Travelling man

Rob Hanich’s (pictured left with son, Aden) all-conquering C4 side and reigning Premiers are setting the standard for travelling to games. After just 2 games the boys kicked off playing at Hassell Park, St Ives and this week they played at Arcadia Park. If they can score Brooklyn next week the boys will have played at every point on the compass.  What better way to start off our anecdotes than with a totally appropriate song – a 1961 classic by Ricky Nelson: Travelling Man

Girl Power

It is great to see Women’s & Girls cricket getting great media coverage and also to see the momentum building. What is easily overlooked is that our commitment to Girls Cricket goes back 25 years to 1996/97! This makes us the longest running Community Cricket Club to offer an unbroken Girls Competition in NSW.

This season we have registered 6 Teams – 1 x Stage 1 (U11); 2 x Stage 2 (U13) & 2 x Stage 3 (U13 to U17)! This doesn’t include Girls in Junior Blasters (10 players) & MasterBlasters (18). Interesting to note that in 1998/99 we registered 7 Teams

How about this for achievements in supporting Women and Girls cricket that can easily be overlooked:

• This season we registered our 1,000^th Girl playing in a dedicated Girls comp. Add to this our Junior Blaster (Kanga), Master Blasters and Blowfly cricketers the number would be closer to 2,000 players
• In Junior Blasters (U5 to U7) this season we have 10 girls in a dedicated team
• Our two head Coaches for Junior Blasters are both Girls
• We have 3 highly impressive Women on our Club Executive (Kirsty, Jane & Suz) plus many others making an impact across our Juniors as Coaches, Managers and administrators
• Kirsty Newbury is developing and running a Girls Leadership program for our U13 to U17 Girls
• Finally, 2 of the greatest Women cricketers to have ever played the game in the world are West Penno graduates – Denise Annetts and Lisa Sthalekar.

Reelin’ in the years

First up, our theme song – the Steely Dan classic Reelin in the Years

Who better to focus on this week than Michael Gunn. Gunny, also known as FAC (Future A Grade Captain), has achieved a lot. FAC has played Juniors with us going right back – check out the photo of a game at Edward Bennett Oval on 20 February 2010. In the background is another A1 Player – Billy Gaunt.

FAC made his Seniors debut in 2012/13 playing B2 Grade and has already scored 2,938 runs.

FAC is also the youngest Seniors Captain in our history, captaining B1 (2018/19) at just 20 years and 9 months of age and taking the Team to a Grand Final. He also captained A2 over the last 2 seasons.

Last Saturday FAC debuted in A1 (Player #330) and top scored with 77*. Had he scored just another 23 runs this would have been his 6^th century drawing him equal to Michael Banner and just one behind the all-time Club record of 7 tons scored by Laurie Tuckerman (A1) in 1951/52. Laurie scored these tons in just one season!

Space Cadet

First up our new theme music for this prestigious award – Lost in Space

There are Space Cadet stories and there are Space Cadet stories – this one ranks up there in going where ‘no man has gone before’. Enter one of our most popular players – who else than Ray Khamis (B1 Blue).

Picture this. Our B1 Blue boys were defending 138 with the last over last to be bowled. The Opposition were 9 down with 11 runs to win with star bowler Todd Hutchinson bowling. So far so good. Anyway the Opposition had a couple of bunnies in and cow corner was always going to be at risk so…who better than Ray to field in this spot – the man who has swallowed more balls than Sharon Stone.

Not this time.

With 9 down, the bunny swung hard and hit it straight to Ray on the Cow corner boundary at Greenway Park. Never in doubt, the boys started celebrating until it hit him flush on the head and rebounded over the fence for 6 to win the match.

It got worse when the ball then rolled down the hill, down the road and Ray needed via GPS to get the ball. There is also a reminder with a nice red cherry on Ray’s sun hat.

Good guys do come first

Andrew Morris (A2 Skipper and pictured left with son Zac) is a tough competitor but also wants to win a game the right way. Playing at The Glade (says it all) and chasing a more than handy 143 to win it was always going to be tough. Two instances happened that showed what a true competitor Andrew is – he wanted to win but the right way.

In the first instance, an Opposition top order batsman was given out caught behind but Andrew recalled him as he knew it came off his arm while playing a flyer.

The 2^nd instance was when Kyle Townsend smashed a ball down the ground and ran 4 all run. Fielding the ball their fielder injured himself and couldn’t get the ball back. Rather than running 5 or even 6 runs the boys held their ground and just settled for the 4.

The result of the game…,,.we needed 9 runs with 9 balls to go and 9 wicket down. We won with 1 ball to go.

Well done mate – this makes winning even sweeter.

A debut to remember

What a way to debut for your new Club. Enter Grant and Zac Gerber. First up Zac. Coming in at number 4 Zac belted his first ball for a straight four that was centimetres from being a 6 and finished with a hard hitting 26 in rapid time. His dad, Grant then took the catch of the season – not a bad effort after 2 Rounds – a diving one-handed catch going backwards to dismiss their opener.

Not to be outdone, Zac then took 2 wickets with his leggies to finish a dream debut – well done fellas.