Hawkesbury are serious contenders
It’s not unfair to Hawkesbury to say that, over its close-to-forty years in the Premier Cricket competition, the Hawks haven’t always pressed for a place in the First Grade finals. Last season, Hawkesbury finished dead last, with only a single win to its name. This season, though… seven games in, Hawkesbury has won five of them, and sit in third place on the ladder. Much of the team’s success has been due to the form of Jack James and Taj Brar with the bat, but on Saturday it was the bowlers who orchestrated the demolition of Sutherland. Ryan Fletcher did the early damage in seam-friendly conditions, whipping out Andrew Deitz and Adam Whatley and running out Brendon Piggott. At that point, Sutherland was 3 for 23 after 13 overs, and there was no way back into the contest, with Aidan Van den Nieuwboer and Smit Doshi cleaning up the back end of the innings. In the end, the game was decided on Duckwoth/Lewis, but Hawkesbury never looked like dropping the points.
Two Irish leg spinners walk into a bar…
The concept of an Irish leg-spinner sounds like the start of a joke (and if you know how it ends, please let us know), but there are actually two of them playing in Sydney this season. Gordon has Gareth Delany, who has already made an impact with the bat, while Gavin Hoey, at University of NSW, has made a quieter start to the season. But Hoey made a telling contribution on Saturday. Going in with the Bees on a wobbly five for 129, he hit his first two balls to the boundary, then launched Joshua Malone for a pair of sixes on his way to 39 from 24 balls. He was economical with the ball, and prised out Anthony Adlam and Alexander Lee-Young from Mosman’s middle order, as the Bees got home in the rain by 21 runs. Hoey played two one-day internationals for Ireland against South Africa earlier in this year (in Abu Dhabi, obviously); his father, Conor, also bowled leg-spin for Ireland, back in the day when Ireland played almost all of its games against Scotland.
Seamus Meaker had a good day
Seamus Meaker’s name makes him sound like he should be an Irish leg-spinner, too, but in fact he bats in the middle order for Sydney. He came into the Tigers’ top side for the T20 matches earlier this season, and played his first Belvidere Cup game in Round 7, but showed what he could do against UTS North Sydney on Saturday. Sydney did well to bowl out the Bears for 161, but then, unfortunately, fell in a heap as the vastly experienced James Campbell showed them how to use a pitch that encouraged swing and seam. After his first six overs, Campbell had 3 for 19, and Sydney had stumbled to 4 for 42. The fact that they remained in the hunt at all was due to Meaker, who was unbeaten on 51 at the end of the innings, reaching his half century by hoisting two successive sixes from Mac Jenkins.
Will Adlam hits a long ball
To readers of a certain age, the concept of W Adlam hitting the ball out of the ground will be comfortingly familiar. Warwick Adlam played seven one-day games for New South Wales, mostly as a distinctly sharp opening bowler, but he was also, on the right day, a left-handed batsman who hit the ball very hard indeed for Gordon, North Sydney and Mosman. One of his sons, Will, is part of the NSW Under 19s set-up this season, and has played a few handy innings for Mosman’s seconds, without quite showing his best form. Until Sunday. Mosman’s Poidevin-Gray side made a slowish start to its T20 match with Fairfield. Only four runs came from the first two overs of the innings; when Adlam came in, Mosman was for 3 for 65 from 10.3 overs, leaving only 57 deliveries in the innings. Adlam faced 37 of them, smashing 12 of them over the fence and four other boundaries, on his way to 104 not out. He really kicked off in the fifteenth over, when he cracked leg-spinner Yash Deshmukh for two sixes, a full toss banged over midwicket and a meaty slog-sweep. In the seventeenth over, he took on Fairfield’s spearhead, Javeer Singh Dhanoa, lofting a drive over extra-cover for four, slog-sweeping a full ball on off stump for six, blasting a slower ball past cover for four, and lobbing an on drive just over the boundary for six more. Ridiculously, 51 runs came from the last two overs, which included four sixes in succession from Aaryan Dixit. Adlam actually hit sixes from five successive legitimate deliveries, punctuated by a wide bowled by Jai Long. Perhaps the cleanest hit of his innings was the massive blow over long-on that brought up his century with only one delivery remaining in the innings. Jai Long had a mixed weekend: on Saturday, he picked up 2-24 from ten overs in First Grade, but the next day his final over in Poidevin-Gray went for 20.
University’s Seconds are still perfect. Just.
Eight rounds into the competition, only one team in any grade has won every one of its matches – Sydney University’s Seconds. But it has been closer than you might think. That unblemished record includes wins over Sutherland by 11 runs, by 10 runs over Penrith and by 5 runs over Mosman. On Saturday, a strong Parramatta side restricted University’s run machine, Ryan McElduff, to no more than 40 (but not before he passed 700 runs for the season), and held the Students to a very chaseable 8 for 208. Pete Brazel grabbed two early wickets, but Santosh Samuel and the highly promising Blake Noorbergen then put Parramatta firmly in control with a third-wicket stand of 109. With eleven overs remaining, Parramatta had reached 3 for 144, needing less than a run a ball with seven wickets in hand, and Noorbergen well set on 74. The Parramatta innings was played in more or less constant drizzle, and the wet ball didn’t help the bowlers. But Noorbergen then drove seamer Will Lintott straight to Harrison May at mid-off, and University tightened the screws. In some ways, the crucial moments were the undramatic ones: May, Henry Snyman and Lintott bowled so efficiently that Parramatta hit only one boundary in the final ten overs. And then the wickets fell in a crash, with three going down in May’s final over, and University was home by nine runs. Teams that reach the finals are often the ones that win the close games, and win from unlikely positions. University Seconds are doing both those things at the moment.