The last of our big milestones

This season has seen an unusually large number of records – Personal Milestones, Team Performances in both Juniors and Seniors. After Peter Lees (C2 Red) clocked over his 5,000 runs last weekend, the last big one this season is coming up fast.

Simon Smyth (A2 Captain and pictured bowling at Bradman Oval) is sitting on 399 wickets after having already been the first player to crack the 150 A2 wickets. Once Simon cracks this milestone he will be just the 7^th player in 88 years to pass 400 wickets and with 2 more wickets moves into 6^th place. So after 2,038 overs we are about to see something special.

The only problem is that while Simon has 399 wickets he is also on 399 hamstrings. You guessed it he pinged it again. Let’s hope this one is just a strain and he is back on the field soon.

Greenway Park update

Just on a serious note for a change, we often take for granted the amazing efforts of our Volunteers without whom we don’t have a Club. Just one example was during the week when, at short notice, we needed to have people make time to meet with the Federal Minister for Sport (Bridget McKenzie) and our Local Federal member, Julian Leeser on the Greenway Park redevelopment.

True to form our great volunteers moved mountains to be there during the day and represent us in the meeting with the Minister. Well done and thanks to Rob and Aden Hanich, Jane and Cameron Bish.

The marvels of modern technology

Peter Lees (C2 Red) scored his 5,000^th run last weekend. In the recent past someone would take a photo of the player from the boundary or during a break. Not these days with Smart phones. After Peter reached his 5,000 runs our quick thinking Umpire took out the phone and got a photo as it happened.

Two strikes

If you dish it out then you have to be able to take it. So your friendly editor has been stung twice by Buzz Burrows (C3 Skipper and pictured right with Peter Lees and Peter Heidegger). The problem is that Buzz is so believable he should be a politician. The first sting happened when Buzz let everyone know that one of his players, Connor Hindmarsh was out injured due to a PokémonGo injury that damaged his shoulder. The 2^nd sting came when Dylan Bish was out for this game due to a family commitment. The story that did the rounds that he was on a Cruise Ship for the School Holidays playing the Maracas in his band as part of the entertainment. One day we will learn.

Not outs – an update

Every now and then we update the list of batsmen who have the highest not outs in our history. With half the Season played let’s have a look at the latest list:

1. Steve Quanborough (D1) – 73 not outs in 187 innings
2. Tim Leyshon (B1 Blue) – 64 not outs
3. Ross A – 58
4. Roger Friend (D1) – 56
5. James Makin (A1) – 54
6. Andrew Fiedler (C2 Blue) – 53

Storm damage

The West Pennant Hills-Cherrybrook area copped the weekend storm harder than most with around 20,000 homes blacked out. Some of the stories to come out so far are:

• There were many road closures around the area. Some of our players were so keen to to still get to the Club, they parked at Thompson’s Corner and walked to the Club!
• Campbell Park was almost wrecked with all the fences down after tress collapsed right along the length (photo) – our D2 boys were playing at this ground
• Les Shore – a tree knocked down power lines at the exit to the ground so without careful negotiation you could have been fried
• WPH Sports Club:
  • early arrivers at the Club were trapped in as a tree at the nets was blown over and blocked the bridge for over an hour
• Edward Bennett Oval – a turtle was blown out of the creek and onto the ground.

The big winner from this was the Sports Club. With people not being able to get out they were powered by generators and were doing a great trade.

Let us know of any other storm stories and we will give an update next week.