Ahilen Beadle is still going
According to the record books, Ahilen Beadle is only 38, which we suppose we have to believe, although it feels as though he’s been around for a bit longer than that. That’s more or less how Blacktown’s bowlers felt about him last Saturday, since he faced the first ball of Manly’s innings (bowled by Hunar Verma), and also faced the last (again bowled by Verma), on his way to an unbeaten 190 from 138 balls. We don’t usually think of Beadle as a big hitter, but on Saturday he helped himself to 120 runs in boundaries, clearing the ropes 12 times and adding 12 fours. He began to accelerate as early as the fourth over, when he hit Guy Hammond for three fours in succession; then he turned his attention to off-spinner Atharv Deshpande, whose ten overs leaked no fewer than 95 runs. Beadle swung freely across the line, planting the ball over midwicket so often that the tennis players in the adjacent courts should probably have been issued with helmets. Joel Foster was a little slower to start, but it scarcely mattered; when Foster was out for 63 in the 30th over, the openers had already added 175. By the end of it all, Beadle had scored exactly half of his side’s 5 for 380. Blacktown’s bowlers didn’t help themselves, donating four extra overs to Manly through a coach-killing 23 no-balls. Beadle first played First Grade back in 2003; this was his 14th first grade century, and easily his highest.
Easts had a day out
Penrith was in the game at Waverley Oval for about five overs, which was how long it took Liam Doddrell to remove Easts opener Nicholas Taylor. After that, Will Simpson and Angus Robson methodically batted the Panthers out of the game. The second-wicket pair – the left-handed Singapore international and the former county pro – added 179 in a match-defining partnership. There were no great pyrotechnics, though Robson did hit five sixes: it more a display of controlled, purposeful batting. Simpson is tall, left handed and graceful through the off-side; the more nuggetty Robson is professionally ruthless through the on side. Together they put the match beyond Penrith’s reach, and a mercilessly efficient performance by the Easts attack bundled out Penrith for just 97.
Records were threatened at Pratten Park
Sydney University was without Kieran Tate on Saturday, and Will Salzmann was unable to bowl, leaving the Students with a very inexperienced attack. Wests openers Josh Clarke and Nick Cutler cashed in, almost batting through the whole of the innings. Nick Cutler had scored 110, and the total was 262, when he missed a sweep at Bailey Lindgard on the first ball of the 47th over. Actually, the University bowlers contained Wests reasonably well for lengthy periods, but with wickets in hand, Clarke was able to accelerate with some fearless hitting at the back end of the innings, lashing nine 6s on his way to an unbeaten 175 for 140 balls. His innings was the highest ever recorded for Wests in a limited-overs game -although the opening partnership was a long way short of a club record. That would be the unbroken 309 assembled by State batsmen Austin Diamond and Jim Mackay against Middle Harbour in 1905-06 – in, since you ask, just 90 minutes. Salzmann, Damien Mortimer and Tim Cummins all hit half-centuries in University’s reply, but Wests ran out comfortable winners.
Finn Nixon-Tomko had the best day ever
According to the well-known theory advanced by The Grade Cricketer, the ideal result for a batsman is to score a century in a losing team – because, presumably, then you get all the credit for everything, and none of the blame. So what do you call it when you score a double century in a losing team in a 50 over game? If this has ever happened before, we can’t find it, but on Saturday, Gordon’s Second Grade built an apparently unbeaten total of 5 for 385, after centuries by Apurv Sharma and Jamie Bekis. In the Bears’ reply, three of the top five batsmen were dismissed for 1, but Finn Nixon-Tomko, who went in at three, batted through 48 overs to remain unbeaten on 207. The left-hander, whose previous best effort in Seconds was a 61, relished the proximity of the Bon Andrews boundaries, cracking 18 fours and 10 sixes. Gordon still won, but only by 43 runs and after a couple of seasons of decent but unremarkable performances, Nixon-Tomko – son of the former Sydney University and Gordon batsman Craig Tomko – suddenly looks like a very different player.
Peter Ferguson was a link to another time
There are probably few current grade players who have much memory of Peter Ferguson, the former Western Suburbs and Sutherland spinner, who died last week at the age of 74. But he was certainly a memorable cricketer. He first played for Western Suburbs in the club’s Saturday afternoon Under-16 team, when he was just eleven. At the age of fourteen, he took 43 wickets in that competition, 18 in Green Shield, two in Poidevin-Gray, and 60 in Fourth Grade – 123 wickets in that 1964-65 season. Wests held him back a bit – a young left-arm wrist-spinner was a valuable commodity, and they didn’t want to expose him to First Grade too early. Still, he made his debut at 17, and took 263 wickets at 21.06. He played with a smile on his face, turned the ball a very long way, and scored runs rapidly in the lower middle order. He never quite managed a First Grade hundred, but twice he was left not out in the nineties. Lesser cricketers appeared for NSW during his career, but he played at the same time as David Hourn – arguably the best bowler of his type that the State has ever produced – and there was room for only one of them in the representative sides.
A look back at Ferguson’s career reminds us how different grade cricket was back then. Ferguson was part of the Wests team that won the Rothmans Cup knockout in 1967-68. But he didn’t bowl much, because usually the opposition was bowled out by Wests’ two Test bowlers (Bob Simpson and Grahame Corling) and two NSW bowlers (Brian Rhodes and Wally Wellham). In 1975-76, Ferguson was a key member of the Wests side that reached the First Grade finals – which included six current or future Test players (Simpson, Peter Toohey, Steve Rixon, Gary Gilmour, Greg Dyer and Dirk Wellham) as well as NSW representative Wally Wellham. Never again.