After a washout last Saturday we finally got on to play a one-dayer at our favourite ground from last season – Nth Turramurra. This ground has short straight boundaries and for teams with batsmen who can hit straight any team is exposed – and Saints had a couple of blokes who had these shots.

Just for something different, we bowled first. For those new to the Team we batted second in all but 1 game last season. After holding St Ives early with some good bowling from Mark Twohig especially they got away to score 6/182 in their 32 overs.

You could tell it was the first game with some rusty efforts in the field but we will only get better. After a long spell away from the game Peter H did really well with the ball. Mark bowled really well taking 3/33 from his 7 overs and causing the top order a few problems with good pace and swing.

Chris Collits also looked very good taking 3/37 from his 7 overs of left arm orthodox. Chris will get a lot of wickets this season. We missed Andrew Watt’s potential to blast out the opposition but with him back next week we have the fire power we need to shake a few teams up. Patrick also looked good after the season break and will continue taking wickets quietly in most games.

We were always going to struggle with a big run chase and got away to a difficult start with 2/10. Spare a thought for John Nesbitt. He got a rank short ball and 9 times out of 10 would have smashed it to the boundary. But….as often happens in the first game he managed to drag it on to the stumps. This won’t happen too much this season.

How about the partnership between Capt Kish and Nick Bennett. They put on 90 odd and didn’t look to be in any trouble. Kish scored 22 and Nick got a classy 55 – good things to come from Nick.

With bad light closing rapidly St Ives got through their overs fast and just got in before it was too dark.

Bring on next week.

Ross A

Posted by Ross Anderson on September 19, 2006 06:56 AM