Robbie Aitken’s still playing
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last week, you’ve probably noticed that North Sydney all-rounder Robbie Aitken played his 500th First Grade match on Saturday. He’s the first player to achieve that extraordinary milestone, although his father, Bob, certainly would have done so if teams played as many matches during his career as they do now. When Robbie Aitken made his debut for Fairfield back in 1992, he didn’t score a run or take a wicket, and his 500th game was equally unproductive – and yet he played a crucial part in North Sydney’s win. Aitken sent down his ten overs on Saturday for only 32 runs, and helped to contain a powerful St George line-up to an attainable total of 244. Aitken hasn’t lasted this long by wasting energy; he barely bothers with a run-up these days, preferring a short shuffle into his delivery stride. But that has the advantage that he hurries through his overs – on Saturday, he hustled through a maiden to Nick Stapleton in about 90 seconds. North Sydney didn’t let Aitken down: they lost early wickets in the chase, but then Aiden Bariol (58), Tim Reynolds (68) and Brent Atherton (52 not out) combined to hand St George its first defeat of the season.
There was a grand final rematch. Sort of.
You could just about argue that the match at Drummoyne Oval on Saturday was a grand final rematch – Sydney outplayed Manly in last season’s decider only five games ago. But that’s a difficult argument to sustain, because the two sides are now almost completely different. Remarkably, only three players – Elliott Herd, Ryan Hadley and Ryan Farrell – remained from Manly’s grand final side, while half of Sydney’s side has also moved on. Anyway, it was a tightly-fought contest between two good sides, and Manly squeezed out a win by only ten runs. Ryan Hadley made the difference: from number ten, he bashed 21 not out to boost Manly to a defendable 206, and then he intervened with the ball when Nathan Doyle (72) seemed to be steering Sydney to victory. First he bowled Doyle behind his legs, then he darted a ball through a tentative prod from Kain Anderson and with his next delivery he trapped Craig Di Blasio lbw – a match-winning spell of 3-1. The other standout for Manly was reserve keeper Matt Brewster, who stepped into Jay Lenton’s shoes and blasted a quickfire 67 at the top of the order.
The par score at Chatswood Oval is 731
Not that we’ve calculated it scientifically, or anything, but that seems to be about what you need to score if you bat first at Chatswood and want to win. Wests got their calculations slightly wrong, reaching merely 5-287 from their 50 overs on Saturday – enough to win almost anywhere else, but Chatswood has a very flat pitch and very short square boundaries. Dylan Hunter followed a tidy, containing spell with the ball by smashing five 6s in a 97-ball 105 not out, while Taj Brar (108 not out) helped Gordon to a nine-wicket win with a ridiculous 44 deliveries to spare. Three weeks ago, neither Hunter nor Brar had scored a First Grade hundred – now they each have two.
I’m Gladys, and so is my PG side
Let no-one say that we dish it out, but can’t take it. This week’s Gladys Berejiklian Sudden Total Collapse Award goes to… Sydney University’s very own Poidevin-Gray side, which at one point was 2-48 chasing Campbelltown-Camden’s 2-113 in a game reduced to 16 overs each. Spoiler alert: they didn’t get them. Leg-spinner Owen Cole had 0 for 12 from his first 14 balls, and then everything went absolutely Gladys. A full delivery was miscued to cover; the new batsman charged past the ball and was stumped; and Cole completed his hat-trick when the next player swept over the top of a full-length ball on off stump. Six wickets fell for three runs in three overs of chaos (including a run-out with some comedic value), Cole walking off with 4-16. But it’s a fickle game; about half the Campbelltown side stayed on to play in the Little Bash game in the afternoon, when Cole’s only over disappeared for 13 runs.
It’s finals time. Nearly.
As the Big Bash kicks off, the Harry Solomons Little Bash is rapidly approaching a climax, with the last round before the finals to be played on Sunday. The most interesting contests will be in the Sydney Thunder Conference, where Sydney University and Parramatta are certain to advance, but Wests and Northern District could, in theory, be overtaken by one or more of Blacktown, Penrith, Bankstown and Hawkesbury. If Penrith can beat Wests, they’ll leap-frog them on the table, as then both sides would have 6.5 points and Penrith already has the better net run-rate. But that doesn’t guarantee Penrith a place in the finals, because Blacktown can jump to 7 points by beating Hawkesbury. Hawkesbury is the longest of long shots, needing a huge win and about three other results falling in its favour. Sydney University can take out first place in the conference by beating Northern Districts, but if they don’t manage that, Parramatta can take the top spot by beating last-placed Campbelltown. Things are similar in the Sydney Sixers Conference, where St George and Mosman go through no matter what, and Randwick-Petersham and Manly will try to hold off University of NSW, North Sydney, Easts and Sydney. It would be a strange white-ball finals series without Sydney, but the Tigers need to massacre University of NSW and hope that (among other things) Manly loses heavily to Mosman. Even if that does happen, Sydney could miss out if North Sydney upsets St George. Of course, all this assumes that it won’t rain, and it almost certainly will, in which case just about anything could happen.