The march to 1,000,000 runs

Earlier this season we called out that we were closing in on the Everest level milestones of 1,000,000 runs scored both by and against our Seniors teams. With only 2 x Competition rounds to go and then Semi’s & Finals the tally shows:

• Runs for – 985,320
• Runs against – 987,530

With average runs scored / round at 1,289 and average runs scored against us / round at 1,181 it looks like we will pass the 1,000,000 run milestones early next season – the delay due to a lot of games being washed out.

What is interesting is that this season we have scored 1,517 runs more than we have had scored against us so the small gap between runs scored and runs scored against is narrowing.

We will track this next season as this is an amazing milestone that is 91 years in the making.

Hammered

The D1 Blues had a field-day at Caterson 4 and the short square boundaries. The boys had 2 players who smashed a combined 11 x 6’s. First up was Happy Rana, the player who earlier this season scored our 500^th ton, belted 4 x 6s in his innings of 36. Enter Jags Balakrishnan who went even better taking 4 x 6’s in one over and finishing with 7 x 6s in his innings of 46! Not done with yet Bram Ramamurthy belted 45 with 3 x 6’s. All up the boys finished with 16 x 6’s in the innings total of 8/196 – 49% of the total runs scored.

The record number of 6’s in an innings is 10 by Russel Ingram (C3) in 2009. Unfortunately we don’t have records of the most number of 6’s in an innings but 16 would be right up there.

Photo: Happy Rana after scoring our 500^th ton earlier this season.

The magic behind Pink Stumps Day

Last weekend at our Festival of Girls cricket at Greenway Park, the girls raised $3,071 for Pink Stumps Day. We started our involvement with Pink Stumps Day in 2010-11 and have now raised $49,198 for the McGrath Foundation. With the Juniors (Mixed) to also run a Pink Stumps Day on Presentation Day we will have raised over $50,000 for this great cause.

Everything that happens in our Club is through our Volunteers. In addition to our Committee members (Suz, Grant & Kirsty) who work tirelessly, just get an insight into what happens behind the scenes: Darren McKeon who is living proof that you don’t need to be focussed on the win to help kids get amazing personal results. Then there is Dennis McKeon, Darren’s Dad who provided us with nearly 80 plants which he grew himself from cuttings in his garden to sell to families for a gold coin donation. Dennis provides over 600 plants a year to local schools free of charge for their grounds maintenance and fundraising initiatives. Add to this the volunteers behind the BBQ, setting up and cleaning the Community Centre; the Girls who served drinks and sausages, sold raffle tickets and harassed passers-by to buy plants.

To quote Suz Colburt our co-Girls Director:

“We are so lucky to have such invested families and a Club and Committee who supports us.”

Photo: Our Stage 3 Girls gettinhg into the spirit of Pink Stumps Day last weekend.

No need to look any further

Our Club has been successful on the field for decades and it is mainly due to our Juniors who play each weekend under a ‘Participation Over Results’ approach – where the kids want to back-up with many going on the play Seniors. During the week we ran a follow-up free skills session for our U8 to U11 players. We had an amazing 71 participants with only a couple of games left in the season.

Photo: our Head Coach (Hazza Norrell) about to start the Skills session with our U8 to U11s during the week.