Round 12

What a game. Playing 6th placed Pymble we made this a lot tougher than it should have been. In fact at 7/42 at one stage we should have been beaten but such is the character of this team we won and won well.

Batting first we struggled on a big slow ground (Bannockburn) against tight but non threatening bowling. Wickets fell regularly and at one stage we were 7/42. Andrew Fiedler was our best early on with 13 and only made one mistake and it cost him his wicket. We were saying that in view of the conditions and the quality of our bowling that we could defend 80 and win with 100. We did exactly that.

Enter the young kids – Michael Richards (14) and Daniel Anderson (12 and making his Seniors debut). The boys put on 16 to start to get us to around a defendable score. Their bowler struggled against our little fella’s. At 6’8” every ball was either a bouncer or short and this caused lot of frustration. Michael used the cut very well and DA used the pull and hook shot to good effect.

DA and Ben then put on 15 to bring us up to our first target - 80 runs. When DA was out for 22 and top score enter Geoff Richards at No 11 who smashed 20 quickly to get us to 115 – a score we could bowl to with confidence.

Our bowling and fielding was high standard. Ben and Geoff were superb. Ben took 3/25 with beautiful line and length but had great support from Geoff 2/6 (6 overs). Geoff bowled with good pace and shook them up. Enter Kishore in his last game this season who took 1/12 (8 overs) to strangle the run rate. Then enter John Mitchell with 3/18 (5) who bowled well to capitalise on Pymble’s frustration who could not score.

Supporting this was fantastic fielding. Geoff’s catch at fine leg and his direct hit run out were amazing. We are now in first place and should finish 1st unless we start losing games and others win outright.

In summary, we are winning games on character and great bowling. We need to get the batting firing again and this should start next weekend once our full team comes back and the usual batting order clicks in.

Interesting story
A good story that will appear on next week’s website News update is a beauty. Here goes:

An amazing biological event happened last Saturday (26th January) in the C1 White game against Pymble. Daniel Anderson (12 years of age) has the Association record for being the youngest player ever to play in this Association. On Saturday he made his debut as a Registered player when he played C1. Why is this special? He last played Seniors, 2 months before he was born (and prior to having a name) when his mother fielded 7 months pregnant in a B1 Semi Final – filling in for a player who was absent. His debut 12 years later now concludes this remarkable double debut! He also top scored for the match with 22.

There was also an unsavoury comment at this match 12 years ago. Daniels’ father who was bowling had a catch go to deep square leg where the very pregnant Denise was fielding. When a catch went up and she was waddling to the ball this individual yelled out “Dive”. The response to an incredulous Umpire was “I can always have another baby but this might be my last wicket”. Choice!

Next week
Next match we play our C1 Red team who are desperate for a win. At this stage we are playing at Foxglove but this may change. Stay tuned.

Ross A

Posted by Ross Anderson on January 28, 2008 07:54 AM