Most dismissals

Nick Bennet (A2) broke the long standing record for the most dismissals by a wicket-keeper in our History. There are 3 ‘Holy Grail’ records – Highest run scorer, Highest wicket-taker and most dismissals so this has broken one of our top 3 records.

During the Semi Final Vs Berowra at Storey Park Nick broke the previous record of 190 set by Dale ‘Merv’ Armstrong (1984/85 to 2000/01) with a best of 36 in the 1993/94 season. Dale is pictured left, or is it right, with Merv Hughes during the World Cup in the West Indies in 2007.

Starting the season at 169 dismissals, Nick passed the record with his 2nd  catch in the Berowra innings. Nick’s best season was for A1 in 2012/13 when he took 25 for the season.

Nick’s photo is in the Records Photo Gallery.

Superstitious

Rob Knapman (B2 Red Skipper, pictured right with Steve Quanborough) is, to be charitable, a bit slow on providing TeamApp updates during the weekend games so that scores are often not updated until after the game. It turns out that Robbie is superstitious. He reckons that he has updated the scores 6 times earlier in the year and on every occasion a wicket fell while he was updating the App. So for the Semi Finals he has passed the baton to Ian Digby to break the cycle.

The Hat-trick

After claiming the first victim in his hat trick, the incoming Opposition batsman took an extraordinarily long time to get to the crease and then proceeded to adjust his gloves for another minute or so before he was ready to take strike (in John Hayne Cup rules, the batsman should be ready to face up in 90seconds, but we weren’t being sticklers for the rules), so finally with the batsman ready, in runs Tanay Hira (pictured 2nd right, back row), out flies middle stump and to the hilarity of both teams the batsman trudges off for a golden! Victim No.2 in the Tanay hat trick!

After Tanay completed his hat trick with the final 3 balls of his over, Scott Chapman took a wicket with the first ball of the next over giving us a team double hat trick with 4 in 4!

Both ends of the scale

Steve ‘Buzz’ Burrows (C2 Captain, pictured right with Peter Lees and Peter Heidegger) set a record on the weekend playing in his 21^st John Hayne Cup (JHC) game. At the other end of the scale is James Makin (A1 Captain) who played his first T20 game. Keep in mind that the JHC is a competition for Teams missing out on the Semi Finals. In Buzz’s case this signals a lot of near misses in making the Semi’s. For James, he has played A1 and A2 continuously since 2006/07 and these Teams have made the Finals every year so this is the 1^st time James has qualified.

What’s in a Nick name

Apart from being a great Captain, James ‘Jamican’ Makin (A1 Grade) can come up with some fabulous ‘nick names’. One of the better ones is Stanton ‘Pon’ Tan from A2 (pictured 2nd left). Without going into too much explanation, mentally put the ‘Pon’ after Stanton’s last name and you will get the theme.

Fumbles

Our Minor Premier B2 Red side has dropped only about 7 catches all season and their fielding is one of the reasons why they are sitting on top of the table. Unfortunately, Day 1 of the Semi Finals saw the boys drop 11 catches with, quoting Skipper Robbie Knapper, “catches going down all around the circle”. For the boys to have the Opposition 9/204 we effectively bowled them out twice and still kept the score to just 204.

Premiership wins

With 4 Teams making it through to the Semi’s our last wins in these games were:

• A2 Grade – 2014/15 (Julian Raffel was the Captain)
• B2 – 2014/15 (Justin Paterson)
• C3 – 2013/14 (Brett Hawkins)
• D2 – 2006/07 (Rob McBrien)

Simon Smyth (A2 and pictured) is one of our most successful Captains having won 1 x A1 Grade; 3 x SPL; 1 x A2 and was runner up in a washed out SPL Grand Final.

Indranil Mukherjee (C3 skipper) started playing for us in 2014/15. Every year he has played in a Grand Final in either the T20 or main comp and has lost every Grand Final but….this time he is Captaining for the first time.