Best photo

This has to be one of the best photos of the year. It shows 2 of our U16 mums after the boys lost their Semi Final last weekend. This isn’t about winning or losing a game. It is a great photo taken at the end of the last game the boys played together since they started playing together in Kanga. It reflected the mood of the whole Team and was an outlet of the wins, losses, the trips away on the Country Carnivals to Armidale, Tamworth and Taree and the close friendships developed over many years.

It shows everything that is great about our game and our Club that forms such an important part of our lives. The good news is that many of these boys and parents will be involved with the Seniors next season and they bring with them this great culture for the next chapter of their cricketing lives.

#Awkward

Eric Junkkari (B2 and pictured right, with Julian Raffel) is the gift who keeps on giving. Picture this. Last season Eric was playing C1 in the Grand Final win against Normanhurst-Warrawee. After mentioning that this game was his last before retirement, the Normo Captain arranged for his players to form a tunnel for Eric to walk through on his way to the wicket for his last innings.

Fast forward 12 months and next weekend, Eric is not only still playing, this time in B2 Grade but the Grand Final is against the same Normo side with the same Captain.

Throw downs

The A2 Red boys have had a great season, finishing 2^nd and were just one good day away from making it through to the Grand Final. Unfortunately, the day turned out to be a shocker with the boys rolled for just 80. They reckon the pre-game throw-downs were the problem. Our boys were simply creaming it with Josh Banner taking out Luke Herzog, Stanton Tan and Snumpty Smyth.

Stanton Tan’s cover drive that hit Snumpty on the leg was a sign of things to come. The carnage continued with the Berowra boys obviously getting nervous about what was to come. Unfortunately we were rolled for 80 in 42 overs. To quote Jimmy McBrien; “unfortunately Berowra didn’t bowl shin-high full tosses”.

Quiet achievers

We usually call out great batting and bowling performances when our players score tons and take 5 –fors. This week though the hero’s batted for 38 overs and scored just 26 runs between them in the B2 Semi Final – Ryan Gunn (13*) – pictured right and Aaron Hawkins (13*) – pictured left.

Batting with us 6 wickets down and needing to draw the game to make it through to the Grand Final the boys showed tremendous patience and maturity to bat out the day and get us into the big dance next weekend.

Peter Lees takes a wicket

Peter Lees (C2 and pictured left with James Makin) has had a great season with the bat scoring over 539 runs at 41.5. As a bowler though, Peter makes a great batsman. Since debuting in 1994/95 Peter last bowled in a Competition game in 2010/11 and in these 24 years there have been 21 unfortunate batsmen who have been his victims.

On the weekend the unthinkable happened. Peter took a wicket to finish with 1/9. This is his first wicket since 1998/99 and the batsman has been offered counselling.

TeamApp screen views

TeamApp continues to get huge popularity with score updates being provided to those who can’t make it to the ground. During the Semi-Finals on Saturday we had just 4 of our Senior Teams playing.

On Saturday, we had an amazing 6,941 screen views with lots of updates coming through from each game matched by a lot of interest. With the Grand Finals on next weekend, if you don’t have TeamApp then it is easy to get to follow the scores next weekend for B2 and D2.