Devlin Malone still plays cricket
There were probably a few raised eyebrows when Sydney University captain Liam Robertson won the toss at Owen Earle, and sent Hawkesbury in to bat on the hottest day of the season so far. But Robertson had read the greenish pitch correctly, wickets fell regularly in between countless drinks breaks, and the home side went to lunch at 7 for 65. Charlie Cassell did the damage early on, helped by Dugald Holloway and Robertson himself, but the most encouraging sign for University was the return of leg-spinner Devlin Malone, who grabbed two wickets in the first session. Malone broke his thumb in a pre-season trial game, and missed the first six rounds – as well as the whole of the T20 competition, where he has always been so effective. Another break to the same thumb cost Malone about a third of last season, too, arresting the development of what remains, potentially, a very interesting career. His spell on day one was followed by four second-innings wickets – which included his 200th First Grade victim and a demolition job on the Hawkesbury tail. Nivethan Radhakrishnan has done an excellent job as the side’s leading spinner in the early rounds, but Malone’s return gives the Students’ attack another dimension. The only other leg spinner to have reached 200 Sydney First Grade wickets by Malone’s age was a certain Kerry O’Keeffe, which suggests that representative cricket is still within Malone’s reach if only he can stop getting hit on the thumb.
The rest of the game unfolded as you’d expect. Ben Joy was on a hat-trick and missed it (for the fourth time in seven games this season – if you go in and Joy’s on a hat-trick, it’s basically a free hit). He carried on his outstanding form in the second innings, taking 4-30. Nick Larkin compiled a big hundred, his eighteenth in First Grade, reaching 143 at better than a run a ball. Liam Robertson hit the ball cleanly. And University bowled well enough to dismiss the Hawks a second time, setting up an outright win that propelled the Students to the top of the table after Manly and Northern District wrestled each other to a draw at Waitara.
James Aitken’s bowling sparks joy
There are two things everyone knows about the Aitkens: they play for ever and they bowl finger spin. James’ father, Bob, bowled biting off breaks for the old Central Cumberland club (now Parramatta) for several decades, leaving no batsman unsledged in the process. Bob’s brother, John, played even longer and talked even louder, sending down low-slung orthodox left armers. Bob’s three sons have all been playing Grade for around twenty-five years, Robbie and Glenn both bowling different varieties of off spin. But James was the exception – sure, he’s played for ever, but for many years he was a batsman pure and simple. He broke into First Grade in 1996 as a batsman with Petersham-Marrickville, then had a few seasons with his father’s old club before turning up at North Sydney in 2002-03. But, while he has amassed nearly 8000 runs in First Grade, he hardly bowled at all in his first seventeen seasons. Around seven years ago, he spent time in Second Grade, where his captain, Michael Lloyd, detected his untapped potential with the ball. Ever since then, Aitken has enjoyed a late-career transformation into… well, maybe not an all-rounder exactly, but at least a batsman who bowls. Exactly what he bowls, though, is hard to say. The years have taken a toll on both his waistline and his hairline, so he’s not exactly an intimidating figure when he ambles in from six short paces. Strictly, his bowling is probably classed as medium pace, a speed it occasionally achieves. Yet somehow it works. He lands the ball on the seam, wobbles it around, uses his experience and a bit of guile, and now has fifty-odd First Grade wickets to his name. Perhaps his greatest weapon is the fear most batsmen have of being dismissed by a bowler who wouldn’t look out of place in park cricket. For some of us, the highlight of day one of Round Seven was the moment when Aitken was handed the ball at Coogee Oval. Anthony Sams was on strike, carefully helping Randwick-Petersham recover from a poor start. Aitken ambled in, with his keeper, Aiden Bariol standing back a surprisingly respectful distance beside an unusually full slip field. Aitken’s first ball was precisely what you’d expect from a 44-year old who hadn’t warmed up too much: slow, short, wide, and going away further. Without moving his feet at all, Sams wafted his bat at the ball, and managed only the slightest toe-end nick through to Bariol. The increase in live-streamed matches (pioneered for some years by Sydney University) has been a feature of this season, but it isn’t one Sams will have enjoyed this week. For pie-chuckers everywhere, though, Aitken’s success sparks hope and joy.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown
No one is writing anyone off, and it’s a long season, but First Grade premiers Randwick-Petersham lost again in Round Seven and currently sit in ninth place, at risk of missing the finals altogether (assuming, of course, we have finals this season). RPs have won only three games from seven, and the fragility of their top order was exposed when they slumped to five for 31 against UTS North Sydney. A couple of rounds ago, Randwick-Petersham was comprehensively rissoled for 98 by Manly, and they’re missing the runs that Daniel Bell-Drummond and Jason Sangha so often supplied last season. But Daya Singh is one of the most competitive players in Premier Cricket, and his counter-attacking 103 hauled his side up to an unlikely, defendable total of 227. North Sydney was coasting to victory at 84 without loss, before Adam Semple, Riley Ayre and – inevitably – Singh wrecked the innings by picking up eight wickets while only 81 runs were added. The Bears still needed 63 runs with Mac Jenkins and Matt Alexander at the crease. Jenkins was averaging ten with the bat this season, and Alexander bats behind him. Not everything they did was entirely convincing: Jenkins’ hook at Singh might have gone anywhere, but found the boundary, while Alexander mixed meaty drives with fortunate edges. But they played with confidence and composure for 80 minutes, and guided the Bears to the points. The winning runs came when Alexander patted a ball into the covers, went for a sharp single, and then watched as the shy at the stumps ran away for overthrows. Last year, those throws hit the stumps and Randwick Petersham won those games.
Steve Eskinazi is the last man standing
In any other season, Premier Cricket would now be full of aspiring English county players honing their game in Sydney. Not this year. This year, there’s one, and only because Steve Eskinazi (who was born in South Africa, has a Zimbabwean father and captained Middlesex last season) holds an Australian passport. Quarantine kept him out of action until Round Five; since then, he has racked up 420 runs at an average of 84. Eskinazi’s 78 was the backbone of Sydney’s innings, in pursuit of a challenging target of 322 at Old Kings. Arguably Parramatta bowled a little too full to him; most of his six boundaries came from elegantly-timed drives, and it was ironic that he lost his wicket to a full toss, which he sliced to Jacob Workman on the on-side. That left Sydney nine down and still needing 36 runs, which was more than Nic Bills and Hugh Sherriff had made between them all season. But, as you may have gathered, this isn’t a normal season, and this was yet another successful finish by the tail. The win lifted Sydney into third place.
The Bees could use a break
Almost fifty years have passed since University of NSW was admitted to the First Grade competition. In that time, they’ve made a serious impact, winning premierships and the Club Championship, and sending players like Geoff Lawson and Michael Slater to higher levels of the game. Unfortunately, the University administration doesn’t seem to know an asset when it sees one. The Village Green used to be one of the finest cricket grounds in Sydney (and a welcome respite from the University’s monolithic concrete architecture). Now it’s decommissioned as a cricket ground, and lies dormant, awaiting some vague future project (probably featuring monolithic concrete architecture). But the Bees could still play at David Phillips. Last week, it was announced that the University has agreed to lease David Phillips North to the Waratahs Rugby franchise as a training ground. It’s a weird decision for a University to make, preferring to monetise (modestly) an asset rather than using it for the benefit of student sporting bodies. We get it: sporting facilities are costly to maintain, and only a relatively small percentage of the students get to use them. Of course, if that logic were applied to the rest of University life, nothing much would happen outside of overcrowded lecture theatres. There are expensive books in libraries that only a handful of students use; complex equipment in science labs useful to only a tiny number of post-doctoral students – Universities are full of costly things that not everyone uses. But they’re there because they enhance the quality of the University, and of the student experience, and the image the University presents to the broader community. Once University of NSW sent out the message: if you study here, you can get your degree in Optometry while playing cricket for Australia. That was more attractive than whatever the message is now. The Bees have a fight on their hands. Good luck to them.