Points Table

Standings after 7 Rounds are:

• A1 Grade – =3^rd (3^rd on quotient)
• A2 – 1^st
• B1:
  • Blue (Rick) – 8^th
  • Red (Gunny) – 3^rd
• B2 – 4^th
• C1 – =7^th (7^th on quotient)
• C2:
  • Blue (Fieds) – 1^st
  • Red (Indranil) – 5^th
• C3 – 2^nd
• D1 – 2^nd
• D2 – 5^th

 

Match Reports

A Grade Vs Galston-Glenorie 294 – match report to follow

 A2 Grade 7 dec 303 Vs SKLPS – if The Home of Cricket (Greenway Park) doesn’t have the best surface in world cricket, then I’ll turn vegan. She looked magnificent. Warm blazer conditions greeted Snumpty ‘Lost My House Key Now’ Smyth, as he tossed well, and elected to bat.

Before moving any further, this author would like to apologise to Fat ‘Cannon Arm’ Connell, for not discussing his cannon arm in last week’s report. It’s like there’s a cannon in his arm.

After losing a wicket, Volc ‘I average 9’ Banner and Pear ‘I Need An Uber To Meet My Uber Eats Driver’ Partridge got to work, with a partnership more sexy than a Cameron Ling calendar. Volc hit 43, with Pear celebrating his first A2 50 with a Dizzy Gillespie horsie ride, on his way to a sumptuous 82. Effie ‘Tall Car’ Banner continued on his terrific form, scoring 65, which included 3 6’s, and confirmed his Best Banner status for the 48th week in a row.

Whilst the runs were being piled on, JMac ‘Lycra’ McBrien was riding his bike from Sydney to Wollongong. Ridiculous.

Great contributions also came from Snumpty (32), Keats ‘Moonwalker’ Keating (25) and Blowy ‘Gandis’ Blow (21*), allowing declaration captain, Fernie ‘Bring It In Boys’ Meikle to declare at 7/303.

With 5 overs to bowl, Cambo ‘Man Bunless’ McBrien and Gandis ‘Blowy’ Herzog bowled with fire and venom, with Gandis taking a wicket, courtesy of a brilliant diving catch from Pear, to leave SKLPS at 1/9.

Super day that.

B1 Blue (Rick) 158 Vs St Ives 0/13 – the mighty Blues got off to a good start – we won the toss and elected to bat. We started off pretty strongly with Julian Raffel setting the tone under heavy verbal scrutiny with 68 & Cooper Goddard with 32.

Those were the only scores of note in our innings, everyone else scored in the single digits and we posted a score of 159.

We had a few overs at St Ives, and we ensured we got stuck in early. Verbal chat was ripe and there was good strong bowling and fielding. We should have walked away with a few wickets – however at the end of the day they finished up at 0/13.

Looking forward to get into St Ives next week.

B1 Red (Gunny) 0/10 Vs Castle Hill Green 100 – match report to follow

B2 Vs Galston Glenorie 5/208 – Naps lost the toss and we found ourselves out in the field on a beautiful day for batting…… Dean Carlin (1/33) got us off to a great start, getting one to nip back and knock over middle stump in the first over. Dean and Prats Datar(1/26) bowled great opening spells with plenty of half chances, unfortunately none were taken.

Matt Digby (1/25) came on first change and made an immediate impact, finding the edge to see the batsman caught behind in his first over.

The opposition dug in and the next partnership put on 80 runs before Raghu Chary (1/40) got the breakthrough thanks to a sharp catch by Dean in gully. Prats dismissed the main Glenorie bat with a peach that knocked over the stumps.

A long tough day with missed chances numbering in the double digits. The boys finished the day with a positive attitude knowing that there are runs to be had next week, and will look to give the run chase a fair crack.

C1 9 dec 354 Vs Castle Hill – Les Shore No 1 was the venue against Castle Hill, and what a performance by our guys. 9 declared 354, it all started earlier in the day with Richard Hughes (68) & Tim Worthington (44) putting on 75 for the opening partnership.

Tim played some trademark shots around the ground in his short cameo and is looking the goods.

Richard Hughes is batting with tremendous patience and controlled aggression. Nandu Ramesh continued his sublime form of late with a quickfire (40), as did Rommel Pandey (37) shoring up the late order, with some power hitting, star of the day was no doubt Asees Rajput (109no) – our 483^rd century.

Asees compiled a well organised brutal at times innings to accelerate the scoring to bring our score to a formidable total. Next week we have a target to bowl to, C1s upward & onward!

C2 Blue (Fieds) 4/161 defeated Castle Hill 159 – we witnessed a game change on its head today. We made the brave decision to send in CH on a belter, due to some bowling restrictions on our young attack. However at the drinks break things were not looking up – CH had amassed 1/114 off the first 20 overs and we were wondering what we had done.

The fact of the matter was that our bowling was wayward and often too short on a deck that sat-up.

So we had some stern words at the break and the boys responded.

We took the remaining wickets for just 45 runs – Warren Schwartzel being the main destroyer taking 4/7 including a spell of 4/0 in 9 balls. Point to remember – we need to be disciplined when we bowl on surfaces (Campbell Park) like this…and taking the pace off the ball can be a good thing.

Our turn to bat, and though we lost an early pole, veterans Mick Barry (50) and Pratah ‘Pedro’ Sinnetamby (61 ret) put on a 122-run partnership to see us to safety.

We were able to snare first innings points just before stumps for the loss of just 4 wickets (incl Pedro’s retirement at 5:45pm as he had to dash and see Cinderella at the Opera House – “This magical romance, with its swirling planets and Dior-inspired ball gowns, returns to Sydney Opera House for an exclusive encore performance” – certainly sounds better than getting a ton at Campbell Park).

Mirror mirror made of tin, let’s see if we can conjure up an outright win.

C2 Red (Indranil) Vs Normanhurst-Warrawee 9/131 – the stand in skipper didn’t call correctly at the toss and we were sent into the field. Wednesday’s rain had left the pitch looking more like a sand pit than astro turf.

It was a tough day in the field but to everyone’s credit we kept plugging away making difficult for the Opposition to score easy runs, of the 80 overs bowled today 36 were maidens.

Amit (3/17) and Ben (1/3) got us off to a steady start with the first wicket falling in the 8th over with just 1 run scored (a no ball)

C3 203 Vs Castle Hill 0/13 – turning up to what has to be the crappiest ground in the Association (Gilroy College), we settled into the luxurious amenities (Thank goodness Vinks brought along his gazebo to shelter the scorers at least!) we decided to have a bat on a ground that was marginally quicker than playing on quicksand!

Some good bowling meant we lost a couple of early wickets, but the man of the hour (Ian Paterson) stood the test and played another outstanding knock. At one stage, showing fleet footwork he got right to the pitch of a quick one and collected a painful red cherry on the toecap of his left boot for his troubles (we suspect it was just in an attempt to get himself another runner!)

Patto shared in a number of solid partnerships before finally falling in the 47th over with the score on 155, Patto having collected 54 to his name (worth 80 odd on any other ground).

He was well supported by Brent Van Wyk, who showed no ground is too big or too slow for him by clubbing a quick fire 27 (3×4 & 1×6), but when he departed at 5/87 we still had some work to do.

John Rose then joined Patto and the two formed a stabilising partnership that really brought us back into control of the game adding 68. Rosey continuing his great form with a fluent 48.

Looking to capitalise in the last hour, Will Harvey played a stylish knock of 21 before we ended up totalling 203. Definitely worth at least an extra 50-60 runs on any other ground. A very solid effort.

With 8 overs against their batsmen we created a couple of difficult chances but couldn’t grab the breakthrough, however, being 190 in front with a very good attack, we will press hard for the win next week.

D1 1/30 Vs Kissing Point 181 – all week captain Papa Diggs was keen as mustard to bat first at the small Mimosa ground as was the confidence that we had won every toss this season it was almost a given. You guessed it..we were put in to the field.

We knew we had to be on song and threw the ball around prior to play to get our eye in just in case an opportunity came our way.

First ball from Amith Ninan (1/31) was a real loosener but the batter hit it straight to fine leg to one of our best fields and it went down. Not long after a dolly went up from the other bat only to hit the turf. Let’s rewind here to say that these 2 bats are averaging over 60 runs and dominate the leading run scorer list.

For D1s so heads were well and truly down.

Amith managed to take the edge before too much damage had been inflicted well caught by Aden keeping. The next 20 odd overs belonged to Kissing Point apart from Dave Larkham (7/60) clean bowling the number 3, KP up to 2/131 and 350 looked on the cards.

Then the man of the day Disco Dave who was already 8 overs through his spell turned on a fantastic performance taking 6/17 off his next 8 overs with 2 more bowled and 4 catches, the man had the ball on a string. This is just the 144^th time that a player has taken 7 wickets or better in an innings.

We are not sure if Dave will be able to walk tomorrow but I am sure taking a 7 Fa will make up for it as well as friendly banter to son Brent discussing best ever bowling figures.

Congratulations Mitch Keetels (1/8) who took his first wicket for WPHCCC well caught by Amith Ninan who was an absolute star in the field with 3 catches today. Roger Friend (1/6) finished the innings with a smart catch behind by Alastair Fullerton.

Our turn to bat for 24 overs, we decided to go with our week 1 only Al Fullerton (12 runs) to bat with Papa Diggs (10*) and they put on a 24 run standard until Al tickled one behind.

Aden Hanich is yet to score but importantly saw the team to stumps only 1 down for 30 needing 152 more runs next week. We are right in this game against top of the table and looking back maybe losing the toss was a good thing Papa Diggs.

D2 135 Vs Kissing Point 0/4 – we lost the toss to be sent in to bat.

We started well losing our first wicket in the 23^rd over to be 1 for 31. The second wicket was lost in the 32^nd over with us on 58. However, KP then introduced a player who took 8 wickets for 17 runs in 16.2 overs. He clean bowled 4 of our players and also got 4 lbw. The lbw wickets were lost plumb in front of middle stump usually via a full toss on the batters foot with no bat involved.

This was devastating and we were lucky to hit 135 runs by the 61^st over before being bowled out. So a promising start to our innings but a terrible finish. Our best batter was Praneel Singh who hit 64 runs including five sixes.

We had to bowl 6 overs against KP to finish the day. Those 6 overs costs us 4 runs. So quite economical.

Next week we need to bowl line and length on the wicket in order to stand a chance in this game. We didn’t do this in the 6 overs with a lot of balls on the leg side. The grass is long and most of the runs came by singles today.

So some chance of getting a win against this third placed team if we can just get the ball on the off side and pitched up fellas.

That’s the aim so let’s give it our best shot.