The 2022-23 season – at a glance

The 2022-23 season started on Saturday 10^th September 2022 with 2 x T20 games – concluding on Saturday 17^th September.

The standard Competition starts on Saturday 24^th September.

Our Match Reports will start covering Competition games from 24^th September.

This season we have registered a record 14 x Senior Teams. Congratulations to our Captains:

Grade	Captain
A1	Cam McBrien (#25)
A2	Campbell Wallace
B1 Blue	Shomik Sengupta
B1 (Red)	Ryan Loveridge
B2	Todd Hutchinson
C1	Kapil Tangri
C2 (Blue)	Rob Hanich
C2 (Red)	Indranil Mukherjee
C3 (Blue)	Tarun Lath
C3 (Red)	Cameron Croucher
C4	Hiresh De Silva
D1 (Blue)	Arun Chaudhari
D1 (Red)	Ian Digby (Diggers)
D2	Ross Smith

Match Reports (T20)

1^st Grade

WPHC Vs Berowra

2^nd Grade

WPHC Red (Todd) Vs Castle Hill

WPHC Blue (Ryan) Vs St Ives

WPHC White (Kapil) Vs Bye

3^rd Grade

WPHC Red (Indranil) 7/102 loss to Glenorie 2/103

Any loss is a bitter pill to swallow, but this T20 game there are so many positives to take that for once we can agree it was a great game of cricket. Ved continuing is batting form from last season scoring 53, Cameron getting a great partnership going scoring 28 and then the U15 juniors getting a feel of Seniors match pressure situation and having a go.

At the toss after a slight drizzle at Dural Park, Captain Indranil had considered to bat first, not because of any strategy but just having 6 players on ground at 1 pm did not leave much option. Coincidentally the skipper of Glenorie was stuck in traffic and had sent a word out to delay the start of play by 15 mins which was agreed wholeheartedly. Toss done, lost and WPH Red team is fielding.

First 9 overs was excellent display of medium pace by Amitava, Manish, Haseeb and Ved and Glenorie though not losing many wickets were unable to get a move on. Last 6 overs with some smart batting helped Glenorie to go past 100 runs and which on a good Dural outfield did not look to be much.

Our turn to bat and the game was in control by WHP Red team till the 15^th over. After that losing some quick wickets and pressure building up, lost the game by 1 run. Someone did mention that during our batting one batsman had run short and we missed that 1 run so dearly.

At the end cricket won, all players had an outing, spoke about the main season to commence from next weekend and the fun continues.

WPHC Blue (Tarun) Vs Thornleigh

4^th Grade

WPHC Blue (Rob) Vs Beecroft

WPHC Red (Hiresh) Vs Kissing Point

5^th Grade

WPHC Red (Dave) 5/88 lost to Kenthurst @ Kenthurst 5/140

Stand-in Captain, Disco, lost the toss and Kenthurst decided to bat.

The composition of the team this week was very different to last week with only 10 players, which included 6 new players.

Parin (1-15) and Jay Nanda (0-13) opened the bowling and kept things tight for the first 5 overs. However the Kenthurst openers continued to score freely and it was a surprisingly fast outfield. The first wicket didn’t fall until the 13^th over when Kenthurst were 95 runs, with Disco (2-14) able to get the break-through with an LBW decision (first for the season). Wickets continued to steadily fall over the last 7 overs, but the runs also continued. 9 bowlers (out of 10 players) were used throughout the innings with Roger Friend also picking up 2 wickets (2-15). Steve Quanborough (0-8) was again unlucky not to have a wicket with anther catch going down. Kenthurst finished their innings with a solid total of 5/140.

Our turn to bat and Jay (14) and Ray (6) opened the innings. Both fell caught behind to great out-swinging deliveries. Roger (3) and Henry Kelly (0) both came in and went pretty quickly and at one stage Kenthurst’s opening bowler was on a hat-trick. This brought Steve Q (41*) to the crease and scored almost half the team’s runs before retiring not-out to let the other players have a hit (thanks again Steve!).

Mridul Das (15) played a solid innings and put on a much needed partnership with Steve to get us a respectable total.

We finished 5/88 but everyone had a good hit-out.

PS: Some score book training will be required before the start of the season!

WPHC Blue (Arun) 8/98 defeated Thornleigh 9/78

Fortress Thornleigh Park conquered. This team over the last 3 years has seen some crazy stuff happen at Thornleigh Park and thrice we either drew the game or were on the losing end. 17th Sep 2022 was meant to be different. I mean you don’t get to often see Amith Ninan (15) open the batting, right? And somehow it worked with two solid 4’s off his bat and giving a steady support to Rommel (31) at the other end who was going all guns blazing. Valuable contributions in the middle order came from Sandeep (15) and Arun (21) saw us through to 98 at the end of the innings.

In came Praneel Singh who probably is badly in need of a haircut, with his flying streaks distracting the batters just in time to get him 2 wickets at the start of the innings. Another Singh (Tej) at the other end picked up his maiden T20 scalp for West Penno and a few more from Amith and Agni saw Thornleigh at one stage gasping at 7/19.

Thornleigh ended their innings at 20 shy of the target with wickets to Praneel (2), Amith (3), Tej, Agni & Nirav (1 each). Another performance worth mentioning was of Sandeep who pretty much caught every object that went towards his gloves.

All up a good win to get us to the top 4 of the T20 comp which now means the gents have to work extra hard to get permission from the high command to avoid house duties on a Sunday.