole early in the five day game and have done it showing plenty of fight, mainly by lower order batsmen, Wright and Butterworth on day 1 and then Hilfenhous, wright and Butterworth with the ball on day 2.
I attended the game today (Day 2) and it was totally entertaining, edge of the seat stuff. I was watching every ball, hoping for more runs early in the day when Tasmania were batting and then more wickets when we were bowling. With a crowd of around 4000 people the atmosphere was good, hanging onto every ball, and getting behind the home team to help them on the path to create some history for themselves and their state.
The Tigers ended their first innings on 340. This scoreline was a good achievement considering Tassie were 5/94 and looking at a pore first innings score. But fine hit’s from Butterworth (66) and Wright (67) took the score to a more competitive Target.
At the end of day 2 the Blues trail by 133, due to some great bowling by Hilfenhous (3/79), Butterworth (2/20) and Wright, who after two overs was taken out of the attack after being tonked for about 20 odd runs, then late showing some ticker returned to end up with the figures of 3/38 including a fine spell of 8 overs, taking 3/8.
The Tigers still have a lot of work in front of them. Two wickets to end the Blues first innings tomorrow morning and then the batsmen have got to go and score big. The majority of them got starts in the first innings but didn’t go on. In this second innings the Tigers need some big scores with some productive partnerships and to bat for as long as they can, to put this game to bed and out of reach for NSW.
