This time the bowlers

We have previously focused on batsmen who are our dominant players. Now it is time for the bowlers. A big thanks to James Makin (A1 Icon) who extracted this info from our Club Wisden.

For our current day players if you are playing with any of the folk mentioned below you are playing with some of the all-time greats of our Club – 88 years of history, so take a moment to appreciate this wonderful opportunity.

Focussing on current day players here goes:

• Highest current day wicket taker – Eric Junkkari (B2) with 468 wickets. Our record holder is David Carey with 623 wickets
• A1 Grade – Riley Miedler 134 wickets which makes him our 11^th highest A1 Grade wicket taker behind Ray McDonald with 364 wickets. Riley is just 24 years old!
• A2 – Simon Smyth 146 wickets is now our highest wicket-taker in A2, passing Amir Marzouk (143) last week.
  • Rowan Keating sits 3^rd on the all-time list with 137 wickets.
  • Also, Luke Herzog has 99 A2 Grade wickets and is ranked 8^th overall. With just 7 more wickets he passes Matt Jobson (102) and James Makin (105) to be our 4^th ranked A2 bowler of all time!
  • This means that the current A2 attack will have 3 of the top 5 ranked A2 bowlers of all time playing in the same Team.
• B1 – Ben Meikle with 79 wickets is our highest placed current day player and is ranked number 21
• B2 – Eric Junkkari  (pictured above) 136 wickets is 2^nd on the list and needs just 4 wickets to pass the great Mark Taylor as our highest ever B2 wicket taker
• C1 – Eric Junkkari has an amazing 232 wickets to be our top ranked C1 bowler. Next best player is Kishore Rampersad on 217
• C2 – no current day player figures in the top 20 bowlers. The highest wicket taker in the Grade for all time is David Carey with 295 wickets!
• C3 – this is a relatively new Grade so no noteworthy performances so far
• D1 – Roger Friend is a quiet achiever with 128 wickets. He is just 10 wickets away from beating the long held record of 137 by Stuart Dyson
• D2 – Mike Kinchington with 57 wickets is the 6^th highest wicket taker in this Grade. The top player is Jon Burns with 144 wickets. With just 5 more wickets Mike will move into 4^th spot!

Quote of the week

Last weekend Phil Wurth (A1) scored his 3,000^th career run. With Phil in the prime of his cricketing life he has lots of time on his side to score a lot more. In an email exchange with “Filthy”:

“… You are right Rossco, By knocking off this milestone at such a young age who knows where I can end up and what records will be broken… the only thing that is going to stand in my way or hold me back from WPHCCC glory would have to be my wife.”

The secret behind exam success

The Captains Course starts this week where our Captains need to get a 70% pass to qualify being a Captain. Last season Simon Smyth (A2 and pictured left with Rick Turner) was one of those few captains who scored 100% in his exam.

As Simon explained to Buzz (C3 Captain):

 “The trick to a perfect score is 5 schooners prior to the exam.

Good luck to all.

Love,

Professor Snump”

The joys of selection

Spare a thought for our Captains who have to go though selection traumas each game for putting the best 11 players on the field with players being unavailable for all sorts of reasons. This week B2 (Knapper’s Team – Robbie is pictured above) was going though the usual process and Ryan Loveridge was unavailable due to being stuck in the country up past Dunedoo due to flooding.