Rain messes things up
Happy travellers of the week are the Eastern Suburbs First Grade side, who made the trek down to Raby to watch Sam Skelly bowl precisely three balls. But at least they got on. Play was possible in only one other First Grade match, at Coogee, where the sandy ground drained quickly enough to allow a 15-over match between Randwick-Petersham and Sydney. Sydney was always struggling after Daniel Sams whipped out Louis Kimber and Nathan Doyle with the second and third balls of the game, and at the end of four overs, the score was six for 19. A couple of decent partnerships then lifted the total to 96, and Sydney had a glimpse of a chance when Kimber removed Daniel Sams with Randwick-Petersham four for 38. But Daya Singh and Riley Ayre steadied the chase, and Ayre hit a six to win the game with eight balls to spare. Good luck to Randwick-Petersham, who seized their chance, and so jump to fourth spot on the table. All points are good, but points when no one else gets on are even better.
Only two people really know how this works
It’s a limited overs game. Team A scores 3 for 141 from its 25 overs. Team B scores 7 for 142 from 25 overs. So who wins? Team A, obviously.
Those were the precise scores from the Second Grade match between Sydney University and Hawkesbury on Saturday. The reason, of course, is that a break for rain occurred while University was batting first, so the number of overs was adjusted during play, and the Duckworth/Lewis/Stern method applied, meaning that Hawkesbury needed to chase rather more than 141 when it batted second. No-one complains much about DLS because, intuitively, it seems quite fair: if you start out thinking that you have 50 overs to bat, you don’t play the same way you would if you knew you had only half as many, so an adjustment to the target seems to even things out. And yet, does anyone understand it? Here’s just one part of the DLS equation:
Clear? We can think of only two people who have played First Grade who could make any sense of this at all (Greg Mail and Michael Cant, since you ask), and we’re a university club. Anyway, by scoring fewer runs than their opponents from the same number of overs, the Students won their ninth match straight, and they can now pretty much take the second half of the season off and still make the finals (although this is not recommended).
We nearly had a record at Cook Park
Penrith’s Fourth Grade had immortality within its grasp on Saturday, and bottled it. Anyone can get bowled out for 63: it takes something special for a team to score less than ten. That appeared possible, briefly, when Penrith set out to chase 125 from 20 overs. In the spirit of seasonal good cheer, we won’t name the batsmen (they know who they are), but Northern District’s William Byrom took a wicket in his first over. Matthew Brown took two in his first over: three for two. Another to Byrom in the third over of the innings: four for three. Brown failed to take a wicket in the next, frankly rather disappointing, over, but never mind – a run out made it five for four. When Byrom struck again in his next over, the innings was 27 balls old and the score was six for six. Then a string of singles spoiled things until Brown took his third wicket, and some kind of history was still possible with the score on seven for ten. But Brendan Vella had to spoil things by playing well and hitting 25, denying his team a rare opportunity to achieve a truly historic catastrophe.
Theertha Satish had a day to remember
The weather improved enough on Sunday to allow most of the Women’s Premier matches to proceed, and there was a memorable contest at Chatswood Oval, where tidy bowling by Gordon’s Grace Poole and Ahilya Chandel (and the mix up between wickets that cost Frankie Nicklin her wicket) reduced Sydney University to three for five in the fourth over. University had recovered only as far as five for 38 when left-hander Theertha Satish came in. Satish began with a couple of crisp drives, but soon the eighth wicket fell with the total on 59, and University appeared set for a heavy defeat. But somehow Satish contrived to squeeze 55 runs from the last two wickets (of which her partners made five), defending sensibly and then peeling off 15 runs from the 17th over with some meaty blows through and over mid-on and a neat clip past cover. In the last over of the innings, Satish connected with a clean strike over midwicket for six, before reaching her fifty from only 37 balls and then falling to the last ball of the innings. A total of 114 was more than University had any right to expect after its start, and Zoya Thakur and Nicklin both followed up with an early wicket. University never really relaxed the pressure, but Gordon fought back to reach three for 87, needing a run a ball from the last 27 balls with seven wickets in hand. In those 27 balls, though, seven wickets crashed for 21 runs, with loopy spinner Isabelle Afaras (3-21) doing most of the damage as three wickets tumbled in the final over and University stole an unlikely victory by just six runs.
Sydney will be tough to beat
Just at the moment, the best kind of cricketer for a Women’s club to have is a representative player back from the WBBL who isn’t currently in the Australian side. Sydney has two of them, and they both showed up at Drummoyne Oval last weekend. Sammy-Jo Johnson picked up 2 for 7 from her four overs, Maitlan Brown collected 1 for 5 from hers, and Campbelltown was slowly suffocated, managing only 52 runs in 20 overs. For good measure, Johnson then went out and banged 30 not out from 21 balls. Sydney sits on top of the First Grade ladder, and will take some catching.