Five Things We Learned from Round 14

You’re going to need a calculator for this one

Unquestionably, the weirdest game of the weekend was at Chatswood Oval, where Gordon stumbled in pursuit of Sydney’s 103, losing its last four wickets without scoring a run – yet finished the day with a surprisingly comfortable reverse-outright, chasing down 232 with no trouble at all.  There was an epic duel between Ben Manenti and Tym Crawford, both of whom seemed to have decided to win the game on their own, and while Manenti couldn’t have done much more than hit 75 and take 7-41, Crawford was there at the finish.  That result, while frustrating, did nothing to harm Sydney’s place on the table: they’re still second, and can sneak past Sydney University for the minor premiership if they beat Randwick-Petersham and the Students (72 points) lose to Manly (58).  Sydney University put an end to Bankstown’s season, thanks largely to an all-round masterclass from Hayden Kerr (86 not out and 4-19).  Gordon had the frankly baffling experience of crashing to 90 all out in the morning, then slipping into sixth place just before 7pm.  So next Saturday’s game at Chatswood is a virtual play-off between Gordon (44) and Easts (40) for sixth spot.  If Gordon wins, no-one can catch them.  If Easts win, they need Sydney to beat Randwick-Petersham (40).  Randwick-Petersham have two ways to reach the top six, which both involve beating Sydney and Gordon losing.  With a straightforward win, they will almost certainly beat Easts for the spot on quotient.  Or they can win with a bonus point, in which case they will either pass Easts on points, or pass Easts on quotient (if Easts also score a bonus point).  Clear?  Good, because you can also create a scenario in which Sydney beats Randwick-Petersham, Easts beat Gordon, and St George (39) beats Parramatta with a bonus point.  Then St George could very well be sixth on quotient.  Easts are paying a price for having the lowest quotient of any side in the top nine, which leaves the Dolphins vulnerable in all these permutations.

Eight sides are in contention in Seconds

Manly’s beserk outright win against Sutherland – they bowled out the Sharks for 86 and 52, but needed a last-wicket partnership of 12 to avoid losing on the first innings – confirmed the minor premiership, and Manly now has an unassailable lead with 76 points.  Wests (57) and St George (55) are also safely into the finals, although St George went down to Northern District, which broke a 21 match unbeaten streak for the Saints in Seconds.  Then it gets confusing.  Blacktown (51) will play in the finals if they beat Bankstown (47).  Bankstown (47) will play in the finals if they beat Blacktown (51).  Blacktown looks threatening, coming off an extraordinary win over Penrith: after the Mounties had been 4-29 , Matthew Day (154) and Green Shield batsman Harjas Singh (147) added 269 for the sixth wicket, with Singh passing 1000 runs for the season, and Penrith was then bowled out by the competition’s leading wicket-taker, Smit Raval, who has now taken three consecutive seven-fors.  The team that loses could miss out if Sydney University (46) upsets Manly.  Sixth-placed Northern District (46) needs to beat University of NSW to be sure of its spot.  If it were to lose, it could be displaced by Sydney University or by Easts (42), if Easts can beat Gordon. 

There are two spots left in Thirds

Northern District (76 points) will be minor premiers in Third Grade, even if they all forget the way to Asquith Oval on Saturday.  They’ll be joined in the finals by Easts (64) Manly (57) and North Sydney (54).  Bankstown (52) looks fairly safe, though it needs to beat Blacktown to be sure of its spot.  But Bankstown would miss out of it loses to Blacktown, and Penrith and University of NSW both win.  Penrith (50) needs to beat Mosman to seal its place in the six.  University of NSW (49) will get in if it wins and one of Bankstown or Penrith loses, but as the Bees play Northern District at Asquith that’s a tough assignment (unless, of course, the Rangers all forget the way to Asquith Oval on Saturday).  Mathematically, there’s a path to the finals for both Sydney University (44) and Sydney (44): they need to win (and a bonus point would help) and hope that Penrith and University of NSW both lose.  If Sydney University, Penrith and Sydney all finished up on 50 points, it’s likely that the Students would take sixth place with the better quotient.

Fourth Grade is well and truly clustered

St George (67) are your Fourth Grade minor premiers this year, and only one side outside the six has any chance of getting in.  Actually the sides placed second to seventh are incredibly tightly bunched: Sutherland has 59 points, Sydney University 58, University of NSW 58, Easts 56, North Sydney 56 and Parramatta 55.   Parramatta moved within striking distance of the top six with a Round 14 outright over Wests.  North Sydney owes its high position to an outright thumping of its neighbour Mosman, whose first innings total of 40 actually represented a recovery from 9 for 25, the early damage being done by Chris Savage (5-15).  This week, North Sydney and Sutherland play each other, and since they can’t both win, Parramatta will pass one of them if it does.  The only problem with that is that Parramatta plays St George.  But the Saints have looked vulnerable in the last couple of rounds, so an upset can’t be discounted.

Two spots are open in Fifths

In Fifths, Penrith (64) holds a narrow lead over University of NSW (62) at the top of the table.    Northern District (58) and Eastern Suburbs (56) are also safely in the six.  Gordon (51) needs to beat Easts to make its spot safe.  But if Gordon stumbles, it can be passed by Manly (46), Parramatta (46) and Wests (45, though they would need a bonus point).  Manly (46) can move into sixth if it beats Sydney University and other results fall its way.

Five Things We Learned from Round 13

Sixth place is still up for grabs

If you take out your calculator and fiddle with it long enough, you can come up with some creative scenarios in which Western Suburbs and Sutherland (32 points) can snatch sixth place from Eastern Suburbs (40) over the next three weeks.  For example, Easts could lose to Fairfield and Gordon, and Sutherland (say) could beat Manly and North Sydney, and about a dozen other results could fall exactly the right way.  But too much of this makes our brains hurt.  There are five teams within a single win of Easts, and most of them have a legitimate shot if the Dolphins slip up.  St George, just one point behind, have a tough assignment this week, facing a Northern District team playing with impressive momentum.  Gordon, making one of its familiar late-season charges, needs to get past second-placed Sydney.  If Randwick-Petersham gets past Hawkesbury this week, its finals chances would then rest upon a final-round one-day game with a Sydney side smarting for revenge after a loss in the 50-over final last weekend.

The simplest way for this to resolve itself is for Easts to win two games.  They have a tough challenge against Fairfield-Liverpool this week, and then face Gordon in what could possibly (but probably won’t) be a straight-up shoot-out for a finals place.

Randy Petes sprung an upset

This season, Sydney has treated most of its white-ball games in more or less the same way a six year-old treats a bouncy castle – trampling all over them, and flattening anyone who tries to share.  So it’s something of a surprise that they’ll end the season without a white ball trophy, after bowing out in the semi-final of the Harry Solomons Little Bash and losing Sunday’s final of the Limited Overs Cup.

When we say Sydney lost, we don’t mean to suggest that Randwick-Petersham didn’t win, fair and square.  But, really…. at least twice on Sunday, Sydney had the game at its mercy, and let it slip.  Randwick-Petersham struggled to build a competitive total, and when Craig DiBlasio bowled the in-form Riley Ayre, the visitors had lost 4 for 113 in 26 overs.  They did well from there to get as many as 232, especially as Harry Manenti wrecked the end of the innings, taking a hat trick with a mix of slower balls and rapid yorkers.   That looked to be at least 30 runs below par, and seemed even worse when Ryan Felsch set about doing what he does, which is to hit new white balls enormous distances.  In Daya Singh’s first over, he carved two boundaries to third man (one more intentional than the other); he followed with a neat drive and a crude slog for two more fours in Singh’s second, and then he turned his attention to Adam Semple, smacking on-drives both to and over the fence at long-on.  When Felsch flicked Jason Ralston off his toes onto the hill at midwicket, Sydney was 0 for 87 from 11.3, needing 145 runs at 3.7 an over with all wickets intact.  But Felsch skied the next ball to deep cover, and the innings unravelled.  By the time Beau McClintock tickled a sweep only as far as Anthony Sams’ gloves, Sydney had collapsed to 5 for 131.  Still, the Tigers bat deep, and that brought together Ben Manenti and Daniel Smith, who calmly restored the equilibrium by adding 44 untroubled runs for the sixth wicket.  Just when Randwick-Petersham looked out of the game again, Caelan Malady removed Smith to a low catch by Sams, after which wickets kept falling as the required rate rose.  In the end, Ben Manenti needed to hit 13 from Ralston’s last over.  His swipe to midwicket was grassed by Maladay, and produced two runs: 11 from five.  Another two reduced the target but the third ball was top-edged and landed safely in Sams’ gloves.  That left young Jack Nisbet with the job of hitting nine runs from three balls, but he failed to make contact and the game ended on a farcical note when he stood out of his ground after his second airswing, and the alert Sams knocked off a bail. 

So disappointment for Sydney, but all credit to Randwick-Petersham, who stuck to their work and remembered the first rule of the game – don’t give up.

Parramatta sprung an upset

The pitch at Old Kings on Saturday was on the slow side, which meant that most batsmen struggled to play with freedom, and the bowlers who prospered were the ones who took the pace off the ball.  Even so, you’d have backed Manly – with Jack Edwards, Ollie Davies, Steve O’Keefe and Jay Lenton – to overcome a Parramatta side that’s out of contention for the finals.  Parramatta’s attack, though, was a mixture of finger spin and medium pace, precisely the combination that was difficult on this surface, and Manly’s batsmen struggled to get out of second gear.  Jack Edwards coped better than most, reaching 74, but he hit only two boundaries from the 110 balls he faced.  Off-spinner Ajaypal Singh struck a critical blow, removing Lenton for only 10, and Manly’s total of 6 for 222 was more or less a par score in the circumstances.  Parramatta needed it to be one of Ben Abbott’s days, and it was.  In the seventh over of the innings, he carved Ryan Hadley for an inside-out six over cover, pulled the next over fine leg for six more, slapped the ball over cover for 4 and swung the last ball round to fine leg for 4 more.  21 runs came from the over, and Abbott’s 54 from 31 balls meant that Parramatta could continue the chase with minimal risk.  Steve O’Keefe applied the brakes and struck twice in his last over, but with plenty of overs in hand, Nick Bertus batted calmly for 78 not out to finish off the game.  It was a strange game for Manly: in the absence of their Big Bash stars, they looked unbeatable, and now they’ve tripped up when the side looks as strong as it has all season.

It’s turning into quite a season for Northern District

With two rounds remaining, Northern District holds a small but significant lead of 45 over Manly in the Club Championship.  It’s turning into quite a season at Waitara – already, the Rangers have won the AW Green Shield, they lead the Third Grade competition, and they have a strong chance of featuring in the finals in every grade from Firsts to Fifths.  The First Grade side held its place in the top six by winning an arm-wrestle at North Sydney, defending a modest total with disciplined bowling and eager fielding.  Chris Green made his mark with a vital 54 and some typically mean bowling, besides holding three catches at long one (including a vital one to remove the threatening Tom Jagot for 61).  Debutant Lachlan Fisher finished wicketless but played a vital part, allowing only 17 runs from his 8 overs.  As the margin of victory was only 12 runs, it was a critical spell. 

In the lower grades, the Rangers’ Seconds went down in a crazy game at Waitara, where they declared on 6 for 200 after only 39 overs, then reduced the Bears to 5 for 67.  Batting at seven, Kobe Allisson whacked seven sixes in his 74, North Sydney got home with a ball to spare, and Northern District dropped to eighth, but only one point out of the top six.  Third Grade was a bloodbath: North Sydney lost two for one, Jack Shelley took 4 for 6, and the Bears, dismissed for 89, had no way back.  Actually there was a weird symmetry about the lower grade games: North Sydney scored 89 in Thirds, 90 in Fourths and 91 in Fifths, which is consistent, at least.

It’s pie time

It’s pie-chucking season again, that hugely enjoyable part of the season when a small army of medium pacers, accustomed to being flogged around the park by big bats on lifeless pitches, find themselves with damp and underprepared decks to play with, and exact revenge for the humiliations of rounds one to twelve.  You know it’s Pie Time when you see scores like this one: bowled out for only 69, Blacktown’s Fourths won outright, firing out Sydney for 76 and 65.  Marcus Jones went into the game with 10 wickets at 36 for the season, and picked up 5 for 20 over the two innings.  Just as much fun was the exchange between Bankstown and Gordon.  In thirds, Gordon lost its last five wickets without adding a single run: all out 49, with Basit Ali taking 4-0.  But in Fifths, Bankstown crawled to 45 all out in 37.5 overs, Oscar Turner taking 4-9.  Sadly, the game in Fourths at Killara was entirely washed out, or it might have been the first Premier Cricket match ever to end in a 47-all tie.  The forecast for this week: more rain, and more pies. 

Five Things We Learned from Round 12

Seven teams are fighting for one spot

If you accept our (patented and highly unscientific) proposition that a team will need 50 points to reach the First Grade finals this year, then five of the six finalists are already settled.  Sydney University (66), Sydney (57) and Manly (52) will certainly be there; Fairfield-Liverpool (45) and Northern District (44) need only one more win from three games.  That leaves seven teams fighting it out for sixth place: North Sydney (34) has the spot at the moment, on quotient, but only just ahead of Randwick-Petersham (also 34), Bankstown (34), Eastern Suburbs (34), St George (33), Gordon (32) and Wests (32).  This week, either Bankstown or Gordon will knock the other out of contention, while Easts could end Wests’ hopes, or vice versa.  Unless it rains, which it will, and that will confuse things even further.

In the lower grades, Manly (65) looks to have the minor premiership locked up in Seconds, while St George (54), Sydney University (45) and Wests (45) look fairly safe.  Northern District (64) has a clear lead in Thirds, with ten other sides still in contention for the top six.  St George won outright in Fourths, jumping over Sydney University to claim first place, and Penrith leads a tightly-bunched field in Fifth Grade.

Dugald Holloway is a bad habit

The great (but French) songwriter Georges Brassens once sang (but in French) that talent without technique is just a dirty habit.  This observation is widely regarded as astute, and yet there are undoubtedly some cricketers for whom technique acts as a handbrake on talent, and that leads us to Dugald Holloway.  The Sydney University fast bowler took bucketloads of wickets last season, winning a place in the SCA Merit Team.  He did it with a technique no coach would ever recommend: he doesn’t have the kind of smooth and metronomically repeatable action that analysts love, and he doesn’t bowl six balls an over on a fourth-stump line.  Occasionally he gives the impression that he’s not entirely sure where the ball’s going, or why.  Holloway, though, succeeds not in spite of his unorthodox method, but because of it.  His left-arm angle is awkward, he can generate unsettling pace, and the fact that he seldom bowls two identical balls in the same over makes his bowling dangerously unpredictable.  In the first couple of rounds this season, Holloway bowled with exceptional discipline and accuracy, keeping a tidy line and length.  And he was nowhere near as dangerous as he is when spraying it around a little.  Now, he’s back to his unpredictable best, which is far more threatening, and there’s never a dull moment when he has the ball.  Against Randwick-Petersham, after Liam Robertson had invited the home side to bat, Holloway leaked 32 runs from his first six overs, profligate work in a low-scoring game.  But then everything clicked, and in his next nine overs, he claimed 4 for 21.  University made heavy weather of chasing 145, and the game was in the balance when Holloway walked out at 6 for 82.  Again, you will find few coaches advising you to copy Holloway’s distinctive crouching stance; but, when in touch, he hits the ball with power and timing that most batsmen would envy.  His 33 from 34 balls was by some distance the freest scoring of the match, and his stand with the endlessly reliable Tim Cummins effectively settled the outcome.  The result leaves University nine points clear in first place, while Randwick-Petersham dropped out of the six and into the pack jostling for sixth place.

Arguably, Jay Lenton is in form

Until halfway through January, you’d have said that Jay Lenton was having an ordinary season.  The Manly captain’s first 14 innings of the season produced half a dozen scores in the 30s and 40s, but not a single half-century (although The Grade Cricketer may have allowed him a couple of “fifty-odds”).  Then, as soon as it started to rain and the pitches became bowler-friendly, Lenton went into overdrive.  He followed his 101 against North Sydney with 105 not out against Blacktown and then 156 not out against Wests.  Manly’s innings against Wests was simply weird.  They scored 304 although the third-highest score was Ryan Hadley’s 8 at number eleven. Early on, Lachlan Ford cleaned up Joel Foster, induced a leg-side tickle from Ryan Farrell, and removed Isaac Vumbacca from a top-edged hook; Oscar Oborn-Corby struck twice, and Manly was 5 for 33.  At which point, irrationally, Lenton rebuilt the innings in a partnership of 206 with Sam Gainsford.  Gainsford is a Manly stalwart, born into the club, but he was batting in First Grade for the first time this season and he had scored only one fifty in his previous 12 matches in the top grade.  He played with an admirably simple method, defending stoutly, then swinging his arms powerfully whenever given the chance to drive or pull.  He blasted three straight sixes from the Wests’ leg-spinners, and also lifted Ford over long-off for six.  His maiden First Grade hundred was an immensely popular one at the club, and there’s something hugely entertaining about the way he holds the pose after completing a meaty stroke, without starting to run.  Lenton also drove cleanly (although he’s considerably more elegant), and he’s in such good touch at the moment that the ball only needs to be fractionally short before he hoists it away over mid-wicket.  Hadley and Elliot Herd bowled well on the second day, though Manly must have wondered whether they had batted too long when Tom Brooks and Ford held them up by adding 68 for the ninth wicket.  But Hadley removed Brooks – caught, naturally by Lenton – and then the Manly captain ended the game by holding onto an outside edge from Ford’s defensive bat.  Steve O’Keefe (unless he retires first), Ollie Davies and various members of the Edwards family should soon be returning to Manly and, especially if Lenton maintains his form, they will be serious contenders at the back end of March.

The Chef served up a memorable day

Mosman’s Matt Moran had an unlucky miss in Round 11, reaching 98 against University of NSW before he whacked a long hop down the throat of deep midwicket.  But he didn’t have to wait long for his first hundred in the top grade.  Against an Easts attack led by Harry Conway, Moran belted 150 not out from only 147 deliveries, hitting 13 fours and clearing the boundary five times.  He shared an unbroken third-wicket stand of 231 with Harry Dalton (93 not out), taking only 31 overs to do it.  A tall batsman with long levers, there are two distinctive features to Moran’s batting – he trades heavily in boundaries, and once he’s set, he keeps on going (his 150 was only his fourth highest score in Premier Cricket).  Before this season, he had a phenomenal record in Third Grade and a puzzlingly ordinary one in Seconds.  He put that right in Round Two this year, cracking 202 not out against a strong Sydney attack, and since his promotion to Firsts, he’s made handy contributions in most matches.  On Saturday, he weighed in with the ball as well, removing Tim Armstrong and Peter Nevill as Easts set about chasing an improbable target.   Jordan Cox was even more dominant than Moran, thrashing 100 not out from 78 balls, seven of which disappeared over the fence.  He reached his hundred by blasting the final ball of the day high over the long-on fence. There was no time to force a result either way, but results elsewhere have kept Easts in contention for the finals, and the point they salvaged for the draw may yet be important.  Finally, our sympathies to Jono Bank, who made his First Grade debut for Easts, but without batting or bowling.  Maybe next time.

They used to make Tooheys ads about this kind of finish

Spare a thought for those lower grade players who hoped that they’d finally play a two-day game, only to have large amounts of Round Twelve wiped away by rain.  Still, the round produced some interesting results, including the game at Killara Oval, where Gordon hosted Sutherland, with both teams still in the hunt for the Third Grade finals.  Only 100 overs were possible, and Sutherland set Gordon the enticing target of 154 from 47 overs.  Gordon stayed in the chase throughout its innings, even though no batsman managed more than Arvin Niranjan’s 24.  At 7 for 122, Gordon was struggling, but Shivraj Rana and Nathan Sequeira put their side back on track with a defiant late partnership.  With one over remaining, Gordon needed five runs to win with three wickets in hand.  Opening bowler Will Straker, handicapped by a slippery ball, had Rana caught from his first delivery, when the batsman tried to clear mid-off and failed.  The next ball smacked into Ethan Sitaramayya’s pads, leaving the umpire in no doubt as to where it was heading.  Last man Simon Read swiped aggressively at the third ball, slicing wide to the left of cover, where Brendon Piggott, one of the Sharks’ better fieldsmen, made good ground and clung on to a difficult chance.  It was a good day for Piggott, who also passed 1000 runs for Sutherland.  Straker’s hat-trick (and 7-53) gave Sutherland the points: they leap-frogged over Gordon on the table, and will most likely break into the top six if they beat 18th-placed Hawkesbury next round.

Five Things We Learned from Round 11

Some things are much clearer now.  Others, not so much.

Here’s what we know after Round 11: with four games to play, Sydney University, Sydney and Manly form a pretty clear top three in First Grade.  Sydney had the unusual experience of thumping Bankstown at Bankstown only to discover that they’d fallen slightly behind the leaders, University, who won all ten points against Campbelltown-Camden.  Manly consolidated third place by chasing down an awkward target set by Blacktown. 

But nothing else is any clearer, because results elsewhere only created more congestion on the table.  Bankstown and St George both dropped out of the top six, St George’s loss keeping Wests’ hopes alive.  Fairfield blew a chance to strengthen its grip on fourth spot when it lost its last five wickets for 18 runs at North Sydney – a result that keeps the Bears in the hunt for the finals.  Randwick-Petersham twice looked dead and buried against Sutherland; on day one, when Sutherland reached one for 209 (before losing nine for 33), and on day two, when their reply stuttered to six for 86.  Twice Randwick-Petersham fought back impressively: their six points lifted them to sixth.  And Northern District capitalised on two surprisingly poor batting displays by Easts to grab an outright win that lifted them to fifth.  As things stand, seven points separate nine teams, with fourth-placed Fairfield on 39 and twelfth-placed Wests on 32.  This week, Wests need to beat Manly to maintain the pace, while Randwick-Petersham will probably need points against Sydney University to remain in the six.  There’s a lot riding on the game between Bankstown and Fairfield, and Sydney could make things very difficult for St George.

Bankstown has the season’s first trophy

Because there are times when T20 cricket produces gripping finishes, it’s easy to overlook the structural problem with the format: that the result can be decided by a single emphatic performance relatively early in the contest.  That’s exactly what happened in the final of the Harry Solomons Little Bash on Australia Day, when Nick Carruthers basically settled the outcome in the third and fourth overs of the day.  In the space of eight deliveries, from Adrian Isherwood and Djali Bloomfield, the left-handed Carruthers plundered 34 runs, and although Bloomfield then dismissed him, his early assault laid the foundation for a target that always looked beyond the Bumblebees.  Bankstown reached one for 64 after five overs, and while University of NSW pulled things back a touch, the home side was always likely to defend 184.  One of Jack Attenborough or Adrian Isherwood needed to come off for the Bees to have a chance; but each hit a sweet, clean six and was then dismissed (Isherwood to a particularly pointless runout).  After that, Bankstown did exactly what they needed – they bowled tightly and fielded athletically and aggressively.  Dan Solway (who contributed 56 with the bat) set his field astutely, and the Bees struggled to reach the boundary when boundaries were sorely needed.  Aaron Bird, who has been playing T20 cricket for as long as it has existed in this country, tightened the screws: he started with a maiden, sent back Suffan Hassan lbw with the first ball of his second over, and eventually conceded a single from the ninth ball he bowled.  His three overs cost only six runs. There was a time when it was his suspiciously faster short ball that worried batsmen, but these days, it’s his slower ball that causes havoc. The eventual margin, 70 runs, was a little cruel.  It was an anticlimactic end to a seriously impressive campaign by the Bees, but a thoroughly well-deserved first T20 title for the Bulldogs.

Ben Joy gives hope to Metro Cup players everywhere

Four balls in to his first spell of the weekend, Sydney University opening bowler Ben Joy persuaded Campbelltown’s Adam Whatley to spar at a lifting delivery outside off stump, and so picked up his 200th wicket in First Grade.  In itself, that’s a commendable but not especially unusual milestone, yet in the context of Joy’s career, the fact that he reached it at all is extraordinary.  Joy first appeared for the club back in 2007, when the selectors, for reasons that remain obscure, decided that it would be best for him to spend a couple of seasons playing Metropolitan Cup.  Even though he took large numbers of wickets for small numbers of runs, it then took him another season to climb past Fourths.  His breakthrough came in 2011-12, when he grabbed 8-12 against Penrith in Seconds, and made his First Grade debut.  Even so, many seasons passed before he became a regular in First Grade, and he was an important part of the University side that won four Second Grade premierships in succession.  In fact, he’s one of only two University bowlers (the other is Tom Kierath) with 200 wickets in both Firsts and Seconds.  Many other players in these circumstances would have switched clubs, but Joy has remained a one-club player throughout his grade career.  This season, he wasn’t expected to feature much in First Grade: it was thought that Joe Kershaw, Charlie Cassell and Dugald Holloway would form the Students’ pace attack, with Hayden Kerr chipping in as well.  Instead, Kershaw’s persistent injuries have prevented him from taking the field at all, while Kerr’s role as permanent unused X-factor sub for the Sixers has limited him to five overs all season.  Joy, on the other hand, now has 32 wickets in First Grade – the most of any bowler in the competition.  He makes full use of his height, moves the ball away from the right hander, gets steep bounce and is half a yard quicker than most batsmen expect.  On Saturday, he ran through Campbelltown to take 5-34, setting up an outright win after Liam Robertson invited the Ghosts to bat first on a pitch with a distinctly green tinge.  This season he’ll lead the University attack into the finals, while offering hope to players in their second year of Metro Cup that the future could be quite bright after all.

Tom Brooks gives it a rip

Western Suburbs now has two country-bred leg-spinners on its books, and that simple fact disguises much more than it reveals, because Jono Cook and Tom Brooks could hardly be more different cricketers.  Cook, lean and agile, skids his leg-breaks through quickly, relying on relentless accuracy, subtle variation and over-spin.  Brooks, whose bleep test is not his strongest point, uses his big hands to give the ball a solid rip, and isn’t afraid of tossing the ball up or sending down the occasional very hittable ball.  Cook has grade cricket’s most prominent manbun; Brooks could just use a haircut.  Cook comes from Taree; Brooks is from Scone, where he played A Grade cricket at the age of 12.  But they can both bowl, a point that Brooks emphasised in Wests’ upset win over St George on the weekend.

It was actually a genuine team effort from the Magpies: Lachlan Ford, Oscar Oborn-Corby and Zain Shamsi all bowled well when the ball was new, and all of the top order made useful contributions, with Nick Cutler’s 72 the standout.  But Brooks’ 4-45 in Saints’ first innings particularly caught the eye.  Brooks wastes no time on a run-up, taking just a couple of steps to the crease, but he still manages to get plenty of body into his action, and he’s capable of turning the ball on most surfaces.  He also has the attacking-leg-spinner’s gift of taking wickets with the odd loose ball.  Brooks has given Josh Clarke a genuine attacking option, and could be very handy in the closing weeks of the season.

Old Kings is no place for bowlers

After the pounding they sustained at the hands of Sydney in Round 10, Hawkesbury bounced back impressively against Parramatta, racking up 8 for 398 and reducing their hosts to 3 for 85.  Normally, you win from there.  Patrick Moore (123) and Scott Baldwin (124) put on 207 for the third wicket, Connor Mizzi set up the declaration with 52 from 35, and then left-armer Ben Roughan marked his First Grade debut by removing the dangerous Ben Abbott, who miscued a drive to mid-off.  But it was all downhill for the Hawks from there.  Scott Copperfield, who has completed his transition from opening bowler to middle-order batsman, hit his second hundred of the season to put his side back in the race.  Dhruv Kant then took control of the game.  The former Blacktown keeper, in his first season with Parramatta, recorded his first century in First Grade, 126 not out, and his partnership with Jacob Workman (whose 59 included four 6s) put Parramatta within striking distance.  Kant drove cleanly and, once his eye was in and the field was scattered, brought out the slog-sweep against the quicker bowlers.  By the time Workman was dismissed, Parramatta’s main enemy was the clock, but Kant and Owen Simonsen needed only 33 minutes to knock off the remaining 70 runs.  Kant and Simonsen peeled 15 runs from the last over of the day, Kant settling the game by smashing a drive high over mid-off.  It was an epic effort from Parramatta, who enter the record books by securing the club’s highest-ever successful chase.  Hawkesbury may well have created their own record, too – we can’t recall the last time a team conceded 400 runs twice in succession.

Five Things We Learned from Round 10

Twelve into six doesn’t go

We’re now exactly two-thirds of the way through the preliminary rounds, so it’s time to make some scientific-sounding (but actually wildly speculative) predictions about the finals.  At the moment, the team in sixth place, St George, has 33 points.  The Saints have a pretty tough draw, and will do well to win three of their next five matches.  So the cut-off point for the top six is likely to be around 45 to 51 points.  This is quite normal: in the last five seasons, the sixth placed team has managed 47, 46, 52, 53 and 49.  What the hell – call it 50.  The question for each side now becomes, is it possible to get 50 points?  Sydney University is there already, and would need to implode quite spectacularly to miss the playoffs.  Sydney (45) are virtual certainties, too, as are Manly (40).  Fairfield-Liverpool has 39 points and good momentum, but a demanding draw: they need to take points from one or both of North Sydney or Bankstown in the next two rounds, which won’t be easy.  Bankstown (34) has a tough draw, too, with Sydney, Fairfield and Sydney University standing between the Bulldogs and a finals spot.  Easts (33) remain in touch despite a post-Christmas slump in form, and play only one side placed above them on the table in their last five games.  Then there are a bunch of sides – Northern District, Randwick-Petersham, North Sydney, Gordon and Wests – huddled between 28 and 26 points, who could get through but need everything to go their way.   Realistically, twelve sides remain in the hunt: if Sutherland (13th on 19) win five from five, that only gets them to 49 points – which, in this hypothetical, is not quite enough.  Of course, none of this counts the potential disruptors – outrights, ties, bushfires, rain, pandemics – that could throw the most careful calculations into chaos.  And if 2020 taught us anything, it’s this: if you would make the gods laugh, tell them your predictions.

But we have eight finalists already

Professional cricket is played in three formats, and Premier Cricket is meant to prepare players for professional cricket, and so we have the 50-over competition.  It often feels like a bit of an afterthought, less prestigious than the Belvidere Cup and not quite as exciting as the Harry Solomons Little Bash.  Yet it exists and, in recent seasons, has produced some excellent matches, usually in the finals, when the competition emerges from the belly of the First Grade competition and takes on a life of its own.  At the end of five preliminary rounds, the holders of the trophy, Sydney University, finished on top again, completing their games with a clinical win over Blacktown.  Blacktown made a lively start despite losing early wickets – at one stage the Mounties seemed on track to be bowled out for 150 in 25 overs.  But the match assumed a more sensible tempo when spinners Devlin Malone and Nivethan Radhakrishnan applied the brakes to the middle order, and eventually a late flurry from Waqar Tareen lifted the total to 223.  University was never really challenged in the chase: Charlie Dummer hammered out his third fifty in a row, Damien Mortimer played a confident, assured innings, and Tim Cummins calmly finished things off.  Liam Robertson, who appeared in his 300th match for University, has now led his side to the top of the table in both First grade and the 50-over Cup.  That earns University a home quarter-final against St George on 7 February.  Elsewhere, Sydney will host Northern District, Manly are at home to Fairfield and last season’s runner-up, Randwick-Petersham, will play at Bankstown.

Ryan Felsch gets nervous in the nineties.  But not too nervous.

In recent seasons, Sydney’s consistent success in the white ball formats has owed a good deal to Ryan Felsch’s ability to get the innings away to an explosive start.  But none of his starts have been quite as dramatic as the one he made against Hawkesbury on Saturday.  He launched his first two sixes in the second over of the day; carted Patrick Moore for two more in the fifth over; and slammed the last three balls of the ninth over for 4, 6 and 6.  To an opening stand of 111, compiled in 11 overs, Justin Mosca contributed 19 runs.  Felsch brought up his 50 from 23 balls, by smashing Abdul Kherkhah to the fence, and he then carved a succession of boundaries to race to 90 from 35 balls.  At which point, he either got nervous, or the Hawks finally came up with a plan.  His next eight deliveries produced only three singles – 93 from 43.  And yet just when it looked as the nervous nineties had claimed another victim, Flesch blasted successive balls from Moore over the fence.  He reached his hundred from 45 balls, 12 of which he deposited out of the park.  After only 20 overs of the game, the question wasn’t who would win, but how many records could be broken.  Felsch eventually fell for 135, from only 63 deliveries.  After which, everything else was an anticlimax, although the rest of the game was distinctly weird.  Steve Eskinazi smashed a century of his own, from only 67 balls, which in the context of any other game would be exceptional but, in this one, just seemed perfectly natural.  Sydney’s 422 was, by some distance, the highest total ever recorded in the 50-over competition. And the Hawks themselves scored at better than a run a ball.  In the end, they lost by 155 runs, even though their total of 267 would have won seven of the ten First Grade matches in the round.  The whole thing was like a strange thought experiment: what would happen if we took a T20 game and played it over 50 overs?

Too many spinners are never enough

Bankstown recently named its T20 team of the decade, a side that seemed to be an attempt to answer the question, “how many left arm spinners is it possible to fit into one team?”  It’s actually a pretty good reflection of Bankstown’s current white-ball strategy, which is extremely heavy on the use of left arm tweakers.  Readers with memories stretching back to the 1980s will recall the time when Bankstown could field three top-class left-arm spinners (Ken Hall, David Freedman and Paul Talbot – or, if you prefer, Emu, Freddy and Straws), one of whom was usually packed off to Second Grade.  Well, today, they’d all get a game.  Northern District did well on Saturday to restrict Bankstown to 218, of which Daniel Nicotra thumped 83 in good time.  But while Tom Felton and Toby Gray bowled neatly, they were eclipsed by Bankstown’s spin pair, Ben LeBas (2-33) and Ben Taylor (3-24), and after Ben Davis was dismissed for a quickfire 35, no other batsman could get moving.  There was even time for Nicotra to pick up a wicket with his leg-breaks.  LeBas and Taylor haven’t usually run through sides this season, but they’re extremely economical – between them, they’ve gone for fewer than three an over.  On the rare occasions when they’ve been more expensive (such as the Round 9 match with Parramatta), Bankstown has lost.  Bankstown has two white-ball finals coming up (the T20 against the Bees on Australia Day and the 50-over quarter-final with Randwick-Petersham).  Anyone looking to beat them will need to come up with a plan to score at four an over or better when the spinners are on.

Param Uppal is consistent

Three years have now passed since Param Uppal was chosen, perhaps prematurely, to make his Sheffield Shield debut.  He’s now 22, and playing with growing confidence and assurance.  His unbeaten 76 against Sutherland on Saturday helped to push Fairfield-Liverpool into the top four, and he now has 574 runs in all formats this season at an average of 57.40.  He’s done his without recording a century – he still has only one First Grade hundred to his name – instead, he’s passed fifty five times, as well as hitting a 46 and a 49 not out.  This may not be the kind of scoring that attracts the attention of selectors, but it’s immensely valuable to his club.  His innings on Saturday was full of crisp drives, fierce pulls and the occasional dirty slog at Pushpinder Singh’s leg breaks.  His bowling remains a handy option, and he looks a much stronger all-round cricketer than he was at the time of his callup for the Blues.

Five Things We Learned from Round 9

The Students are almost back at full strength

On Saturday, Sydney University fielded two players who have broken a thumb or finger this season, as well as two who have missed games with leg injuries.  Now that they’re back, the Students are more or less at full strength, except for their Big Bash players, and their win over Penrith kept them on top of the First Grade ladder.  Penrith will look back on the game as a missed opportunity, since Tyran Liddiard (52) and Cameron Weir (95) gave the Panthers an excellent platform, but Dugald Holloway, rediscovering his best form, undermined the innings with 3-23 and Devlin Malone and Ben Mitchell took important wickets to restrict the score to 235.  The chase was clinical: Charlie Dummer led the way with another vigorous fifty, and Liam Robertson maintained the momentum with a rapid 42 (an innings that included two massive sixes from Jordan Browne’s off-breaks, as well as Robertson’s 7500th run for the club).  And the game was finished off by Ryan McElduff, returning from injury, who hit an unbeaten 66 from 67, driving crisply and threading the ball through the on side.  University did not always look convincing in the first half of the season, but the side is gathering strength and momentum at the right time.

Manly’s depth has held up well

The Big Bash season is not always enjoyable for Manly, who lose the Edwards brothers, Stephen O’Keefe and Ollie Davies to one franchise or another (and we’re not counting theoretical Manly player Mitchell Starc here).  This season, however, their depth of talent is so good that they have managed to hold second place on the First Grade ladder, and first place in Seconds.  On Saturday, Manly battled to 8 for 189 against Eastern Suburbs, and looked well beaten when Easts reached 3 for 143, needing 47 from 20 overs.  Yet they won by 18 runs.  Most of the damage was done by Elliott Herd, who has emerged this season as a genuine wicket-taker in First Grade.  The off-spinner was expensive, allowing 60 runs from his ten overs, but the four wickets he took were vital.  It’s not unfair to say he had a little help from Easts’ batsmen, with Peter Nevill and Will Simpson both lofting inoffensive deliveries to fieldsmen in the deep, while Jack Preddey tried to sweep a ball that was too full and straight.  Herd won’t mind: already this season he has 25 wickets, and Manly are not missing O’Keefe nearly as much as expected.  Ryan Hadley has been below his best this season, but played his part to perfection, removing Tim Armstrong and Angus Robson at the top of the order and wrapping up the tail.  Easts will be trying to work out exactly how they managed to lose this one, the main consolation being the form of young Kent batsman Jordan Cox, who hit a classy 74 in his first First Grade innings for the club.  Cox was removed by Isaiah Vumbaca, who’s proof of the depth at Manly; recently promoted to Firsts, Vumbaca contributed 37 vital runs and also picked up a vital wicket, his first in the top grade.

You can’t bowl there to Tom Doyle

The innings of the week in a losing cause was played by Sutherland’s Tom Doyle, who belted 109 from 101 deliveries after his side had slumped to 2 for 36 against Sydney.  Doyle has been in Sutherland’s First Grade side for five years now, making very valuable contributions without ever quite scoring as heavily as a player of his talent might.  When he’s on song, though, he’s very difficult to bowl to – he’s extremely strong square on the off side, between cover and point, regardless of whether the ball’s full or short.  That often forces bowlers to straighten up, and then Doyle works the ball through the leg side.  On Saturday, his square drive brought a large proportion of his eleven fours, and there was also a flat slap for six over cover from Ryan Felsch’s bowling.   When Nic Bills straightened up his line, Doyle played an audacious flick over the midwicket fence (although he was lucky to survive an ugly heave later in the over, the bottom edge eluding both the stumps and the keeper and running away to the fence).  Doyle and Daniel Fallins (57) steered Sutherland to the respectability of 6 for 239, but Sydney’s batsmen staged a well-paced chase and reached that target with an over to spare.  Beau McClintock, with 61, led the way, while Sutherland’s bowlers will regret donating 14 wides and no-balls to their opponents.

The Bees are on a roll

They may be underperforming in the First Grade competition, but University of NSW is still in the hunt for silverware this season, after storming into the Grand Final of the Harry Solomons Little Bash.  Their formula is pretty simple: they bowl tightly, field aggressively, and then Jack Attenborough goes beserk (in a very elegant way).  And a bit of luck helps too.  At Chatswood Oval on Sunday, Brandon McLean handed the new ball to left-arm spinner Adrian Isherwood, who started off with a dreadful half-tracker.  Nine times out of ten, Tym Crawford would have deposited it into Orchard Road; this time he picked out Declan White’s safe hands on the boundary, at which point Isherwood embarked on a delirious victory lap that makes you wonder what he’ll do if he ever manages to pitch the ball on leg and hit the top of off.  Nathan Doyle’s 74 from 54 hauled Gordon to 6 for 150, not a huge total on Chatswood, and Isherwood (62) and Attenborough (57) pounded the Stags out of the game with a second-wicket partnership of 115 in only 12 overs.  They were both brutal on Quincy Titterton, and Isherwood launched Dylan Hunter for a couple of flat sixes over cow corner.  Isherwwod and Attenborough make it very difficult for bowlers to settle into a line and length: Isherwood is left-handed, Attenborough right, and since Isherwood just about comes up to Attenborough’s shoulder, he pulls deliveries that his partner drives.

Except for an over and a half, during which Ben Abbott thrashed everything out of sight, Bankstown was always in control of its match against Parramatta, and logically they start as favourites for the Grand Final at Bankstown Oval on Australia Day.  But the Bees are on a roll, and it would be risky to bet against them.

There are more finals coming

It’s easy to forget, but this coming Saturday is the last of the preliminary rounds for the First Grade Limited Overs Cup, so it’s worth checking up on the state of that competition.  The fact that the competition has only five rounds has made the table very congested, especially as one of those rounds was mostly washed out.  So at this stage, all we can say for certain is that Campbelltown (1 point) and Blacktown (nil) will not be in the qualifying finals on 7 February, while Manly, Sydney University and Randwick-Petersham (20) certainly will be.  Everyone else could be, as a matter of mathematical possibility, although Mosman (for example) would need to score two for 509 before bowling out St George for 12 and hoping other results go their way.  Perhaps the most interesting match of the round is at Bankstown, where the home side (14 points) could miss out on the top eight with a loss to Northern District (19).  University of NSW (7) would leapfrog their opponents Eastern Suburbs (13) if they win with a bonus point, while Fairfield-Liverpool (13) can sneak in to the eight if they beat Sutherland and other results favour them.

Five Things We Learned from Round Seven-and-a-half

We’re still in a pandemic

The Sydney Cricket Association’s decision to cancel the second day of Round Eight was sensible, responsible and perhaps inevitable.  For several weeks, the Premier Cricket competition has carried on as… well, not as normal, exactly, but a decent approximation of it in the circumstances.  But the Association has a duty of care, not only to those involved in the game, but to the broader community, and the risk that a stray player or two from the northern reaches of waxhead country might be involved in spreading the virus simply wasn’t worth taking.  As it happened, rain would have prevented a result in most games anyway.  So perhaps the biggest disappointment is the loss of a few Green Shield games: there are boys who have waited a long time for their one chance to play in that competition, and losing that opportunity is a real blow.  Let’s hope at least a couple of the abandoned fixtures can be rescheduled.  At the time of writing, the “Avalon cluster” seems to have stabilised so, with any luck, fixtures can be resumed before too long.  Although, should anything go wrong, Sydney University is sitting on top of the First Grade table.  Just saying.

Fairfield grabbed its chance

Only one first-innings result was possible on day one, and Fairfield-Liverpool grabbed it after dismissing Penrith cheaply.  Josh Baraba made good use of the new ball, knocking over Ryan Hackney and Cameron Weir with only six runs on the board.  Jordan Browne and Adam Bayliss then restored order with a steady partnership of 64, until Jarrad Burke tossed the ball to Jaydyn Simmons.  The logic behind this wasn’t immediately obvious: Simmons had never bowled for Fairfield, while in his career at Campbelltown, his First Grade wickets cost 65 runs each.  And yet one of his innocent looking medium pacers beat Browne’s forward prod, at which point Penrith imploded.  The last eight wickets tumbled for 67 runs, mostly to some disciplined bowling by Riley Allington and Chad Sammut.  Penrith’s seam attack bowled well, too, but a bright innings from Param Uppal gave the Lions the lead well before stumps.  It was a strong team effort, and the abandonment of day two means that it pitches Fairfield into the top six.  But there was a twist, because by chance, many of the same players met again the following day in Poidevin-Gray, when Penrith absolutely bladdered Fairfield.  Baraba, so effective on Saturday, leaked 62 runs from 8 overs on Sunday, while Allington went for 51 from seven.  Penrith’s Henry Railz failed to score on the Saturday, and smashed a rapid 88 the next day against much the same bowling.  Sometimes it’s an irrational game.

It’s looking like a breakthrough season for Charlie Dummer

Sydney University and Parramatta will both regret the loss of the second day of their game; University was as confident of taking six more wickets as their hosts were of scoring another 127 runs.  But on the first day, when the bowlers generally had things in their favour, Charlie Dummer’s innings was exceptional.  His 88 came from only 95 deliveries, as the nuggety left-hander produced a series of cleanly-struck drives and pulls whenever given room to free his arms.  His first fifty came from only 44 balls, the highlight being a dismissive swat over the midwicket fence from a Luke Dempsey delivery that could easily have been blocked without anyone losing face.  Dummer had a very difficult start to the season; he has had to cope with the tragic loss of his younger brother in September, and as recently as Round Two, he was playing Second Grade.  And yet he’s now emerging as a genuine threat in the top grade.  His talent is obvious, but it also says a lot about his character and resilience that he now has three half-centuries in Firsts this season, and is handing out punishment to some very accomplished bowlers. 

Vasi MacMillan won’t forget his debut in a hurry

It’s an unusual game where the fifth seamer does the damage, but that’s what happened in St George’s match with Bankstown.  Evasio MacMillan had been called up to make his First Grade debut, taking the place of Tom McKenzie, on the back of not very much form to speak of in Seconds – seven wickets in five matches.  Bankstown had made its way for 2 for 90 by the time MacMillan got the ball, with the big wicket of Daniel Solway having fallen to Nick Stapleton.  MacMillan started with a maiden to Jake Cormack, and then struck twice in his fourth over, bowling Cormack and having Daniel Nicotra caught behind.  Bankstown was dismissed for 220, leaving the game frustratingly poised at the end of day one.  MacMillan, a former Trinity Grammar student, ended up with 4-28 – the best return he’s achieved for the Saints since Green Shield.  His seamers are nippy and accurate, and he’s a confident competitor.  He might even get promoted to fourth seamer some time soon.

Blacktown can’t take a trick

The Blacktown Mounties remain winless in First Grade this season, despite a commanding performance on day one against Hawkesbury.  Toby Flynn-Duncombe, owner of the least Blacktown name in all of Blacktown, batted with monumental patience throughout the entire day; he faced the first ball of the day, and the last, and reached 136 by the close.  It was an innings defined by restraint, but Flynn-Duncombe also took full advantage of anything lose, hitting three sixes and being intermittently harsh on spinners Abdul Kherkah and Jake Wholohan.  James Newton rediscovered his early-season form with a solid 83, and Jordan Gauci (62 not out) stamped his class on the final session.  Blacktown’s three for 316 represented a very solid day at the office.  They’ll never know whether it would have been enough.

Five Things We Learned from Round 7

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.

Five Things We Learned from Round 6

Cricket really is a ridiculous game

In a round full of improbable outcomes – such as Penrith’s last pair adding 80 runs to deny Hawkesbury – there’s no doubt which match was the most irrational.  Chasing North Sydney’s 355, St George lost its first four wickets for 11 runs.  James Campbell swung his third ball past Mitchell Gray’s bat, then had Nick Stapleton caught behind, trapped Matt Hopkins in front with a full delivery, and removed Kaleb Phillips first ball – at which point, the bustling seamer had four for two from 16 balls.  When Tom Vane Tempest poked hopefully at another outswinger, Campbell had five for six and St George had crashed to 6 for 52 – needing only 304 more to win.  Spoiler: they got them.  Andrew Walsh came to the crease with nothing to lose, and turned the game around in extraordinary style.  Walsh is a Hurstville stalwart, and usually you know what you get with him: steady inswing off the wrong foot.  More often than not he plays Seconds, but when he’s promoted he does a reliable job: in North Sydney’s innings, he bowled 12 tidy overs, taking one for 33, which is pretty much the quintessential Walsh performance: competitive, utterly dependable, and unremarkable.  None of that describes the innings that followed.  Actually, he started slowly: his first five runs occupied 24 deliveries.  After that, he drove Ollie Knight square for four, cracked Campbell twice through the off side, and never looked back.  At first, it seemed like some light relief in the dying stages of the game, especially when Tom Engelbrecht fell for 64 at 7 for 112.  Except that the ball then started disappearing all over the place.  Walsh launched left-armer Mac Jenkins wide of long-off for six, rapidly passed his previous best in First Grade (53), then swiped Campbell for three sixes in an over, resorting to a strange stroke by which he thrusts his front leg towards midwicket, opens up his body, and somehow hits the ball high and straight.  With Joe Graham providing stoic support, Walsh reached his hundred from 120 balls, and simply went on hitting the ball onto the bike track.  St George passed 300 in the 86th over, when Walsh carved four successive balls from Will Graham for three 4s and a 6.  When Joe Graham’s patience ran out, and he skied Jack James to cover, the eighth wicket had added 213 and St George needed 30 with two wickets standing.  Walsh brought up his double-century by pulling Campbell for the fifteenth six of his innings.  And then, just when the game couldn’t get more ridiculous, it got more ridiculous.  The last possible over began with St George needing five runs and Tom Ortiz hampered by a damaged quad.  As he could barely walk, let alone run, he retired hurt.  Walsh, on 208, tried to win the game with a single hit, but picked out Tim Reynolds in the deep.  So Ortiz came back out, with a runner.  Jack James bowled four tidy deliveries, and on the final ball, the scores were precisely level at 9 for 355.  North Sydney brought the field in, and Tom McKenzie’s last-ball heave cleared mid-on and raced to the boundary.  This was the approximate equivalent of a soccer team winning after being 0-15 down at half time.  Naturally, Walsh held his place in the St George side for the T20 game the following day, when Daniel Fallins trapped him in front for a third-ball duck.  It’s a ridiculous game.

The Students don’t give up

In any other round, the most extraordinary finish would have been the one at University Oval.  Midway through the second afternoon of the game, Sydney University looked dead and buried.  The Students’ total of 9 for 313 – which owed most to Tim Cummins’ composed 101 – was around par on a good, flat pitch, and Northern District was making steady progress towards it.  Corey Miller provided the backbone of the chase, batting for four and a half hours for an elegant 79.  The young left hander defends soundly and drives fluently.  He also plays a distinctive, David Gower-like stroke, hitting the ball square through the off-side while transferring his body weight in exactly the opposite direction, towards square leg.  He middles it so often that it doesn’t look like a technical flaw – but it was this shot that brought about his dismissal, when he sliced off-spinner Nivethan Radhakrishnan into the safe hands of Hayden Kerr.  Ben Davis (62) and Scott Rodgie (56) showed all their experience to steer the Rangers into a powerful position.  With four overs remaining in the game, the Rangers needed 15 runs and had four wickets standing, but somehow the Students kept playing as if they were on top.  Radhakrishnan struck twice in an over: Toby Gray slapped a drive to Ben Joy at mid-off, and then Rodgie moved across his stumps to glance the ball fine, and missed.  Tom Felton hooked at the persistently hostile Dugald Holloway, didn’t make full contact, and saw Cummins take a brilliant catch down the leg side.  The final over began with Northern District’s last pair needing seven to win.  George Furrer punched the second delivery hard into the ground and straight back to the bowler; Radhakrishnan fumbled the ball, but it ricocheted onto the stumps at the bowler’s end, with Ross Pawson backing up and out of his ground.  It was a cruel way for the Rangers to lose, but a fair reward for the Students’ sheer determination.

There’s a reason Josh Clarke doesn’t play for the Sharks

We say this in a caring way, and without judgment, but Josh Clarke gets around.  Western Suburbs is the fourth club he’s represented in First Grade, after Penrith, Campbelltown-Camden and Hawkesbury.  Not Sutherland, though, and here’s why. Clarke hit his first hundred in the top grade in 2012-23, 105 for Campbelltown against a Sharks side including Adam Zampa and Nic Maddinson.  He slumped a little after that: Nathan Fitzgerald removed him for second-ball duck at Glenn McGrath in 2013-14, and his next two scores against Sutherland were only 22 and 29.  But for Hawkesbury in 2017-18, the fluent left-hander amassed an unbeaten 188 at Owen Earle, which he followed the next year with 19 and 88.  He’s played twice for Wests against the Sharks, hitting 176 and (last Saturday) 119.  Since 2012, Clarke has played 8 matches against Sutherland, scoring four hundreds and 746 runs at 93.25.  What makes this record even more exceptional is that most of the Sharks teams Clarke has faced have been strong – Ben Dwarshuis and Daniel Fallins were both in the attack last weekend.

Wests won, incidentally: Clarke’s teams usually do when they play the Sharks.

Sydney will be hard to stop in the Little Bash

With one Sunday remaining before the finals of the Harry Solomons Little Bash, Sydney looks like the team to beat in this season’s T20 competition.  Unbeaten in the Sixers Conference, the Tigers scarcely needed to get out of second gear in accounting for North Sydney last weekend, containing the Bears to a modest 8-132 and running down the target with 21 balls to spare.  The key to Sydney’s success is explosive batting in depth: Justin Mosca is hitting at 160.5 this season, Ryan Felsch’s strike rate is 151.5, and they’re followed by Steve Eskinazi (149.1), Beau McClintock (105.6) and Anthony Mosca (98.8).  Most sides slow down when they lose a wicket: Sydney usually doesn’t.  Add that to disciplined bowling and you have a difficult side to beat in the shortest format.  The dark horse could be University of NSW, which looks set to reach the finals after a crushing win over Eastern Suburbs.  Jack Attenborough led the way with a dominant 113 from only  61 balls; Chris Tremain and Dan Christian form the basis of a handy attack, and Christian has an uncanny knack of winning T20 trophies.

Grade cricket lost an old friend

A couple of days before Round Six began, Five Things learned that Greg Growden, the former Sydney Morning Herald journalist, had been taken into palliative care at the Lighthouse facility within Royal Prince Alfred hospital.  Greg died, ending a long affliction with cancer, on Saturday 14 November.  He was only sixty years old.  His career with the Herald had been lengthy and distinguished.  He started as a cadet in 1979 remained on the staff for almost forty years, until the lure of a voluntary redundancy payment became too appealing.  By the end of his time on the paper, he was best known as a Rugby writer, but he also wrote extensively on cricket – and on Grade cricket, too.  Greg understood that every player started at the bottom of the ladder, and he had an abiding interest in the grass roots of the game.  For some years, he produced a column – 48 Hours – every Monday, covering the events of the weekend, and during the summer he always had an eye for unusual stories from Grade cricket.  One memorable example was the time when he reported (on a no-names basis) on an argument between two First Grade scorers, one of whom refused to sit with the other because of an “intolerable odour”.  The story had an unexpected postscript: the day it was published, Greg was called by five different scorers, each one complaining that he didn’t really smell all that bad.  Greg’s strong, individual voice will be missed.  Our condolences and best wishes to his family.

Five Things We Learned from Round 5

Hayden Kerr is back

Sydney University has been badly affected by injuries this season, with five or six First Graders missing in action at any given time.  The Students have still found ways to win – or, at any rate, to win enough to hold on to second place on the competition table – but will be grateful for Hayden Kerr’s return in Round Five.  The sciatica that kept Kerr out of the early matches still prevents him from bowling, but he eased back into action with 67 from 75 balls against Wests on Saturday, followed by a sharp catch at slip to remove Nick Cutler.  His innings – slightly subdued, by his standards – was decorated with several clean, powerful drives but, unusually, he was out-Kerred in the early stages of the innings by Charlie Dummer.  The compact left-hander has played several handy white-ball innings this season, all with a wonderfully simple method.  If the ball is full, he drives through the line for four; if it’s short, it disappears through the leg side with a shot that wouldn’t look out of place on a baseball diamond; and he occasionally blocks the straight ones.  He scored 56 of his opening stand of 88 with Kerr, facing only 42 balls.  Damien Mortimer then carried on his good form, spanking 94 from 105.  Mortimer’s batting is normally classically orthodox, but late in his innings he diversified, playing a series of scoops and reverse sweeps before sacrificing a likely hundred by skying leg-spinner Tom Brooks to midwicket.  Wests were briefly in the hunt to chase down their target of 306, when Josh Clarke and James Psarakis built a threatening partnership, but once that stand was broken by Nivethan Radhakrishnan, there was little more resistance.  Not for the first time this season, Ben Joy (3-17) was the pick of the bowlers for the Students.

Hamish Dunlop has a First Grade cap

Hamish Dunlop is in his sixth season with Eastern Suburbs.  He has spent most of that time as the Fifth Grade wicket-keeper, playing a bit in Fourths and, three times last season, in Thirds.  And he now holds Easts’ First Grade cap number 713.  He was chosen in Fifths on Saturday, and made his way down to Raby No3, but his day took an unexpected twist when Baxter Holt was injured in First Grade on the adjacent oval.  Holt, who has had a shockingly unlucky season with injuries, was batting with great determination, repairing Easts’ innings from the early wreckage of 4 for 19, when a ball crashed through the grille of his helmet and struck him in the face.  Holt retired hurt for 26, was sent away for a head injury assessment (he’s bruised, but OK), and the umpires agreed that the Dolphins were allowed a concussion replacement.  Easts had Hamish Morrison keeping wicket in Third Grade on Raby No2, but he was already in the field, and there was no one else in his side willing or able to take over behind the stumps.  So Hamish Dunlop was called up from Fifths.  Batting at ten, he chipped in with a handy five not out, to lift Easts to 9-185; then he caught Jonathon Sammut from Henry Thornton’s bowling in the third over of Campbelltown’s innings.  That was his only dismissal, but he did a tidy job with the gloves, allowing no byes in the innings, as Campbelltown folded for 131, with Thornton (4-17) and captain Jack Preddey (3-18) doing most of the damage.  Next week, Easts expect Peter Nevill to return from State duty, and if that occurs, the club’s last three First Grade keepers will have been a Shield player (Holt), a Test player and… Hamish Dunlop - who may well be back in Fifths next week, but already has one of the season’s better stories to tell.

Caelan Maladay can be destructive

Randwick-Petersham quick Caelan Maladay has made an inconsistent start to the season, but when it all clicks, he’s a handful.  On Saturday, the premiers were defending a decent, but by no means imposing, total of 9 for 244 against Penrith.  Cameron Weir put the Panthers on track with a lively 52, and then Henry Railz punched a brisk fifty to put his side within reach of the points.  Maladay bowled the 44th over of the innings, and he was all over the place: ten runs came from it, including three wides.  With five overs remaining, Penrith needed 20 runs with five wickets in hand, and the two batsmen at the crease had already shared a partnership of 97.  Wise betting at this stage was on Penrith.  At which point, Maladay turned the game on its head.  With the third ball of the 46th over, he held a high return catch from Railz.  Two balls later, he bowled Josh Lalor.  Then, in his next over, he grabbed three wickets in four balls: Luke Hodges was caught by Tim Affleck, Ryan Fletcher missed a straight one and was trapped in front, and Jordan Browne holed out to Riley Ayre.  Maladay’s analysis in his last two overs read: 01w1w1 and 1ww1w.  Five for five in eleven balls, and Randwick-Petersham were home by 12 runs.  Not everything about Maladay satisfies purists – he has been known to bowl with his hair in a ponytail and (slightly more importantly) makes minimal use of his front arm.  But already in his short career, he’s shown a talent for taking wickets in clusters. 

We just lost our excuse to visit @srwatson33

Regular readers of Five Things will remember our sad obsession with the Instagram account @srwatson33, that baffling combination of cricket, motivational philosophy, tourist snaps of India and bizarre product endorsements.  Sadly, we no longer have any excuse to go there, now that Shane Watson has announced that he’s hanging up his boots (350 Not Out FF from Asics, in case you were wondering).

For much of his career, Watson was an easy target for his critics.  In England, especially, his front pad often seemed like a giant magnet for the ball; his self-belief made him the most unwisely optimistic user of the Decision Review System; his bulky frame became increasingly injury-prone; and he bore a disconcerting resemblance to a Disney character.  A harsh but fair analysis of his Test career is that he under-achieved slightly – although had his body allowed him to continue bowling at the pace he produced early in his career, he might well be remembered as one of the game’s very best all-rounders.  In white-ball cricket, though, he was consistently excellent over a very lengthy period.

And you won’t hear a bad word spoken about him in the Shire.  Watson joined Sutherland back in 2011-12, and over the last eight years he turned out 25 times for the club, scoring 1220 runs at an average just under 50.  The numbers aren’t alarming – they’re more or less what you’d expect of an international – but they don’t properly reflect his impact.  Watson was a brutal destroyer of any bowling that fell short of the highest class (google Simon Kerrigan for evidence of this) and some of his efforts for the Sharks were extraordinary.  There was his 114 not out in a T20 game against Mosman, which occupied only 53 balls, no fewer than 16 of which vanished over the fence.  But arguably his bigger contribution was off the field.  He trained with the club, passed on his knowledge and experience, and did it all without ego.  One longtime Sutherland member describes him as “the best bloke I ever met in cricket”.  He’s earned an enjoyable retirement.

Gordon Fourths can bowl a bit

Oscar Turner has five wickets at 2.80.  Dave Monaghan has four wickets at 3.00.  Oliver Clarke has five wickets at 7.60.  These are not the bowling averages from the Chatswood Under-9s. 

Enjoying the unseasonally wet start to the season, and a couple of distinctly dodgy tracks, Gordon’s Fourth Grade have so far disposed of their opponents for scores of 51 and 85.  The batting is less convincing – so far, no one has passed 24 – but, truly, when you’re chasing 51 and 85, how good does it need to be?  Gordon has jumped to an early lead in the competition with two bonus-point wins from as many starts.

We are, though, a bit concerned about the form of spinner Prahlad Iyer.  Dropped from Thirds after one game, he produced the hopelessly expensive figures of 2-14 against Mosman on Saturday.  Better sharpen up, son.  There’s such a place as Fifth Grade, you know.

Five Things We Learned from Round 4

All points are equal, but some are more equal than others

In cricket, there’s no point complaining about rain: it happens, and there’s nothing to do about it.  Saturday’s rain was strong, intermittent and localised – the kind that causes, not bad luck exactly, but an unequal distribution of opportunity in a cricket competition.  In First Grade, only two results were possible.  At Allan Border, Mosman collapsed from 64 without loss to 130 all out, after which Sydney University’s sprint for a bonus point almost ended in disaster.  Damien Mortimer batted beautifully for 61, but wickets fell around him and if Ben Joy’s late swipe had been safely held, the Whales would have snatched an upset win.  In the event, Charlie Cassell smashed a ball from Luke Shelton out of the ground, and the Students staggered away with seven points.  Sutherland was in a spot of early trouble at Blacktown, losing its first three wickets with only two runs on the board, but dominated the rest of the game.  Jarryd Biviano (65) and James Arnold (77 not out) restored equilibrium with a partnership of 91, and some furious late hitting by Andrew Ritchie lifted the Sharks to 8 for 246.  Blacktown reached 3 for 122 in reply, before Tushaar Garg (4-21) cut short the contest.

Elsewhere, though, there were reminders that competition points are like runs: it isn’t how you get them, it’s how many.  So North Sydney, who reached 177 without loss at Pratten Park, walked away with as many points (one) as Campbelltown-Camden, routed for 99 at Old Kings.  Randwick-Petersham, who raced to 2 for 157, received the same point that Northern District did when their game was washed out.  It’s said that this kind of thing evens out in the long run.  It doesn’t, but if you can believe it, it hurts a little less.

Ben Joy has devised a new kind of hat trick

Under the conventional definition, a hat trick occurs when a bowler takes three wickets with successive balls in the same match.  But there’s a secondary definition in the dictionary: “when someone is successful at achieving something three times”.  Sydney University’s opening bowler, Ben Joy, has completed a remarkable but somewhat confusing hat trick – a hat trick of missed hat tricks.  Against Gordon in Round Two, he removed Matthew Wright lbw, then bowled Ryan Meppem first ball, only for Jackson Saggers to survive the next ball.  Against Easts he bowled Harry Byrnes Howe and trapped Baxter Holt lbw first ball, but Tim Armstrong successfully negotiated the hat trick delivery.  Then in Round Four, he removed Ashley Doolan and Dean Crawford with successive balls, but not Hayden Brown.  He does have a Premier Cricket hat trick to his name, in Second Grade against Easts back in 2012-13, to go with one he took back in the days when he was allowed to terrorise Metro Cup batsmen.  For the time being, though, the message to batsmen is: if you come in immediately after Joy has taken a wicket, you’re in trouble.  But if you come in after he’s just taken two wickets, you’re probably OK.

Aaron Bird has devised a new kind of hat trick

Still on hat tricks, and Bankstown’s Aaron Bird has come up with one that’s even more unusual than Ben Joy’s.  Bird, a highly experienced fast-medium bowler who has represented NSW, these days saves himself for Sundays and the Harry Solomons Little Bash.  Last Sunday, he collected the first hat-trick of his Premier Cricket career, in the T20 game against Hawkesbury.  Which doesn’t sound very unusual, except that not one of the batsmen he dismissed was out first ball.  With the last ball of his second over, Bird removed Patrick Moore, who was caught for 20.  Ben Taylor bowled the next over and when Bird took the ball for the last over of the innings, Abdul Kherkhah was on strike, having faced three deliveries from Taylor.  Kherkhah skied a catch to Liam Marshall, and the batsmen changed ends, leaving Mohammad Shinwari to face his fourth delivery – which he missed.  Hawkesbury managed only 85, Bankstown romped to a comfortable win, and we promise to stop talking about hat tricks for a while.

Jack James may have been unlucky

Spare a thought for UTS North Sydney’s Jack James, who batted beautifully for 98 at Pratten Park, only to lose the chance of his second First Grade century when rain ended play.  James and Tim Jagot put together an unbroken opening stand of 177 from 37 overs, and James got off to a very bright start, twice square driving Wests seamer Michael Tudehope for 4.  He’s particularly strong through the off side on the back foot, but played strokes all round the wicket: he flicked Tudehope to the fence at fine leg, pulled powerfully when leg-spinner Tom Brooks dropped short and swept effectively.  James was on 96 when Josh Clarke delivered the last ball of the 37th over of the innings; he clattered it forward of point, only for the ball to be intercepted just before the boundary.  At which point the umpires took the players from the field, not to return.  The Bears will feel aggrieved that nothing came of their dominant position: James may well be wishing that the game had gone on for just one more over.

There’s a bit in the deck at Graham

For as long as there has been Grade cricket, there have been Grade captains who have tried to motivate their teams, after dismal batting performances, with variations on the theme of “It’s runs on the board that counts” or “Scoreboard pressure!” or “Let’s make them work for it” or “We got ‘em, they have to get ‘em”.  Usually these speeches are followed by crushing, seven-wicket thrashings, but once in a while things turn out differently.  It isn’t clear what Manly Fourth Grade captain Adam Gummer told his side after it had crashed to 51 all out against Gordon but, whatever it was, it worked.  Manly had batted for less than 27 overs, crumbling to Oscar Turner (3-4) and Oliver Clarke (3-11), but Gordon did little better.  James Waddington started the collapse, grabbing a wicket with his first delivery in Grade cricket.  The second wicket pair added 16 runs, but then three wickets fell before the next run was scored.  Matthew Brown, in his first match for Gordon, played positively for 22, but wickets continued to fall around him.  When the sixth wicket fell at 34, Manly was well in the game, and after Andrew Boulton grabbed two quick wickets, Gordon’s last pair still needed seven runs for the win.  In the end, Gordon fell over the line, but Manly’s young side learned a few important lessons about never giving up.  As for Gordon, they lost nine wickets in 14 overs, five of their batsmen scored ducks, and they walked away with a bonus point.  It’s a weird game.

Five Things We Learned from Round 3

Damien Mortimer is back in the groove

Over the past five seasons, Sydney University’s Damien Mortimer has been one of the most consistent batsmen in First Grade, usually ending up with somewhere around a thousand runs to his name.  He had a minor blip in form last season, despite (or possibly because of) a successful off-season in Ireland, but normal service has now been resumed.  A former Australian under-19 captain, the compact right-hander always looks a high-class player, but has played less senior representative cricket than he might have, partly because although he passes fifty more often than anyone else, he has converted only eight of them into First Grade hundreds.  The most recent came on the first day of Round Three, a polished 122 against Easts at University Oval.   His innings showed all the hallmarks of the best of his batting – patience, impenetrable defence and sweet timing through the off side – besides which he set a new Premier Cricket record for Adjusting the Batting Gloves Between Deliveries.  He treated Marcus Attallah brutally in the off-spinner’s first spell.  Mortimer was eventually dismissed when he played for turn to a delivery from Attallah that skidded straight through, and a fine edge was held by keeper Harry Byrnes Howe.  Byrnes Howe isn’t the tidiest-looking keeper on the circuit: he wears his shin pads under his pants and his shirts are so large that you suspect that both Byrnes and Howe are hiding in there somewhere.  Byrnes Howe also opened the Easts innings, wearing his batting pads in the more conventional outside-the-trouser fashion, though he failed to get them or anything else behind a delivery from Ben Joy that nipped back and cartwheeled the off stump while the batsman shouldered arms.  Joy then trapped Baxter Holt in front first ball to reduce Easts to 3-35, at which point the target of 330 looked well out of reach.  There was a brief flurry from Tim Armstrong, who batted like a man with a train to catch, unfurling a series of meaty drives and slashes before deciding to attempt a defensive shot, and edging it.  Once Armstrong was dismissed, there were only two possible winners, and one of them was the rain which, as it happened, had the last word.

Tushaar Garg has settled in

Tushaar Garg is not your everyday opening bowler.  For one thing, he’s a former GPS public speaking champion, which means that there are only four or five Grade batsmen who have any chance of understanding his chat.  He’s also a law student and the founder of a not-for-profit organisation whose name - Ethical Education - invokes two concepts that are completely unfamiliar to the great majority of new ball bowlers.   Anyway, after eight seasons with Bankstown, Garg moved to Sutherland this season, filling a Tom Pinson shaped hole in the pace attack.  Being a reflective sort of character, he must have questioned the wisdom of the move after the first two matches of the season, in which his bowling was slaughtered mercilessly.  Gabriel Joseph and Nick Bertus plundered 71 runs from his 10 overs against Parramatta, after which he managed only one for 77 from 13 against his former club.  But Sutherland, and Garg, persisted, and they were rewarded with a remarkable spell of 6-35 against Campbelltown-Camden.  The Ghosts’ openers actually knocked up 35 runs in the first half hour, before Garg had Jayden Zahra-Smith caught at cover (Zahra-Smith has replaced Jaydyn Simmons in the side, complying with the competition By-Law that requires Campbelltown to field at least one Jayden or Jaydyn in every round).  That triggered a collapse in which five wickets fell for 13 runs.  Garg conceded 14 runs from his first three overs; then he grabbed 4 for 10 in 20 balls, including two with successive deliveries in his sixth over.  His pace isn’t alarming, but he bowled a very tidy off-stump line, found some awkward bounce, and did enough off the seam to trouble all the batsmen – a highly appropriate method for Glenn McGrath Oval.  He ended the innings with career-best figures and set up six points for Sutherland on the opening day of the game. 

SOK could break a few records this season

In case you’re wondering, the record for most wickets in a First Grade season by a Manly-Warringah player is 67.  Mark Cameron did that.  The record for most wickets in a First Grade season by a Manly-Warringah left-arm finger spinner who had previously represented NSW is the 66 Mike Pawley piled up in Manly’s premiership season of 1973-74.  Both numbers are under serious threat this season, depending on how deeply Steve O’Keefe’s T20 commitments impact upon his club commitments.  O’Keefe routed St George in the opening game, taking 6-36; in Round Two, he helped Manly to defend a sub-total of 142 by grabbing 5-16 from only eight overs.  There wasn’t a great deal of deceptive flight on show, as O’Keefe pushed the ball through quickly on a flat trajectory, but he has mastered the art of bowling round the wicket and straightening the ball just enough to find the outside edge – the result of which was that Penrith’s batsmen presented Cameron Merchant with three catches at slip.  In an interview he gave during the week, O’Keefe explained that he knows “how to manage my body to bowl 30 overs a day.  I’m glad my performances have shown that.”  Except, actually, they haven’t – he needed to bowl only 48 balls against Penrith.  Penrith would have been ecstatic if they’d stayed out there long enough to make him bowl 30 overs.  There may be longer spells ahead, but already O’Keefe has 13 wickets at an average of 7.  Quite apart from breaking records, he could very well propel Manly back into playing in the finals.

Michael Sullivan made a memorable start

Michael Sullivan played for eight seasons, and exactly 100 games, for Parramatta before he was called up to make his First Grade debut against Fairfield-Liverpool.  In truth, he had never mounted a very compelling case for earlier promotion: while he has turned out 33 times in Second Grade, the right-arm seamer managed only 34 wickets in those appearances.  He was graded in Seconds this season, after some penetrative spells in Thirds last year, but went wicketless in Round One.  In Round Two, though he celebrated his 100th game for his club by taking his first five-wicket haul – 5-69 against a UTS North Sydney team that hammered every other bowler.  That earned him a call-up to Firsts, where he made an instant impact, removing Yuvraj Sharma and Jaydyn Simmons in his opening spell.  He returned later in the day to wrap up the innings, finishing with the impressive figures of 5-33.  Rain cut short what would have been an interesting chase on the second day, but that wouldn’t have taken too much of the gloss from Sullivan’s debut.  Right now, he leads the bowling averages in the First Grade competition, 0.31 runs ahead of Steve O’Keefe.

St George bats deep in Seconds

For about an hour and a half, things were looking so good for the Blacktown Mounties.  Matt Day, their experienced Second Grade captain, had a careful look at the Harold Fraser pitch and decided it was lively enough to invite St George to bat.  His judgment was vindicated when the Saints collapsed to 5 for 56, with the sixth wicket falling only 16 runs later.  That brought together Max Farmer, a 17 year old wicket-keeper playing his second innings in Grade cricket, and Jono Craig-Dobson, a useful-ish lower order batsman whose highest score in 116 Premier Cricket matches was a 69 in Fourths.  That unlikely pair not only set about repairing the innings, but went on to rewrite the St George record book, adding 198 runs for the seventh wicket.  Farmer showed exceptional patience, batting for four and a half hours for his 105 and reaching his century with a neat cut past cover for three.  Craig-Dobson fell within a single stroke of his own maiden hundred, falling for 94 from 182 deliveries.  St George recovered to reach 297 and looked set to claim the points before rain intervened.  Farmer, a Maitland product, played with a level of maturity that suggests he could be a very interesting prospect.

Five Things We Learned from Round 2

Too many Ollies are never enough

What a big week for Cam Merchant, who celebrated (though possibly not in this order) not only an excellent innings of 89 against St George, full of deft cuts and glides, but also the arrival of his first child with Jules Robinson.  Five Things isn’t much of a follower of reality TV, watching – as a sort of professional duty – only just enough to keep up to date with the activities of the Manly Warringah Cricket Club.  But the story, as we understand it, is this.  Cam and Jules (Julie?  Julia?  Juliet?  anyway) met on Married at First Sight where, not grasping the format at all, they forgot to cheat on each other with a personal trainer/model before embarking on an alcohol-and-Twitter-fuelled rampage, but actually liked each other, and then got married at second sight.  Now, in a move that made the Daily Mail forget all about Donald Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis for a day or two, they have welcomed a son, Ollie.  And hearty congratulations to them.  But, Ollie?  We refuse to believe it’s a coincidence that the name was chosen in the week when Manly’s Ollie Davies followed his brutal Round One century with a run-a-ball 91 against St George.  This kind of tribute in entirely in keeping with the spirit of Grade cricket.  Although it’s sobering to think that had one of Merchant’s other team-mates been fit and in form, the kid might have been called Ahillen.  Bullet dodged.

The Students need a deep bench

Sydney University began its match against Gordon already missing Hayden Kerr, Devlin Malone (both injured) and Will Masojada (stranded in South Africa) and its stocks fell even further on the second day when Nick Larkin flew to Adelaide with the NSW squad and Liam Robertson injured his knee in the warm-up.  Yet the Students still had enough depth to account for a Gordon side depleted by several off-season departures.  Larkin’s 83 was the backbone of University’s 286, the one surprise about the innings being that he didn’t press on to the kind of massive score he so often accumulates when in control.  He received two short balls outside off in succession from Ash Premkumar; the first kept alarmingly low, but the second lifted, and Larkin chopped it onto his stumps.  You could argue that University should have posted a taller score after reaching 2 for 159, but Gordon’s spinners bowled with skill and persistence to keep their side in the game.  Gordon was well in the game on the second day, reaching 2 for 91 with Tym Crawford driving cleanly and confidently.  But Ben Joy and Dugald Holloway both defied the lifeless pitch to take wickets in clusters, and University’s new recruit, Nivethan Radhakrishnan, dismissed two batsmen with his right arm and one with his left.  For Gordon, left-hander Dylan Hunter delayed the inevitable with a fighting half-century.   It was a workmanlike win for the Students, who now could really use a week with no more injuries.

Michael Tudehope may have been the MVP

He wasn’t, of course – that was Matt Gilkes from University of NSW, who smashed his sixth First Grade hundred and carried it on to his first double hundred, a round 200 against Western Suburbs from only 203 balls.  Ten sixes, fifteen fours.  Brutal, and brilliant.  And yet (through no fault of his), not match-winning.  Because David Phillips isn’t a road, it’s a four-lane highway, and when the ball goes soft – say, around the fifth over – bowling becomes a cruel and unforgiving task.  The Bees’ bowlers found it difficult to exert any pressure on the second day, and Wests chased down their target of 368 with three wickets and a handful of deliveries to spare.  Nick Cutler’s 125 was excellent in the chase, and Josh Clarke (50), James Psarakis (58) and Joel Abraham (57) all made important contributions.  But you can make a cogent argument that the player who did most to win the game for Wests was seamer Michael Tudehope, who toiled through 22 overs on the first day to return the decidedly unglamorous analysis of one for 60.  In a match when 760 runs were scored at a rate of 4.65 an over, the gangly right-armer operated at an economy rate of 2.72.  We don’t usually think of economy rate as mattering much in two-day games, but if Tudehope had conceded runs at the same rate as the rest of the bowlers in the game, Wests would have had another 40-odd runs to chase, and that may have made all the difference.

Brock Larance enjoyed the week

The Grade Cricketer has always insisted that the most enjoyable feeling in cricket is scoring a hundred in a losing side.  If there’s a bowler’s equivalent, then Campbelltown-Camden’s indigenous all-rounder Brock Larance hit the jackpot last weekend.  Although the Ghosts fell 12 agonising runs short of Fairfield-Liverpool’s 256 in First Grade, Larance was outstanding, picking up 5-67 with his off-breaks, a haul that included State representatives Arjun Nair and Param Uppal as well as grizzled veteran Jarrad Burke.  On Sunday, Bankstown edged out the Ghosts in the first round of the Harry Solomons Little Bash, but Larance had another day to remember, dismissing Jake Cormack, Daniel Nicotra and Aaron Bird with successive deliveries.  The hat-trick ball was actually a low full toss, which a surprised Bird chipped straight back to the equally surprised bowler, who needed a couple of grabs to complete the catch.  Larance is not yet 19, but has already had a rather meandering journey along the cricket pathways: Campbelltown is his third Premier Club (he had Green Shield stints with Randwick-Petersham and Fairfield-Liverpool), and he has also played in Dubbo and Port Macquarie, toured England with the Australian Aboriginals and been a fixture in the NSW Country junior representative teams.  He made a tentative start to his First Grade career last season, but now looks set to make an impact.

NDs selectors are not easy to impress

And so to Second Grade, where Northern District Ranger Corey Miller hammered 262 against Hawkesbury from only 248 balls in just 259 minutes.  Some clubs might have responded to that performance by picking Miller in the T20 match on the next weekend but no, at NDs, promotions need to be earned.  And we do hear that Miller was a bit slow moving from 240 to 250.  Anyway, for those fascinated by Second Grade records (and who isn’t?) Miller’s innings was the highest at that level for NDs (beating 237 by the left-handed opener, Angus Farncomb) and the fifth-highest in Seconds for any club.  The record is still 278 not out, set in October 1904 by North Sydney’s ABS White against Manly (having dismissed Manly for 94, North Sydney then ran up the pointlessly massive total of 8 for 698, 21 of which came from the bat of future Test batsman Charles Macartney).  White, whose given names were Alfred Becher Stewart, was always known by his nickname, “Stud”, the origins of which thankfully remain obscure.  It may be some consolation to Miller to know that White made his first-class debut for New South Wales within twelve months of heaping misery on the Manly Twos. 

Five Things We Learned from Round 1

Dan Smith refuses to get old

For a time on Saturday, it looked as though the highlight of Sydney’s performance against Sydney University would be the debut of Kain Anderson, the teenaged Newcastle off-spinner.  But by the end of the day, the stand-out effort had come from a player who made his first appearance in First Grade (in March 1997) several years before Anderson’s parents even started getting to know each other (though this is, we admit, a guess).  Dan Smith came to the crease with the Tigers chasing a moderate target of 227, but in trouble after Ben Joy knocked the top off the innings with a lively opening spell.  He was a little tentative early on: footwork was never really his strongest point, and now he doesn’t bother with it much at all, preferring simply to lean his weight slightly forward or slightly back.  But his eye remains keen, and he strikes the ball almost as cleanly as ever.  His partnership with Ben Manenti took Sydney from 4 for 64 to 5 for 161, and Smith remained there until the end, unbeaten on 91 from 112, including three beefy sixes.  Anderson caught the eye with his control, variety and turn, and Ben Manenti bowled neatly and hit hard.  There were some promising signs for University (who missed the injured pair of Hayden Kerr and Devlin Malone): Charlie Dummer hit a bright half-century, his first in Firsts; Tim Cummins showed again why he’s among the best keeper-batsmen in the competition; and Ben Joy found awkward bounce that eluded the other quick bowlers.

It’s still a batsman’s game

In ten matches on Saturday, almost 5000 runs were scored while bowlers picked up only 137 of the 200 possible wickets, paying just over 35 runs for every one they took.  Those figures would have been even more one-sided if Mosman hadn’t surrendered its last eight wickets for 34 runs to last year’s Manly Second Grade attack.  We saw the first eight hundreds of the season as well as five scores in the 90s.  Parramatta’s Jacob Workman leaked 85 runs from 10 overs, and still ended up on the winning side.  It’s a good time of year to be a batsman.

Zeeshaan Ahmed looks interesting

Bankstown has developed a very interesting prospect in opening batsman Zeeshaan Ahmed, who fell three runs short of a maiden century in only his fifth First Grade innings on Saturday.  Ahmed has progressed through the junior ranks at Bankstown, playing Green Shield for three seasons, and turned out for NSW Metropolitan Under-19s last season, averaging a tick above fifty in the interstate carnival.  He turned the match against University of NSW into a one-sided affair by blasting 97 from only 77 balls as Bankstown ran down its modest target with 22.2 overs to spare.  On his way up through the grades, Ahmed showed an ability to bat for long periods of time, but he can also hit with power – he cleared the fence five times on Saturday.  One to watch.

Axel Cahlin enjoys a change of scenery

Axel Cahlin had been part of the furniture at Gordon for so long – he played eight years with the Stags – that it’s something of a surprise to realise that he’s still only 22.  His last two seasons in First Grade have been… OK, but without quite fulfilling the promise of his early years in the top grade.  Now he’s moved up the Pacific Highway to Waitara, and celebrated his first innings as a Northern District Ranger with an impressive century against Campbelltown-Camden.  His 122 came from 133 balls, with ten fours and a six, and helped NDs to a very defendable total of 6 for 267.  George Furrer and Chad Soper pegged back the Ghosts’ chase, despite Ben Patterson’s rapid 93.

Don’t expect much grass at Fairfield

Fairfield-Liverpool has assembled a remodeled side this year, led by new recruit Jarrad Burke, the 37 year old all-rounder who now has almost enough clubs for a few rounds at The Lakes.  Burke joins Param Uppal and Arjun Nair, giving the Lions three spinners who have represented NSW (Burke’s three appearances coming in the prehistoric T20 competition, when it was played between State teams).  Quick bowlers hoping for plenty of grass on the deck at Don Dawson Oval may well be disappointed this year.  Predictably, Burke was the pick of the attack against Randwick-Petersham, allowing only 31 runs from his ten overs.  His spell gave Fairfield a measure of control, despite Anthony Sams’ quickfire 107, before Daya Singh boosted his side with some clean striking at the back end of the innings, lashing 39 from only 16 deliveries.  Singh and the impressive Caelan Malady then each grabbed an early wicket, after which the chase was beyond Fairfield’s reach.  And there was time for Scott Coyte to pick up a wicket in his first appearance for Randwick-Petersham since March 2012.