Another game against one of the top sides – it would be good to have a break in the draw against some of the weaker teams but we did OK again. Last week we came to within 20 runs of beating our 1st placed Gold team. This match we also just fell short of a good win against 2nd placed Hornsby.

Day 1
Batting first we scored 84 on a slow James Henty. John with 18 and Harry 15 were the major scorers but everyone chipped in with good efforts. Sundries contributed a lot to our total with 31. A score of around 110 was our target but this was always going to be a difficult task with most of our batters ground hitters rather than being players who hit the ball hard in the air.

After our innings Hornsby had 8 overs to bat and they finished at 1/22.

Day 2
Although we fell short it was one of our good performances – just falling short by 2 wickets. Gee we played well. Everyone bowled well and the fielding was also good. Zain was really good again taking 2/12 with Owen taking 2/16. Owen is now our top wicket taker for the season - wel done owen. Other good bowling performances were from Darcy 1/6, Jonty 1/8 and Jed 1/11. At the end we had them 8 down so just a few extra runs would have got us across the line.

John’s highlight
• Our fielding was again really good
• Batting was hard with a slow outfield but we still got a good score
• We made it difficult for Hornsby who are the top side and they struggled to get out total.

Season update
Some interesting points:
• While the draw is random, we have played 5 of the top 6 teams. We are the only team to have had such a difficult draw
• We have taken 53 wickets at 18.27 so far this season – the 3rd best of any other team
• In our batting we have lost 47 wickets at 21.00 – only 5 teams have a better batting average per wicket
• We have gone down in 3 games by less than 15 runs including the really close game then went down to the last ball against Upper Hills.

All up, while we have not had a big season on the points table so far, there are a lot of good things coming out of the season:
• Everyone has been given equal opportunity with the bowling and batting which will put us in good shape for the future. Some teams use a set batting order
• Winning games is not the most important thing – our approach of giving everyone a fair go will pay back in time
• We have a great turnout of parents who are very supportive.

Next game
We start again on the 2nd February with 2 games to go. First game back we play Berowra at Foxglove North (just off the Pacific Highway past Mt Colah).

Have a wonderful break over the Christmas / New Year period and see everyone in about 5 weeks time.

John, Raj and Ross

Posted by Ross Anderson on December 26, 2007 06:13 AM