Back to Parklands again this weekend to take on defending Premiers ARL. With Trouty & Denny MIA, we welcomed to Ryan Blaker to the side in making his A grade debut. Snumpty lost the toss and ARL elected to bat on a pitched with more cracks than a plumber’s convention. Snumpty and Zouk again got us on the front foot, with Zouk picking up 3 early wickets. Good tight bowling continued through the middle, with ARL really only dominating the innings for about 5 overs. Macca, Affie and young Ryan made up the “7th” bowler required and did the job well, containing the ARL batsmen. Phipo again was in the thick of things with a catch, a runout and another stumping off Smoke. Waltz bowled tight and picked up 3 crucial wickets. In the end ARL were all out for 180, a very gettable total on a lightning fast Parklands outfield.

Then it was our turn to bat. Enough said. 4 ducks and a total disregard for our wickets and we were all out for 72 with the blink of an eye, against a very pedestrian bowling attack. Lovey thought it was her lucky day, being passed through the team like she was the last woman on earth. However she ended up with Phipo, for the longest ever duck and poor partnership contribution. The one highlight was young Ryan Blaker, showing our batsmen how simply valuing your wicket and picking the right balls to hit can pay dividends. He top scored with 22.

We crashed back down to earth after our dream start last weekend. As long as a few lessons were learnt, we should come back better and stronger this weekend against Normanhurst.

Posted by Simon Smyth on October 2, 2007 10:18 AM