Northern Districts Club Coaching Day
The Annual Northern Districts Coaching Day is fast approaching. Run over the school holidays this is a very good programme with some star coaches – Dean Gilchrist, Justin Langer and Upal Chandana (Sri Lankan ODI and Test All-rounder). Details are:
• When: Monday 21st January to Wednesday 23rd January
• Where; Waitara Oval
• Time: 9.00 am to 3.00 pm
• Cost: $190 for the full 3 days
• Contact: please contact Sportspro on 9453-1451. Details are also on the website.

We have a great relationship with ND’s and this programme is recommended.

Clubs Day
Cricket NSW is running its annual “Clubs Day’ for the Twenty/20 ‘Big Bash’ match between NSW and the Western Warriors at Telstra Stadium on the 10th January starting at 7.00 pm.

The promotion wants Junior Teams to turn up in Club colours in a ratio of 4:1 (12 kids to 3 adults) to be in the running for prizes.

If interested then please let your Manager know so that it can be passed on to Cricket NSW – we need to respond by 14th December.

Cricket umpires Training Course
For those interested, the NSW Cricket Umpires training course is coming up. This course gives a State level qualification that is sought after. Details are:
• When: Tuesday 5th, 12th, 19th 26th March with an Exam on the 4th March 2008
• Where: SCG NSW Lecture room
• Time: 6.30 pm to 9.30 pm
• Cost: $50

If you are interested then please contact David Townsend on 9339-0942 or david.townsend@cricketnsw.com.au direct.

Girls
All games were washed out on the weekend and are played next week as 1-dayers. We have a break after the 15th December for the school holidays. Games then re-commence on the 2nd February until 1st March with Semi Finals / Finals played over 8th and 15th March 2008. This gives us 14 weeks of competition plus finals.

Junior boys
The standings after Round 7 are – Round 8 has yet to be updated:
• U16s – Blue (=2nd), White (=2nd)
• U15s – Blue (2nd), Red (8th)
• U14s – White (=1st), Blue (4th), Red (= 8th )
• U13s – Gold (2nd ) Blue (7th ), Green (12th ), White (13th )
• U12s – Red (3rd ), Blue (9th ),White (=9th), Green (14th)
• U11s – Gold (=1st), White (=3rd ), Green (=3rd), red (12th ), Blue (14th )

Next week we play the last Round before the Christmas/New Year break.

Junior Scores come through later but a special mention to Michael Richards playing for the U15 Blues against Mt Colah who took 7/2 – one of our best bowling performances in many years.

Seniors
Another rain affected weekend but at least we got a few games underway.

A1 V 87 lost to Normanhurst-Warrawee 6/113 – something unusual happened, A1 actually got on to play at The Glade of all places. Apart from Troy Newman with 19 and James Makin 15 there was not a lot of joy in the batting. In the bowling, Smokey Dawson with 2 wickets brought up his 200 career wickets. Welcome back to James Makin with 2 and Adam Walter straight with 2 wickets. Could well be a 10 point game – either way in this one.

A2 95 lost to Kissing Point 7/96 – in a slow scoring day at Greenway we were unable to build partnerships with only Sam Baidya top scoring with a gutsy 29. We made them fight for every run with some tight bowling, especially from Brad Hingle and Voice (on his return) who took 2 wickets. They got them 7 down, but unfortunately they snuck through with 2 overs left. Goes to show if we had a few more runs posted we could of taken this one, but we showed excellent fight in defending such a low total - a solid effort!

Colts 3/101 defeated Kenthurst 100 – in a 1-dayer this is a fabulous result trying to beat the rain. Nick Bennett did it yet again with 40* and was well supported by Taylor Paton 35*. Good bowling, with the wickets being shared amongst 5 bowlers ( Tim Scoular 2 for 2 off 6, Nick Bennett 2 for 4 off 1.5, Rohan Dixit 2 for 14 off 5, Tim Anderson 2 for 23 off 7 and Mark Bennett 1 for 24 off 8), saw Kenthurst all out in the 33rd over. Bad weather was always going to be a factor on the day and at 3 for 22 after 6 it was looking a bit shaky. Nick B and Taylor Paton then combined for an unbeaten partnership of 79 off 14.5 overs to get us home with the rain arriving about 5 minutes after close of play.

B1 Blue 110 lost to St Ives 132 – batting second in a 1-dayer, this is one we should have got closer to a result our way. Bowling first we restricted St Ives to a gettable score. Chris Rae 3/14 and Andrew McKinnon 3/6 were outstanding. In the batting, Scott Jobson with 31 was the standout but just missed out on the support he needed to get across the line.

WPHC Red 112 lost to Normanhurst-Warrawee 3/113 – another 1-dayer in the B1 Comp. Gav Hassett was outstanding with 35 but like the Blues didn’t have others kicking in to provide support. This is a tight competition so a turnaround win next weekend will put us back in the frame.

C1 White 3/65 Vs Ku-ring-gai Chase 265 – one of those games. After having them 5/40, 6/60 and 8/120 they got away big time with sustained big hitting from their tail end. Ben McNamara bowled very well to have Ku-ring-gai on the ropes early. We had 23 overs to see out and after a 16 ball opening from their opener gave us a good start. With only 200 to get and some very good players to come this is still within reach on a small and fast ground.

C1 Red 77 lost to Hornsby 8/95 – our worst batting performance of the year but a tremendous fightback with the ball has opened this game up. Take out Tim Starr (20) and Sundries (17) not a lot of cheer with the batting – for a change. Our bowling made up for this blip – Tim Starr with 4/18 was outstanding and with Geoff Starr and Sam Croft taking 2/17 each we are back in the game for 10 points. Watch this spot.

C2 165 Vs Normanhurst-Warrawee 0/38 – after winning the toss and batting we were for 165 thanks largely to the efforts of Ashraf Ahmed 84 and Peter Lees with 29. Three run outs didn't help our cause but we did fightback from from 5/29 and 6/57 so our score gives us something to get....Normanhurst are 0/38 in reply. Still a lot of cricket in this game.

D2 86 lost to Normanhurst-Warrawee 5/106 – the main highlight here was that we won the toss for the first time since Round 2. Batting first, Steve Keevy with 21 was our best. Bowling wise we stuck to it with our best being Shankar Ravi with his 3/34. Special mention to Alok Pradhan for taking his first wicket of the season. We are overdue for big batting effort so maybe next weekend might be the day. Good luck fella’s.

Bradman and a bit more
How about the performance of Nick Bennett, our Colts Captain this season. So far he has scored 390 runs in Colts and A2 at an amazing average of 195.00. To make this even more significant the Colts games have been on turf that has been rain affected in most games. Added to this he has now entered the Club’s top 10 bowlers of the season with 11 @ 8.18. Simply amazing.

Commitment
Every now and then we here about folks making a big effort to turn-up for games – Tony Hadley being the best known for his regular trips from China and WA. This time wel done to Adam Walter (A1) who arrived for his A1 game fresh off the plane from the US and taking 2 wickets in the process. Well done mate.

Internet usage
Some interesting insights into who uses our web:
• The number of hits continues to grow – this October we got 3,693 hits – 5 short of the all time record
• 44% of all hits are on Saturday and Sunday
• Our most popular pages are the News section followed by the Photo Gallery
• 9 people have actually done a name search on Craig Willmott – a legend mate - then again these might have been from you
• Apart from Australia, people from countries that have hit our website since September this year include:
o United Kingdom – 227
o US Government – 117
o Finland – 156
o China – 27
o Germany – 18
o Norway – 14

The mind boggles about the US Government – perhaps we are on some observation list as a potential terrorist threat – ooops – probably got another hit for mentioning that ‘T’ word. Or another theory, they have seen some of those ugly heads in our ‘Photo Gallery’.

Top 10 run scorers
1. Nick Bennett (Colts) 390 @ 195.00
2. Michael McDowell (C1 White) 280 @ 70.00
3. Dan Moye (B1) 222 @ 55.50
4. Taylor Paton (Colts) 222 @ 55.50
5. Dom Burke (B2) – 218 @ 36.33
6. Geoff Starr (C1 Red) – 211 @ 52.75
7. Tim Starr (C1 Red) – 204 @ 25.50
8. Ross Anderson (C1 White) 198 @ 39.60
9. Peter Taylor (B1) – 180 @ 45.00
10. James Makin (A1) – 179 @ 89.50

Top 10 Bowlers
1. Ben McNamara (C1 White) – 18 @ 12.50
2. Isaac Malamel (C2) – 14 @ 15.36
3. Bran Ramachandran (D2) – 14 @ 17.93
4. Andrew Joyce (B1) – 13 @ 12.38
5. Peter Stott (A1) – 13 @ 13.46
6. Jacques Visser (C2) – 13 @ 22.54
7. Dylan Brogan (Colts) – 12 @ 9.33
8. James McBrien (C1 Red) – 12 @ 14.17
9. Andrew Watt (C1 White) – 12 @ 21.00
10. Nick Bennett (Colts) – 11 @ 8.18.

Club Championship
At the half-way mark we are doing very well and are on track for back to back Club Championship wins. The table at the end of Round 6 is:

1. WPHC 896
2. Kenthurst 687
3. CHRSL 666
4. Hornsby 650
5. St Ives 618
6. Norm-Wee 531
7. Berowra 529
8. ARL 527
9. Kissing Pt 493
10. Galston-Glen368

Points table
Just a reminder that you can get this info from www.cricketnsw.com.au/hkhdca - the table as at the end of Round 7 is:

• A1 – 19 points (= 6th)
• Colts – 23 points (3rd)
• A2 – 29points (2nd )
• B1 Blue – 29 points (1st)
• B1 Red – 18 points (= 5th)
• C1 White – 40 points (1st)
• C1 Red – 38 points (2nd)
• C2 – 37 points (1st )
• D2 – 7 points (7th)

Personal achievements

Watch the following big ones coming up:
• Roger Friend 3 off his 100 wickets
• Chandana Jayasekera – 25 off 1,000 runs.

Name Grade Achievement
Sean Doohan A2 100 wickets Vs Kenthurst Semi Final 17/3/2007@ Turramurra Oval
Nathan Fathers C1 1,000 runs Vs Hornsby @ Montview West 27/1/2007

Jacques Visser C2 50 wickets Vs Hornsby

Ross Anderson C1 7,000 runs Vs ARL

Ryan Cherrie B1 150 wickets Vs Mt Colah

Andrew Mills B1 2,000 runs Vs Normanhurst-Warrawee

Simon Smyth A1 200 wickets – Vs Berowra

Adam Walter A1 100 wickets Vs Berowra

James Makin
A2 • 3,000 runs Vs Kenthurst
• 339 wickets – 11 wickets to 350
Kishore Rampersad
C1 • 250 wickets – Vs Castle Hill RSL
• 3,858 runs – 142 to 4,000 runs
Matt Dawson A1 • 2,954 runs – 46 off 3,000
• 200 wickets – Vs Normanhurst-Warrawee
Steve Baker C2 839 runs – 161 to 1,000

Roger Friend D2 97 wickets – 3 to 100

Lachlan Gill B1 Blue 963 runs – 37 to 1,000

Chandana Jayasekera B1 Red 975 runs – 25 to 1,000

Bruce Poehlsen B1 Blue 874 runs – 136 to 1,000

Alistair Rayment
B1 Blue • 182 wickets – 18 off 200
Peter Whitehead A1 47 wickets – 3 to 50 career wickets

Craig Willmott C1 1,919 – 81 to 2,000 career runs

DCA website – points table
Now that the season is well underway anyone can track how their teams are going in the Competition in Both Seniors, Juniors and Girls by accessing the following website: www.cricketnsw.com.au/hkhdca and then just go to WPHCCC and then your team.

Alternatively, just go to Links on our website and it is the first entry.

Probably worth locking this into your favourites and checking after each game for the standings.

Website developers and graphic artists
We are privileged to have Peter Lees do all the website work for our Club. However, it is run by volunteers and we always need to involve others to share the fun.

If you have abilities in Perl scripting, graphic design or other web-related skills, and would like to contribute to your Club, please contact Peter (AT) wphccc.org

Posted by Ross Anderson on December 16, 2007 06:45 AM