Caboolture captain Matt Schubert believes his team has the upper hand in the Sunshine Coast cricket grand final and desperately hopes for a break in the rain to chase victory.
The Snakes need an outright victory, after finishing behind Maroochydore on the ladder and losing the first innings.
They restricted the Swans to just 137 and only mustered 120 in reply, but they have their opponents at 4/35 heading into the third and final day of play on Saturday.
Schubert said they were in the box seat, but needed the weather to co-operate.
“Obviously a first innings loss isn’t the we wanted but I feel like we’re definitely on top in the game at the moment,” he said.
“That (weather) is the only thing that’s going to stop us.”
If they do get on the paddock, the Snakes have the bowling stocks to take quick wickets, enabling them a small run chase.
“We need to bowl well in the first hour of the day,” Schubert said.
“That can really set up what we want to achieve.
“If we go well with the ball and take a few early wickets, it goes a long way to winning the game.”
Connor Corlet and Glen Batticciotto are swinging the ball left and right and we’ve got a couple of good spinners in Jack Connew and Carter Simpson.
Corlet and Batticciotto claimed 3/16 and 3/6 respectively in the first innings.
The Snakes have won nine of the past 12 premierships in the eight-team competition and sense another opportunity, against the reigning premiers.
“We’re where we wanted to be,” Schubert said.
“We didn’t plan on finishing (the regular season) in fourth place but we’re playing finals cricket and that was what we wanted from the start of the season.
“We want to be playing in the big games and we’ve got ourselves in a position to contend for the title.
“I’m really pleased with that, but it depends on the weather whether we get a shot to go all the way or not.”
It could be Batticiotto’s last hurrah in the competition, with speculation this will be his last game before hanging up the boots. He is pictured below batting.
There has been showers all week and more were predicted until next week.
Meanwhile, Swans captain Blaine Schloss believes his team is well poised to defend their title, after denying the Snakes first innings points.
“I think we’re in a strong position at the moment,” he said.
“It’s going to depend on the weather this week, on where we end up on Saturday.
“But it was a really good effort from the boys to win on first innings given we batted quite poorly on the first day.
“We’ve refused to lose all the way throughout the season.”
Even if there is play on Saturday, he is confident they can finish the job.
“We’ve won from tricky positions all year,” he said.
“We’re in a tricky position at the moment, but we managed to defend 140 in the semi-final and in the first innings of the grand final we defended 130 so we’ve got a lot of faith in our bowling attack and fielding team that we can defend low totals if we need to.”
They may not need to defend runs if their batsman kick on.
“We’re going to have to bat well for a long period of time and score 180 or 200, or look to bat for 60 overs to try and bat them out of the game.
“They’re a dangerous opposition with Schubert and Batticciotto, who can score runs in pretty quick time, so it’s important for us, if we get on, that we look to bat 60 or 70 overs and try and take them out of the game.”
He said they would prefer to play rather than have a rain-affected match, but they did enough in the first innings.
“It’s unfortunate (if rain intervenes), because we always want to get on the field and play,” he said.
“But we’re fortunate that we’re in the position that we’ve already won first innings points, so if the rain does come in, we’re in the strong position to lift the trophy at the end of the day.”
