Points Table

Standings after the final Round (Round 14) follows. The Semi Finalists have been highlighted:

• A1 Grade – 3^rd
• A2 – 1^st
• B1:
  • Blue (Rick) – 8^th
  • Red (Gunny) – 1^st
• B2 – 3^rd
• C1 – 6^th
• C2:
  • Blue (Fieds) – 1^st
  • Red (Indranil) – 5^th
• C3 – 1^st
• D1 – 3^rd
• D2 – 6^th

Match Reports

A Grade 8/187 defeated Hornsby 138 – final scores and match report to come.

A2 Grade 200 & 6/84 defeated Hornsby 64 & 3/132 – the last day of practise games greeted us at the Garden of Headen, as Hornsby started the day at 3/16. Things for us went from great to great great, as early poles were as regular as Aussie Prime Minister changes.

Gandis ‘Come On Katie’ Herzog and Blowy ‘Sexy Human’ Blow did the early damage with some high quality fast bowling. Gandis DID NOT bounce anyone out.

Hornsby’s 1st innings was completed a tick past 2pm for 64, with Gandis taking 6 fa, Tis ‘Rishni Does It’ Mistry taking 3, and Blowy 1.

Knowing that an early finish would mean parenting duties, Snumpty ‘Mel’s At A Wedding’ Smyth decided to play another innings.

We went into bat, and some good Hornsby bowling restricted us to 6/84, when Snumpty declared, in an un-Graeme Smith like move. Well done to Effie ‘Stick Calves’ Banner, who’s 16* saw him pass 500 A2 runs for the season, and not far behind the all-time A2 record, set by John ‘Wallaby Tracksuit’ Howard in 1722/23.

We bowled again, as Tis cleaned up their opener, in a prelude to next week, before a handy 2nd wicket partnership saw an outright beyond our reach. Late wickets to Gandis and Keats ‘1+18-3+5+2’ Keating were nice. I also love how you just did that maths in your head to equal 23. Made you think didn’t I? That’s cause I control you. You’re mine.

A massive highlight of the day was the last catch of the day to Effie, who’s dive, reach and 1 handed speccy 3mm from the ground, belied a man with such tiny calf almost muscles.

In the end, a comprehensive 1st innings win. Congratulations on being minor premiers. The season starts now.

B1 Blue (Rick) 9/175 dec lost to SKLPS 7/176 – arriving at Glenhaven with the knowledge that today could be the last game Club larrikin and legend Tim ‘Hollywood’ Leyshon plays for the club brought a tinge of melancholy to proceedings.

However we decided to resume where we left off last week and keep batting. Alex ‘Hooch’ Turner was the first to go getting cleaned up by a Jaffa. Chris ‘Willy’ Williamson was patient, very patient and carved out a patient 35.

A cameo by Cooper ‘Coops’ Goddard. The highlight of the innings was a swashbuckling 29* by our number 11 Peter ‘Slenda’ Flook who treated the SKLPS bowling attack with complete disdain. His opening 4 scoring shots 4,6,4,4.

It was kind of fitting that the last man to fall was Hollywood with our innings closing at 175.

We knew SKLPS would come out swinging as they needed a win. Hollywood and Allan ‘Raff Dog’ Raffel opened the bowling with sharp spells. We then turned to Calvin ‘DJ’ Breytenbach and Slenda.

SKLPS rode their luck and kept swinging and wickets were falling at regular intervals. The bottom line was we knocked over 7 SKLPS batsmen including 2 direct hit run outs to DJ and they got the winning runs with 5 balls to spare.

We dropped a few catches which sadly cost us. Best of our bowling Slenda 3/22, Coops 1/55 and DJ 1/38.

A close game that went down to the wire befitting a send off for Hollywood albeit we didn’t pick up the win.

WPHC Red (Gunny) 181 defeated Castle Hill White 153 – showing up on day 2, the team was quietly confident in getting the win. So confident that we felt the need to give their batsman plenty of lives, with the team dropping 6 catches in the first 50 minutes.

That was not a typo.

We managed to pick up two wickets in between these 6 drops, with KT ‘Katie’ bowling a strong fiery opening spell (finished with 1-21 off 13) and Cam ‘Instagram game’ McBrien (1-17 off 11) picking up the other wicket.

From here, Castle Hill batted well till tea, finding themselves in a strong position at 2-101. However, a spell of serious pace from Semonn ‘don’t bowl me I won’t get a wicket’ Oleksyn (4-11 off 6) changed the match today and swung momentum back our way to have them at 6-117.

Ben ‘wickets’ Meikle then cleaned up the tail (3-32 off 13) with Aaron Hawkins also picking up a wicket (1-17 off 8).

Today was not ideal for us going into finals in the field, dropping an embarrassingly large total of 10 catches. However, another way of looking at it is we got 20 wickets and it was also a significant boost for the fine tin. We also managed to wrap up the minor premiership and look forward to a much stronger performance in the field for the semi finals after hardly dropping any chances all season.

Good luck to all playing in semi finals next weekend!

B2 1/109 drew with Berowra 8/271 – we started the day back in the field with Berowra 6/180. In a comp where last place can still make finals, this was a big day.

Berowra had already sealed the minor premiership so they decided to bat on giving players time in the middle. We did ourselves no favours, dropping 3 catches in the first 7 overs. Nathaniel bowled well taking 3/58 from his 22 overs. Ryan Loveridge bowled a great spell without luck. Showing great signs moving into the Semis. We toiled away in the field, but edges and chances just didn’t go to hand.

Berowra eventually declared with a minimum of 38 overs remaining and a total of 271 to chase. A draw would be enough to see us into the finals. Eric Junkkari (28*) and Zac Morris (66) went out into the middle to see off the overs. The pair went on to put on a 101 run partnership before Zac was eventually dismissed in the 31st over.

A great effort to push in to the top 4 from a team that has fought hard all season. In finals cricket, anything can happen and we will continue to fight.

A special shout out to B1’s from Raghu who has recovered from the head knocks he received at the Social Night.

All the best to the teams that have made the finals!

C1 7/186 dec defeated Kissing Point 172 & 3/118 – after bowling out Kissing Point first week for 172 a below par score on a smallish ground we had faced 6 overs and were 0-14.

We lost Waris Trehan early (5), then in came Rommel Pandey to up the run rate, he did that with Hughesy, until Rommel missed a straight one for a quickfire 20. This brought the impressive Nandu Ramesh to the crease, continuing the to lift the run rate, and shared a 74 run partnership in (9 overs) with Richard Hughes (24) until Hughesy was out. 3-111

This brought Asees Rajput to the crease, they shared a 31 run partnership in 6 overs with Nandu (77 9x4s & 3x6s) finally out for a superb 77. From here we passed their score in the 35th over, and pushed 14 runs past.

Cameos from Asees Rajput (20), Napier Gryst (7), Pavan Cherupalli (12), with Aseem Goswami (4no) & Wortho (9no) 7 dec 186. Bowling in their 2nd innings, everybody got a bowl in 37 overs, Rommel Pandey (1-12), Pavan Cherupalli (1-4) & Nandu Ramesh (1-6) were the pick of the bunch with Kissing Point batting out their 2nd innings 3-118.

To my guys the 5 close losses (1 run, 3 runs, 4 runs, 5 runs & 16 runs) have meant the difference this year to be that close! Furthermore wish to thankyou all for all your efforts this year plenty of contributions throughout the year, see you at the Presentation night.

Best of luck to all the teams in the final series.

C2 Blue (Fieds) 6/246 defeated C2 Red (Indranil) 5/244 dec – a day where one team needed to play for everything and the other just had to see through the day. Reds did not hesitate to declare on Week 1 score to push for the 10 wickets.

After a disaster first day of Captaining, Stu “the better C2’s captain” Fiedler went into today with high hopes knowing Indranil “Can’t defend 250” Mukharjee has declared over this week’s break.

The Blue’s were off to a terrible start when Dan “the forgotten twin” Schwartzel got bowled first ball of the game. A few more batsmen fell and we found ourselves 4/65 off 28 overs. A strong 77 partnership between Matt “the better twin” Schwartzel and Mick “keep the ball off the ground” Barry put us in a good position until Matt fell for 36.

Some close calls and missed opportunities paved a platform for the Blues as they piled on the runs. Sreeni bowled an excellent spell to get 2 wickets and one which was another beauty of a delivery to take a settled batsman’s middle stump and brought the Reds back in the hunt. Shanks as usual had the opportunity to bowl a long spell and took 2 wickets.

But it was not a day for the Reds as the Blues got the runs losing 7 wickets and after 79 overs and that brings the curtain for the Reds for the season.

Stu “we’ll have a bowl” Fiedler increased his batting average to 96 after another not out, with Jack hitting the winning runs and get his first seniors 50. West Penno Blue now has had 10 different players this season to score 50 or more. We got the win and knocked Indranil’s Reds out of the comp.

For the Red’s, a big call out to Tom Hando and Varindar Rawat to help out through the day and this shows the club spirit all around. Also to Avi Lath to field for the Reds for first 3 overs.

All the best to the 7 semi finalists and hope we can have all 7 in the Grand Finals.

C3 150 lost to Berowra 212 – our openers Xander and Connor continued on from their good start last week to post a great 1st wicket partnership of 84. Xander making 43 and Connor 24 to have us in a commanding position.

Unfortunately the wheels fell off from here and we managed to somehow lose 6/22! The first time for 12 rounds that our middle order has failed us, so no reason to panic, and it simply serves to ensure that these batsmen will be even more determined to score well next match.

Dylan Bish (31) and Sam Kirkegard showed strong resilience in the lower order and Darcy Ward clubbed a little cameo at the end.

We fell short in the chase today, but champing at the bit to be back in the winner’s circle next match in our Semi Final.

D1 126 lost to St Ives 9/230 – batting didn’t start off well, Connor falling to a “contentious” LBW. The Hanich boys were ready to chase the runs down in one partnership until Aden got a little too confident with his running and ran himself out, Aden would tell you another story.

Steve slumped to the crease still complaining about his back from the previous week and shortly afterwards pulled a short ball for a top edge six. Rob was batting in fine form until he popped one up to grant St Ives an easy wicket.

At this point our only hope was to block out the game for a win, however, Gautam and Steve decided otherwise attempted to whack the bowler for six only to find the fielders.

The days play didn’t get much better from there apart from another impressive innings from the rocket man Roshan blasting his way to a maiden 50, proving once again that power exceeds precision batting.

The days play finished shortly after that, falling more than a hundred short of our total, barely scraping past 100 runs. Certainly need to hit the nets before finals next week.

D2 51 & 4/19 lost to Kissing Point 6/131 dec – at the end of Day 1 we had already lost on first innings. We knew that KP were likely to only bat for a short time and then seek an outright win against us.

We managed to take a further 4 wickets to have KP declare on 6/131 after batting a further 17 overs today. Praneel Singh took 3/17 from 9 overs, Lakshya Rao 2/27 off 7 overs and Captain Mike 1/15 off 7 overs. It was 2.30 pm when we were into bat to try to stave off this outright.

We knew that we had to bat 3.5 hours and bat out about 50 overs. Our batters managed to do so and the Opposition ended the match about 5.50 pm. Praneel Singh hit a fantastic 58 runs before being caught at Long On after hitting seven 4s and four 6s.

Thiru Pukazthenthi also hit 32 not out partnering Praneel through the long afternoon. This was the 4th outright that we have managed to defend this season. A big thanks to Roger Friend who did a great job wicket keeping and to Simon Friend who was a substitute fielder.

Well the season is now over for D2 as we were not in contention for the Semi Finals. The team developed as the season progressed. Our bowling attack improved substantially but the batting is still a work in progress. The enthusiasm of this team was second to none and our practice sessions were well attended throughout.

So a big thank you from the Captain 👨‍✈️ for an enjoyable season.