Our own Funky Miller

For those of us of a certain age will remember Colin Miller (1998-2001). Miller used to play with Blue or pink hair. He would also open the bowling and then bowl spin. Last weekend we had our own version of Funky Miller – Dave Behlevanas.

In just his 2^nd game back from injury this season, our caring C2 Blue Captain (Andrew Fiedler) bowled Dave for 13.2 overs and it was just too much. DB ended up taking 6/59 with amazing resilience. What makes this fascinating is that Dave started off bowling medium pace and took 3 wickets. As the overs added up and the fitness waned he then bowled spin and took another 3 wickets.

Stranded

Peter Lees is one of the highest scoring batsmen in our history. In 88 years only 9 players have reached the imposing 5,000 run milestone. As so often happens when big milestone approach it takes time and Peter is no exception. At the start of the season he needed just 49 runs to reach this milestone. Up to this game, Peter had scored 48 runs. Just 1 short of the 5,000 so he goes into the last game needing just 1 run to join the elite in our Club – good luck Peter.

“I would walk 500 miles…”

The famous 1987 song by the Proclaimers (here ) comes to mind when thinking about Tim Worthington (C1 Captain).

When you think of players passionate about their cricket we have some amazing characters including many of today’s players – just think of Simon Smyth, Justin Paterson and Buzz. Tim is up there with the best. He is currently playing with a broken hand and has often played when sick or carrying some other significant injury.

This week we found out another trait that adds to his status. Tim lives at Hornsby and is the Head Ground keeper at Pymble Golf Course – on his feet all day. It turns out that Tim also walks to and from work every day – 16 kilometres in total and it takes about 2 hours & 10 mins each day.

We found out about this story when literally bumping into Tim on the Train on his way home. It turns out that Wortho had done so much walking this week that his legs ‘felt like jelly’.

If anyone even comes close to this commitment then let me know.

Traffic jam

We have a number of big personal Milestones coming up with 4 players within touching distance of some major achievements:

• Peter Lees (C2 Red) has 4,999 runs and become just the 9^th player in our history to reach this wonderful milestone
• Simon Smyth (A2) has 398 wickets and 151 in A2 alone. Once Simon gets the next 2 wickets  he will be only the 6^th player in our history to reach the amazing 400 wicket mark.
• Shankar Ravi (C2 Red) – 199 wickets
• Nikki O’Meara (C2 Red) – 99 wickets
• Stuart Fiedler C2 Blue) – 98 wickets.

Good luck boys on achieving these wonderful personal achievements.

“…but I scored a double hundred”

“Disco” Dave Larkham (D1) took the amazing figures of 7/60 today in D1 against the top team. This is just the 144^th time in our long history that a player has taken 7 or more wickets in an innings. This then turned into a bit of father / son rivalry. While his son Brent (B1) is one of our outstanding talents, Brent’s best is just 4/11 – a long way behind the old man. So after thinking about for a while Brent reminded Disco Dave that “at least I scored a double hundred”.

Dave wasn’t too disappointed through as he was congratulated by the Nicole, the beautiful wife of Ian Digby. When combined with a cold beer, this brought a smile to Dave’s face after the confronting discussion with Brent.

In another twist to this story, after Dave took his 2^nd wicket and the Team’s 3^rd he commented “we can’t always let these young blokes take all the wickets”.

He ends up snaring 5 more after and with Roger Friend and Amith taking a wicket it was old blokes 9-1 Rewind to last week when the young ones (20 and under) took the honours 9-1.

A whole lot of love

With so much turmoil and so many problems going on around us it is nice to see our B2 Skipper (Robbie Knapman) and star batsman Macca McGregor sharing a tender moment back at the Club after the latest match.

What would you choose?

You are playing at Campbell Park are 61* and will bat on next week after already winning on the 1^st innings. But….you have a commitment to get to at 5.45 pm with just 15 mins to bat before stumps. This was the choice facing Pratah Sinnetamby (C2 Blue and pictured far right, front row).

The commitment Pratah had to get to was 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”.

Pratah chose Cinderella Vs a ton next week. What would you choose?