As usual, we lost the toss and were asked to bowl on a pretty good batting field. It was a real hot day and we needed to be sharp in the field all day against a good team that’s only lost twice. We started off a bit slow with no one really finding the line with the ball until Rajeev struck middle stump in the 16th over with an excellent delivery. While some of us probably weren’t at our best bowling today, our fielding was certainly better this week. The exceptions were Ahmed and Luke who bowled well with no luck, but the biggest improver today was Dylan D, who bowled real well from his long run off. We didn’t get too many chances and it took a while before we picked up our next wicket. The next three wickets all came from run outs, two of which came from direct hits after over throws. Joe showed that he can also wicket keep, taking a catch off Rohan’s beautiful spin, before picking up our last wicket with the ball of the day – a full pace yorker that sent the bails flying. We can’t be too disappointed with our performance this week. While we have to chase a fairly big total, we should go OK and have some fun batting next week.

The grass certainly grew a lot in a week and we didn’t get much value for our shots. Just about all the Hornsby team bowled pretty well, but they couldn’t get Chris P. out! He did real well today and played some fine shots. Tis and Luke were looking excellent and both got scores in the mid 20’s not out. Unfortunately I had to leave early so I don’t know how the rest of you went, but from the scorebook it looks like Akeel was the pick of our batsmen with another solid not out performance. I heard the player of the match was shared this week by Dylan D. and Chris P. which is not surprising from their good form in this match.

While we only won one match on averages, I think if we had won more than the one toss all season, we might’ve won a few more because the conditions always seemed to be worse the 2nd week, for whatever we were doing. But no excuses, we were up against some very good teams. I think we were good in defeat, but were the best team at celebrating our wickets, even though we sometimes had to wait long spells between them! I also think we mostly had fun playing and we have all learnt a bit more about cricket. I want to thank our coach Kevin and my dad as manager for helping us this year, and also a big thanks to Neil’s dad for doing such a good job scoring for us every week. It was also good to see such good support from all the other family members at out games, and especially those who helped out with umpiring and training.

Posted by on March 10, 2007 10:19 PM