Field 3 saw the first match of the day between the Coastal Marlins and the Bayside Pirates. Both teams were 0 and 2 after the first week and were in desperate need of spark to start their BPL campaign. Kris Glass proved to be just that with a promotion to open the batting for the Marlins and really set the tone with an entertaining 49 off 30 balls.
A steady flow of runs throughout the innings for the Marlins, with some brilliant boundary hitting by Lloyd Aspin, ensured a total of 4/174 after their 20 overs.
Pirates started their innings cautiously, after losing Brandon Honeybrook early to Adam Sommerfield, James McNeil (24 off 29) was called upon to try to steady the Pirates’ ship and build a partnership with their middle order. However some disciplined bowling and steady wickets from the Marlins, coupled with a lack of Pirates’ boundaries throughout the middle overs made it tough to build any momentum to chase down the total.
Some late intent from interstate recruit Sunam Gautam (15 off 10) and Logan Duval got the Pirates to 100 but was never enough as the Coastal Marlins controlled the tempo for most of the match winning by 73 runs.
Lloyd Apsin was fantastic and lead the way with Bat and Ball for the Marlins to get them off the bottom of the ladder with a win first up to take them to 1 win from 3 games.