Young Guns left to rue major batting collapse as Old Dogs claim second straight Twenty20 Slam title

For the second straight year, the Old Dogs have secured bragging rights against their younger counterparts, as they won the Upper Great Southern Twenty20 Slam on Friday night at Clayton Road Oval. Last year the Upper Great Southern All Stars defeated the region’s best under-23 players in the inaugural T20 exhibition match. Once again, experience prevailed as the Old Dogs posted a match-winning total after batting first. Two wickets from Jordan Hughes early on had the Old Dogs on the back foot at 3-22 before Perrin Quartermaine and Carl Garrick added 30 runs together. The Young Guns had their opponents at 5-62 when Quartermaine was dismissed for 20. Some late firepower from Kalan Joyce (23) and Caen Taylor (32) helped guide the Old Dogs to a very competitive total of 8-133 from their 20 overs. Hughes finished with 3-39 from his four overs and was the only multiple wicket-taker. In reply, the Young Guns got off to a great start, thanks to a 31-run partnership from openers Jordan Draper-Gibbs and Jacob Schorer. However, they suffered a major collapse, losing 7-17 to dent their victory hopes. Hughes and Lewis Parsons added 27 together to get their side back into the game but they were eventually bowled out for 88, Parsons top-scoring with 23. Rodney Ford took 3-8 off three overs and Blair Forrest claimed 2-15 for the winners. Event organiser Max Evans hoped to make the event bigger and better in 2022. “There have been numerous forms of T20 competition in the association in previous seasons between clubs, but a drop-off in popularity saw them scrapped after the 2014-2015 season,” he said. “We still wanted an opportunity to give guys some experience playing T20 cricket, and playing representative franchise cricket allows for that, as well as providing the opportunity to play in front of a much bigger crowd than we usually get to regular fixtures. “There’s a fairly large cohort of cricketers across the association all around their early 20s that in the last few years have really started to make an impact around the association. “Having said that, there’s also a number of guys that have been the benchmark for the association for a long time, played a lot of country week A-section cricket and had some success at it. “So you could say there was already a subtle rivalry between old and new, we just put them in coloured shirts under lights and made it official.”