A really good game against the clearout Competition leaders St Ives played at the Glenhaven beach. We had some of our stars out – John and Pat Nesbitt and John Mitchell so had some gaps we had to fill.

We lost the game but put in one of our best performances - we can take a lot of positives out of this game. We bowled first and restricted them to 153 in 39 overs. While the outfield was slow St Ives have a lot of hitters who have scored big runs this season. Even without Pat we bowled very well. Mark Twohig who is playing his last game with us before going overseas was superb and showed how much we are going to miss him. He took 4/22 from 8 overs and got important wickets. Chris Collits also chipped in with 3 wickets to put us in a good position.

We fielded well with Joel Mitchell, filling in for John, was outstanding with 2 very good catches and some inspired fielding. Well done Joel.

Our turn to bat and we got off to the worst starts. Kish was out first ball to a skied drive. This was followed by Ross A being caught for 1 down low at cover with Bryce then departing LBW. At 3/11 we were struggling. But this is where we showed that we have a lot of juice in the tank for the rest of the year. Despite the bad start we finished at 146 – just 9 runs off a win that was on right down to the over.

Despite Mark leaving us, Club Legend Tony Hadley has made a welcome return from China and is right for the rest of the season. This gives us great firepower in the batting and depth in the bowling. Not having played for almost 9 months Tony scored 59* and didn’t look like getting out. Added to this a very strong middle order with Tim again looking good and Andrew who has now scored his 200 runs for the season plus Shane who will be a regular fill-in we are looking very good.

After starting the season with a shaky batting order we now have a team that can win the comp if we make the Finals. At the halfway mark we are only 5 points out of the top 4 and are looking strong. Our bowling has more depth than any other team and the batting is strong right down the order. If we get a way to a reasonable start we should score heavily.

Still a long way to go but we are looking much stronger now than when Round 1 started.

Ross A

Posted by Ross Anderson on December 21, 2006 05:10 AM