Cricket really is a ridiculous game
In a round full of improbable outcomes – such as Penrith’s last pair adding 80 runs to deny Hawkesbury – there’s no doubt which match was the most irrational. Chasing North Sydney’s 355, St George lost its first four wickets for 11 runs. James Campbell swung his third ball past Mitchell Gray’s bat, then had Nick Stapleton caught behind, trapped Matt Hopkins in front with a full delivery, and removed Kaleb Phillips first ball – at which point, the bustling seamer had four for two from 16 balls. When Tom Vane Tempest poked hopefully at another outswinger, Campbell had five for six and St George had crashed to 6 for 52 – needing only 304 more to win. Spoiler: they got them. Andrew Walsh came to the crease with nothing to lose, and turned the game around in extraordinary style. Walsh is a Hurstville stalwart, and usually you know what you get with him: steady inswing off the wrong foot. More often than not he plays Seconds, but when he’s promoted he does a reliable job: in North Sydney’s innings, he bowled 12 tidy overs, taking one for 33, which is pretty much the quintessential Walsh performance: competitive, utterly dependable, and unremarkable. None of that describes the innings that followed. Actually, he started slowly: his first five runs occupied 24 deliveries. After that, he drove Ollie Knight square for four, cracked Campbell twice through the off side, and never looked back. At first, it seemed like some light relief in the dying stages of the game, especially when Tom Engelbrecht fell for 64 at 7 for 112. Except that the ball then started disappearing all over the place. Walsh launched left-armer Mac Jenkins wide of long-off for six, rapidly passed his previous best in First Grade (53), then swiped Campbell for three sixes in an over, resorting to a strange stroke by which he thrusts his front leg towards midwicket, opens up his body, and somehow hits the ball high and straight. With Joe Graham providing stoic support, Walsh reached his hundred from 120 balls, and simply went on hitting the ball onto the bike track. St George passed 300 in the 86th over, when Walsh carved four successive balls from Will Graham for three 4s and a 6. When Joe Graham’s patience ran out, and he skied Jack James to cover, the eighth wicket had added 213 and St George needed 30 with two wickets standing. Walsh brought up his double-century by pulling Campbell for the fifteenth six of his innings. And then, just when the game couldn’t get more ridiculous, it got more ridiculous. The last possible over began with St George needing five runs and Tom Ortiz hampered by a damaged quad. As he could barely walk, let alone run, he retired hurt. Walsh, on 208, tried to win the game with a single hit, but picked out Tim Reynolds in the deep. So Ortiz came back out, with a runner. Jack James bowled four tidy deliveries, and on the final ball, the scores were precisely level at 9 for 355. North Sydney brought the field in, and Tom McKenzie’s last-ball heave cleared mid-on and raced to the boundary. This was the approximate equivalent of a soccer team winning after being 0-15 down at half time. Naturally, Walsh held his place in the St George side for the T20 game the following day, when Daniel Fallins trapped him in front for a third-ball duck. It’s a ridiculous game.
The Students don’t give up
In any other round, the most extraordinary finish would have been the one at University Oval. Midway through the second afternoon of the game, Sydney University looked dead and buried. The Students’ total of 9 for 313 – which owed most to Tim Cummins’ composed 101 – was around par on a good, flat pitch, and Northern District was making steady progress towards it. Corey Miller provided the backbone of the chase, batting for four and a half hours for an elegant 79. The young left hander defends soundly and drives fluently. He also plays a distinctive, David Gower-like stroke, hitting the ball square through the off-side while transferring his body weight in exactly the opposite direction, towards square leg. He middles it so often that it doesn’t look like a technical flaw – but it was this shot that brought about his dismissal, when he sliced off-spinner Nivethan Radhakrishnan into the safe hands of Hayden Kerr. Ben Davis (62) and Scott Rodgie (56) showed all their experience to steer the Rangers into a powerful position. With four overs remaining in the game, the Rangers needed 15 runs and had four wickets standing, but somehow the Students kept playing as if they were on top. Radhakrishnan struck twice in an over: Toby Gray slapped a drive to Ben Joy at mid-off, and then Rodgie moved across his stumps to glance the ball fine, and missed. Tom Felton hooked at the persistently hostile Dugald Holloway, didn’t make full contact, and saw Cummins take a brilliant catch down the leg side. The final over began with Northern District’s last pair needing seven to win. George Furrer punched the second delivery hard into the ground and straight back to the bowler; Radhakrishnan fumbled the ball, but it ricocheted onto the stumps at the bowler’s end, with Ross Pawson backing up and out of his ground. It was a cruel way for the Rangers to lose, but a fair reward for the Students’ sheer determination.
There’s a reason Josh Clarke doesn’t play for the Sharks
We say this in a caring way, and without judgment, but Josh Clarke gets around. Western Suburbs is the fourth club he’s represented in First Grade, after Penrith, Campbelltown-Camden and Hawkesbury. Not Sutherland, though, and here’s why. Clarke hit his first hundred in the top grade in 2012-23, 105 for Campbelltown against a Sharks side including Adam Zampa and Nic Maddinson. He slumped a little after that: Nathan Fitzgerald removed him for second-ball duck at Glenn McGrath in 2013-14, and his next two scores against Sutherland were only 22 and 29. But for Hawkesbury in 2017-18, the fluent left-hander amassed an unbeaten 188 at Owen Earle, which he followed the next year with 19 and 88. He’s played twice for Wests against the Sharks, hitting 176 and (last Saturday) 119. Since 2012, Clarke has played 8 matches against Sutherland, scoring four hundreds and 746 runs at 93.25. What makes this record even more exceptional is that most of the Sharks teams Clarke has faced have been strong – Ben Dwarshuis and Daniel Fallins were both in the attack last weekend.
Wests won, incidentally: Clarke’s teams usually do when they play the Sharks.
Sydney will be hard to stop in the Little Bash
With one Sunday remaining before the finals of the Harry Solomons Little Bash, Sydney looks like the team to beat in this season’s T20 competition. Unbeaten in the Sixers Conference, the Tigers scarcely needed to get out of second gear in accounting for North Sydney last weekend, containing the Bears to a modest 8-132 and running down the target with 21 balls to spare. The key to Sydney’s success is explosive batting in depth: Justin Mosca is hitting at 160.5 this season, Ryan Felsch’s strike rate is 151.5, and they’re followed by Steve Eskinazi (149.1), Beau McClintock (105.6) and Anthony Mosca (98.8). Most sides slow down when they lose a wicket: Sydney usually doesn’t. Add that to disciplined bowling and you have a difficult side to beat in the shortest format. The dark horse could be University of NSW, which looks set to reach the finals after a crushing win over Eastern Suburbs. Jack Attenborough led the way with a dominant 113 from only 61 balls; Chris Tremain and Dan Christian form the basis of a handy attack, and Christian has an uncanny knack of winning T20 trophies.
Grade cricket lost an old friend
A couple of days before Round Six began, Five Things learned that Greg Growden, the former Sydney Morning Herald journalist, had been taken into palliative care at the Lighthouse facility within Royal Prince Alfred hospital. Greg died, ending a long affliction with cancer, on Saturday 14 November. He was only sixty years old. His career with the Herald had been lengthy and distinguished. He started as a cadet in 1979 remained on the staff for almost forty years, until the lure of a voluntary redundancy payment became too appealing. By the end of his time on the paper, he was best known as a Rugby writer, but he also wrote extensively on cricket – and on Grade cricket, too. Greg understood that every player started at the bottom of the ladder, and he had an abiding interest in the grass roots of the game. For some years, he produced a column – 48 Hours – every Monday, covering the events of the weekend, and during the summer he always had an eye for unusual stories from Grade cricket. One memorable example was the time when he reported (on a no-names basis) on an argument between two First Grade scorers, one of whom refused to sit with the other because of an “intolerable odour”. The story had an unexpected postscript: the day it was published, Greg was called by five different scorers, each one complaining that he didn’t really smell all that bad. Greg’s strong, individual voice will be missed. Our condolences and best wishes to his family.