Eastern Suburbs batsman Trent Park stood tall and delivered a masterly 146 to take the challenge up to the all conquering City United on day one of their two-day encounter at King Edward Park.
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Park peeled off 15 fours and eight sixes as Easts posted 273 and mounted the first major challenge to unbeaten City United's start to the Maitland first grade competition..
He came in with the score at 2/14 and remained until the end sharing in a crucial partnerships of 68 with Toby Godfray (27) and 110 with Jack Bennett (59).
While Park was in devastating form, City's bowlers were on top of the remainder of the Easts batting line up.
Tim Burton picked up 5-45 including the top three Easts batsmen and Todd Francis took 3-50 to lead the City bowling figures.
Bennett and Park matched each other in their partnership but when Bennett was out shortly after tea Park led the attack lifting his tempo and dominating scoring.
"Trent batted sensationally, it was awesome," Bennett said.
"It was a really positive innings, you'd almost say controlled aggression. He hit 15 fours and eight sixes, so he didn't have to do too much running which is probably good for him.
"He got through the early period and was able to cash in at the end with some really clean hitting.
"He was on 61 at tea and brought up his 100 six or seven overs later.
"He was just in the zone, he was hitting everything out of the park at one stage."
City were 1/53 at stumps with Wayne Dunlop on 33 and Josh Trappel on 12 after Josh Hicks bowled former Easts skipper Andrew Vickery for seven.
Bennett said it was a really good day for the club backing up against front-runners City after last week's important win over Northern Suburbs.
"At the start of the day we talked about being in the contest all day and we were able to do that," he said.
"Obviously next week is going to be a challenge as they've got a lot of batting and have to make about 220.
"We've got them in a contest which is really good and what we wanted to achieve. We've laid the foundation and hopefully next week we can pile on the pressure and get the result."
The only disappointment for Easts was that apart from Bennett and Godfray no other batsman was able to go on with an innings in support of Parks.
"It was nice from my perspective to chip in, I threw it away a bit after tea, but we were able to wrestle away a bit of momentum from them.
"We were 3/82 when I came in and Trent and I were able to put on 110.
"People were able to stay around with him, but unfortunately no one was able to go on and get a score."
Bennett said Godfray had been an incredible influence on the team both on and off the field.
"He is setting standards of what we want to be and want to do out there and it's starting to really reflect in our results," he said.
"That win last week against Norths was unreal and then to be able to back that up this week with another really good day of cricket it's a sign that we are finding consistency and meeting our potential."
Bennett said dismissing the Trappel brothers (Josh and Matt) and Wayne Dunlop early and cheaply was going to be the key to victory next week.
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