Day 1, Round 2 at North Turramurra Oval – again. This time we were playing Ku-ring-gai Chase.

It was almost Ground Hog day. Capt Kish lost the toss, they batted first and we ended up batting out the last half hour. This scenario happened in every game last season (1 game aside) and for the first 2 games this season. Anyway, on to the game.

We started off with a bang. Marky Mark bowled their opener with a corker 1st ball – 1/0 after 1 ball and looking good. With Andrew Watt on the sideline at a wedding we lacked that firepower to shake them up a bit more.

Our catching was again our worst enemy. We dropped about 7 catches, some hard, some not so and this allowed them to build momentum. At tea they were 2/180 odd and cruising. How quickly a game can change. We started to take some good catches and wickets fell. This caused the run rate to slow and we took 3 quick wickets after the break with their batting looking fragile. Well done to John and Pat who both took good ones in the deep.

They started to accelerate again helped along by a couple of tough dropped chances – especially looking into a setting sun. They finished at 5/275 and closed leaving us around 30 minutes to bat in failing light.

With Andrew back we have a good balanced bowling attack. Mark and Patrick bowled well early on but some good straight hitting to short boundaries made it tough at times. Capt Kish again bowled tightly but the star was Taylor Paton up from the U16’s. He bowled a beautiful line (offspin) and took 2 /20 off 8 overs and had a catch dropped. Big things ahead for Taylor. One of those catches was put down by Ice Man Bryce but the big fella came back fast and ran the batsman out with some brilliant recovery reactions.

Batting in failing light Ross A and Taylor batted out the last 8 overs to be 0/5 with a full day to play. There were no fears in the wicket and the bowling was moderate so with a bit of application and luck 276 is within range on this fast ground with short straight boundaries.

Bring on next Saturday.

Ross A

Posted by Ross Anderson on September 26, 2006 10:11 PM