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Echuca South’s B grade side continued its form into the finals with an impressive win against Rochester Tigers at the weekend.

After electing to bowl at Echuca South Oval, the Tigers made a great start to have the home side 3/12.

Rhys Behrens joined Alex Larcombe at the crease and the youngsters quickly added to the scoreboard, with Behrens making 36 of the 49-run partnership before he was dismissed by Joel Waters.

Larcombe (20) was run out soon after but an impressive long spell at the crease by Ben Eade (26) saw the South tail significantly add to the total with handy knocks from Anthony McMahon (11) and Stewart Moar (25) as the team finished on 141.

In the Tigers’ reply, Moar captured a vital wicket before stumps on the first day, before South returned with a solid display yesterday.

Moar finished with 3/19, while Eade starred with 4/13 and Cameron McMullan’s 3/16 saw the team bowl out the visitors for 79.

South went into bat again but after reaching 3/47 after 20 overs, the match was called off.

■Girgarre prevailed in a close match against Tongala at the weekend, winning by 16 runs.

After winning the toss and batting at home, Girgarre overcame the early loss of Mick Coyne for Brett (33) and Ash Hughes (58) to add 71 runs for the second wicket.

The team then collapsed to be 7/127 before a late fightback from Wade Summers (25), Matt McCready (23) and Tom Coyne (15) saw the team finish on 198.

Brett Hughes starred with the ball in the Blues’ reply, taking 5/69 as the visiting side finished all out for 182.

Ash Hughes (2/44) was the other main wicket-taker.

■The Fire Brigade versus Echuca result was unavailable.

C grade

A remarkable 26-run 10th-wicket partnership by Mark Patten and Scott Bailey led Stanhope to an upset win against Girgarre in C grade on Saturday.

Echuca and Bamawm-Lockington United won their respective semi-finals and Girgarre would have been confident of making it a clean sweep, only for the Lions duo to cause the upset.

Stanhope won the toss and sent Girgarre into bat at the Northern Oval in Kyabram and took regular wickets throughout the low-scoring innings.

Only Andrew Melverton (27) and Jason Varcoe (23 not out) resisted the attack with a 31-run partnership as the team was bowled out for 101.

Brett Bunfield (3/13) cleaned up the tail, while Cobey Aynsley (2/19), Brent Sloan (2/12), Kade Dearing (1/26) and Tom Hepburn (1/11) were the other wicket-takers.

Knowing a strong bowling performance was needed in reply, Lee Kempinski took two wickets early and when opener Wade Foley was dismissed for 22, Stanhope was 5/50.

Kempinski’s superb day continued as he struck three more times to finish with 5/22 and reduce the Lions to 9/77, before the last partnership from Bailey (7 not out) and Patten (13 not out), getting home in the 36th over.

Aside from Kempinski, wickets also went to David Asquith (2/18), Dean Shay (1/18) and Melverton (1/17).

■Ladder-leader Echuca progressed to the C grade preliminary finals, despite a slight scare in its match against Rochester United.

After being sent into the field at the Moama number two oval, United struck early through Nick Dobell as Echuca fell to 2/10.

Unfortunately for United, Dobell then suffered an injury and was unable to bowl further after taking 2/1, but Mark Emmerson (2/33) picked up where Dobell left off to make further inroads into the Echuca batting line-up and reduce it to 4/22.

Prolific opener Max Beard (22) fell soon after, but Nathan Burrell (48) and Ben Hearn (16) then combined for a 50-run partnership.

Still struggling at 7/110, Echuca’s tail wagged with Brandon Byrne (19 not out) and Rick Nathan (19) helping the team finish on 9/165.

Dylan Nebauer (2/26), Nathan West (2/27) and Kane Moroney (1/28) were the other wicket-takers for United.

The visitors started well with Craig Coghill (13), Emmerson (30) and Xavier Hooppell (30) all getting starts, but no other batsmen made a significant contribution as the team was bowled out for 124.

Byrne (3/24) was handy, while Rod Perry (2/12) bowled an impressive line. The other wickets went to Jason Gould (1/15), Nathan (1/11) and Tyson Russell (1/40) as Echuca won by 41 runs.

■The last semi-final saw reigning seven-time Campaspe Cricket Association champion BLU defeat Fire Brigade.

Winning the toss and batting at Lockington Consolidated School, the Flames started well to dismiss the home side’s top three batsmen cheaply to have it 3/17.

However, that only brought Jacob Gardiner and Jeff Arnott to the crease.

The aggressive Arnott smashed 61 of the 93 runs in his partnership with Gardiner and with the youngster set, the other players batted around him as BLU accrued an imposing score.

Gardiner enjoyed further solid partnerships with Eric Bish (18), Brad Mundie (13) and Murray Serpell (20) before eventually being dismissed for an epic 89 in the final over, with the team making 229.

The visitors gave it their best shot were unfortunately not able to match the feats of BLU and were bowled out for 188 after 37 overs, with BLU winning by 41 runs.

Nick Roffey was the star with the ball taking 4/27, while Jason Shaw (2/22), Arnott (1/22) and Brett Monro (1/26) also chipped in.