THE Queanbeyan District Cricket Club first grade side will turn their attention to the shorter format of the game this weekend, as they prepare to take on Eastlake and Albury-Wodonga in the first two rounds of twenty over action.
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They will be without master-blasters Blake Dean and Jono Dean for the Konica Minolta Regional Cup competition, who helped lead them to the semi-finals last season back in January.
But Queanbeyan captain Sam Taylor said he expected to field full strength teams this weekend, with the side out to avenge their semi-final loss from last season to Albury-Wodonga, which saw the Riverina based side field up to six ineligible players in that match.
"We might have a couple of blokes out with ACT under 19s commitments but otherwise we should be reasonably full strength," Taylor said.
"With our team being pretty young, it should be business as usual, but we'll go along as best as we can and prepare like we do every other week, and hopefully we can come away with two wins this weekend."
The coming weeks will prove very busy for the side, with two twenty over matches this weekend, followed by their third against Tuggeranong next Thursday, and their round five one day match, also against Tuggeranong, the following Saturday.
But the Bluebags will enter the competition, which features the Cricket ACT clubs as well as the Albury-Wodonga representative team and a representative team from the South Coast, with inconsistent form after another one day loss, against Eastlake, last Saturday.
Former Queanbeyan player Michael Spaseski smashed an unbeaten 101 off just 92 balls as his side made a comfortable 3/239 before bowling Queanbeyan out for 210.
Queanbeyan were in trouble early at 7/114, before Matt Grocott (54) and Mark Solway (48) put on 92 runs to get their men within 33 runs.
But another collapse of three wickets for four runs shut them down with more than three overs remaining, with the side losing their second match by less than 30 runs.
"We're letting ourselves down a bit in the top order and lacking a few runs, but realistically in all of our losses we've been pretty close," Taylor said.
"You'd like to think that if a couple of things pan out right for us, we should at least be four wins from five games."