Five Things We Learned from Round 8

The Students are creeping up

After making an uncharacteristically slow start to the season, Sydney University has now crept up into fourth spot on the First Grade ladder, following a comfortable bonus-point win over the Blacktown Mounties.  Blacktown was never really in the contest: Caelan Malladay, Dugald Holloway and Kieran Tate knocked the top off the innings, after which Devlin Malone (4-32) continued his excellent recent form.  Ryan McElduff then sealed the bonus-point win with a positive, unbeaten innings of 59, while Liam Robertson’s rapid 21 not out included two fours and two sixes.  Except for Northern District and Mosman, who have broken clear at the top (but play each other next week), the competition ladder is now seriously congested, with only a single point separating Sydney University in fourth place and St George on seventh.

Some things change, some stay the same

It was, if we’re honest, an odd round of matches.  What with the Big Bash hoovering up increasing numbers of reserves, and sides missing Covid-affected players, there were plenty of weaker sides on the field and an unusual high number of debutants in First Grade.  Manly fielded its third First Grade wicket-keeper in as many games, which isn’t something you see all that often, and both wicket-keepers in the Penrith-Northern District match were making their debuts.  But some things stayed the same, by which we mean that Northern District had another big win.  Penrith had the worse of rain-affected conditions at Howell Oval, and once Ross Pawson and Lachlan Fisher reduced them to 4 for 7, there was no way back into the game.  Penrith was contained to 97 in 30 overs, after which Axel Cahlin and Scott Rodgie made ridiculously short work of the Duckworth-Lewis target.  Most seasons, a team with 50 points reaches the finals: Northern District has passed that number with seven games to go.

Tom Pinson bats now

Over the years, Sutherland’s tall opening bowler has been consistently impressive with the ball in his hand and… well, not quite so impressive with the bat.  Before this season, he had played 163 Premier Cricket matches and his one half-century (six years ago in Second Grade) looked like an aberration.  Last season he scored precisely zero runs for Sutherland (although, to be fair, he batted only twice), and his career First Grade average has hovered around ten.  It was a surprise when he began this season with a hard-hitting 42 not out against University of NSW but, as it turns out, it was no fluke.  He then clubbed 37 not out against Mosman and (promoted to number eight) 43 against Randwick-Petersham.  On Saturday, he went to the crease with Sutherland in deep trouble at 6-101, chasing Wests’ 208.  Wests’ spinners (Josh Clarke, Tom Brooks and Javed Ahmadi) had all bowled too well for the Sharks’ middle order, and with 19.3 overs remaining, Sutherland still needed 108 runs.  Pinson’s tactics weren’t entirely orthodox: for quite a while, he either blocked or slogged, so that his first scoring shots were 4, 6, 4 and 4, with plenty of dots in between.  His method has the virtue of simplicity: if it’s up, he drives, if it’s even slightly short, he pulls, and the rest he blocks.  With Andrew Deitz giving sensible support, Pinson whacked 59 from 61 balls, and although he was dismissed within sight of the target, Andrew Ritchie hit the winning boundary with four balls remaining.  If you exclude his one T20 innings, this season Pinson has 190 runs at 63.33, the kind of performance that in other sports would call for a stewards’ inquiry.

Gladys has a strange relationship with Sutherland

Close readers of Five Things will appreciate that the Sutherland club has a strange relationship with the Gladys Berejiklian Sudden and Dramatic Collapse of the Week Award.  Some weeks the Sharks’ bowlers trigger the best collapse, and some weeks their batsmen contribute it, but somehow or other they’re always there or thereabouts.  There were hot contenders for this week’s award in the First Grade match between Fairfield-Liverpool and Randwick-Petersham, in which both sides lost 3 for 0 at the top of the order.  R-Ps reached 1-19 before losing Cam Hawkins, Anthony Sams and Riley Ayre without adding a run, but Fairfield’s collapse was superior.  They were 11 without loss before Adam Semple struck, removing Amritpal Singh, Yuvraj Sharma and Luke Ohrynowsky in successive balls to complete a hat-trick.  After allowing a wide and a single, Semple then bowled Awad Naqvi, so that Fairfield had lost four wickets for only two runs.  Semple’s 6-37 (the best return in the First grade competition so far this season) helped Randwick to defend its modest total of 101.

That was good, but not quite as good as Sutherland’s Thirds, who appeared to be cruising to victory against Wests, reaching 105 without loss (and then 1-118) chasing a mere 120.  And then, something distinctly odd happened, and bowlers who had seemed tame a few minutes earlier suddenly turned deadly.  Bilal Khan sliced through the batting so decisively that five wickets crashed for only two runs in the space of a couple of overs before Sutherland fell over the line for a Winning Gladys.

The Kids Are Alright

It’s that time again, when a bunch of kids run around on top-grade ovals and try to figure out whether Premier Cricket is for them – a decision that involves, not only an assessment of talent and aptitude, but a careful consideration of exactly how many summers they feel like squandering in pursuit of a Third Grade average of 23.  Thankfully, if this year’s Green Shield is any guide, there are still plenty of talented young men willing to submit to that bargain.  It wasn’t that tough a choice for St George’s Sam Konstas, who won’t be seen much longer in Thirds.  Although he didn’t start for his new club (he was at Easts last year) until Round 6, he already has nearly 600 runs for the season, in Thirds, Seconds, PGs and Green Shield.  Yesterday, his 52 helped St George to overhaul Campbelltown’s 192, to which the highly consistent Riley Kingsell contributed 105.  Lachlan Ritchie’s 117 not out against University of NSW was Sutherland’s first hundred in the competition for eight years.  Best of the bowlers in the last two rounds have been Campbelltown’s Lachlan Fitzpatrick (who destroyed University of NSW with 6-8 and a hat trick) and Sydney University’s Reehan Shyamsundar, who ran through Wests to take 6-20.

Five Things We Learned from Round 7

Oli Zannino possibly feels like a Tooheys

There was a remarkable match at North Sydney Oval, where Justin Avendano crunched his second hundred within a week, yet ended up on the losing side.  The ground is in great shape – flat pitch, fast outfield – but the pitch was set on the edge of the square, which created one unreasonably short boundary and made life particularly uncomfortable for the bowlers.  Brent Atherton and Avendano got the Bears away to a rapid start, Mac Jenkins batted brightly for fifty, and the innings was topped off by James Aitken, who smashed the first ball he faced over the short boundary despite looking as though he had accidentally wandered in from a nearby Fathers v Sons match.  In the end, a target of 302 was probably no more than par, but it looked better than that when Matt Alexander reduced the Students to 2-12.  Jordan Gauci and Liam Robertson dragged their side back into the contest with a stand of 130.  Robertson drove imperiously on his way to 89 from 67, continually teasing the long-off fieldsman by punching the ball just out of reach.  But the match swung back in North Sydney’s favour when Jack James removed both Gauci and Robertson in quick succession.  Ryan McElduff, previously short on runs this season, immediately found touch and received good support from Charles Litchfield and Dugald Holloway.  But Holloway was given run out (apparently on the theory that if it’s a direct hit, it must be out) and University still needed 53 from six overs.  The new batsman, keeper Oli Zannino, was only making his First Grade debut because the Cummins brothers aren’t very particular about who they have dinner with, and he had no form at all with the bat – over the last season and a half, he averages ten in Seconds.  And yet he blasted his side home, thumping 33 from 16 balls.  Twice in an over he heaved Sam Alexander over the long boundary, and with three needed to win, he cracked the cleanest of pull shots over mid-wicket from Matt Alexander.  He’s way too young to remember this, of course, and so are you, but in about 1975 there was a very successful TV advertisement for Tooheys, in which the New South Wales keeper, Steve Rixon, goes in last and needs five to win from the last ball.  Dennis Lillee drops one short, and you can guess the rest.  As the jingle goes: “How do you feel when the ball leaves the field and clears the pickets on the way?”

It’s a pretty happy Christmas for Northern District

There was nothing very dramatic about Northern District’s win over Gordon on Saturday.  The Rangers’ pace attack – Ross Pawson, Lachlan Fisher, Scott Rodgie and Chad Soper – suffocated Gordon’s batting and then, after the loss of two early wickets, Corey Miller and Lachlan Shaw added 134 to put the result beyond doubt.  It was the kind of clinical, well-organised cricket that has given NDs seven wins from as many games, and a clear lead in the competition at the Christmas break.  Interestingly, there’s only one Rangers batsman (Scott Rodgie) in the top 35 run-scorers in the competition and only two bowlers (Pawson and Rodgie again) in the top 35 wicket-takers.  But they have depth, everyone does his job and they play as a team.  They may need to play a little differently when the two-day games start – but so will everyone else, and by then NDs should have a finals berth well and truly secured.

Mark Stoneman is back, and he appears to be in reasonable nick

As England’s average opening partnership in Tests this year is 8.3 (or something – we made that last bit up), there was added interest to the game at Waverley Oval, where two England openers of the recent past faced up against each other.  The win, by TKO, went to St George’s Mark Stoneman, who lashed 150 from only 131 balls.  Sam Robson hardly failed, reaching 47 for Easts, but it was Stoneman’s innings that defined the game.  Of course, he did have the advantage of facing Robson’s bowling, which he twice launched over the fence.  Stoneman and Luke Bartier shared a third-wicket stand of 212 in 38 overs, by which time the game was pretty much out of reach for Easts.  They did put up a spirited reply, but no-one made the big score that might have made the contest closer.

There’s a new Gladys in town

And so we head to Fourth Grade, where competition for the Gladys Berejiklian Sudden and Unexpected Collapse of the Week Award is fierce.  There was a highly commendable bid by the Gordon Fourths who, chasing Northern District’s 140, reached 1-29 before crashing to 55 all out, losing their last five wickets in 13 balls without adding a single run.  That was good, but not quite as good as Randwick-Petersham’s effort against Sutherland.  Batting first, RPs added 12 runs without any alarms before Joshua Wiseman, playing his first game in Fourth Grade, removed Ben Chaplin, Chaik Hathurusinghe and Joshua Bird to complete a hat-trick.  Then Tom Vandermaal struck twice, and RPs had lost 5-12.  But what makes this one special is that it was that rarest of all beasts, the Winning Gladys.  Because RPs scrambled together 119, and then dismissed Sutherland for just 111, with the evergreen Nigil Singh snaring 4-26. 

The Green Shield is on

This season’s Green Shield season is underway, and in the second round, Hayden McCarthy of University of NSW enjoyed what The Grade Cricketer would regard as the ultimate success available to a cricketer below circuiting age: 105 not out and 4-34, in a team that lost.  McCarthy’s heroics were overshadowed by Penrith’s opener Leo Astill, who slaughtered an extraordinary 162 from 112 balls, which included 12 sixes and 10 fours.  Astill, who hit hard and, mostly straight, doubles up as Penrith’s Fifth Grade wicket-keeper and, by coincidence, he had played McCarthy in Fifths the day before.  On that occasion, McCarthy bowled him for 29 in a game the Bees won.  It’s fair to say that it didn’t take Astill long to get his revenge.  Play their cards right, and these two could be trying to Alpha each other for years to come.

Five Things We Learned from Round 6

Mosman is having a moment

Approaching the halfway point in the season, it’s time to acknowledge that Mosman is travelling exceptionally well.  The Whales are unbeaten in First Grade, sitting in second place behind Northern District; have reached the conference semi-finals in the Little Bash; and have won six from six in Seconds.  If you really wanted to quibble, you might point out that four of Mosman’s five wins have been against teams in the bottom half of the competition table, but that overlooks the possibility that those sides may be in the bottom half of the competition precisely because they have played Mosman.  The key to the team’s success has been its firepower with the bat; Peter Forrest has been in rich form, as have Lachlan Hearne and Anglo-Australian wicket-keeper Jordan Cox.  But against North Sydney on Saturday, Hearne went lbw first ball, Forrest wasn’t playing, and Cox made only four.  Even so, the Whales made light work of a target of 241, with Harry Dalton hitting 76 and Matt (The Chef) Moran launching three sixes in his unbeaten innings of 63.  Again, if you were looking to find fault, you could argue that Mosman’s seam-based attack is best suited to the white-ball game; but Dean Crawford, Jake Turner, Elijah Eales and Moran have been so consistent and efficient that Saturday’s game was the first time this season that Mosman has needed to chase more than 200.  Interestingly, Mosman has chased in every game so far, and hasn’t lost more than five wickets on any occasion, so its quotient is a ridiculous 2.6177.  Mosman hasn’t reached the First Grade finals for eight seasons – that drought may be about to break.

Ethan Jamieson is developing nicely, if not quite how we expected

We’ve been watching Ethan Jamieson for five years now, since he was a Green Shield player for Sydney University, and it’s no surprise that he’s now emerging as a very handy First Grader.  What is slightly surprising is how he’s doing it.  He’s always looked the part as a neat, well-organised, wristy left-handed batsman, but nothing in his past few seasons (with St George and now University of NSW) gave anyone reason to think that his bowling would become a serious weapon.  Nonetheless, his leg-breaks have become an essential part of the Bees’ attack, and he had an exceptional weekend, snaring 3-30 against Manly and 3-9 against Sydney – which he backed up with the bat, hitting 56 and 67.  His bowling may still be a work in progress (he seems to vary genuine wrist-spun leg-breaks with off-breaks from the front of the hand), but he’s accurate and thoughtful, and beat Manly’s Elliott Herd with a classic leg-spinner that clipped the top of off stump.  On Sunday, he went to the crease with the Bees in trouble at 2-11, and turned the chase into a stroll with an authoritative 67 from 48.  He reached his fifty by lofting Kain Anderson over long-on for six, then blasted the next delivery straight down the ground for six more.  Somewhere in the last month, Jamieson has changed from young and promising into a key member of the Bees’ side.

We have some finalists

The surprising thing about the last preliminary round of the Harry Solomons Little Bash is how unsurprising it was.  On the whole, higher-placed teams beat lower-placed teams, and results turned out more or less as you’d have expected.  Perhaps Northern District, unbeaten in First Grade, might have been favoured to beat Sydney University at home, especially after containing the Students to 8-136.  The Rangers reached 2-55, with Scott Rodgie in ominous touch, before Devlin Malone turned the game on its head with a brilliant four-over spell of 3-9. Liam Robertson picked up important wickets, Kieran Tate bowled a nerveless final over, and the three-run victory kept University at the top of the Thunder conference.  Blacktown, meanwhile, accounted for Hawkesbury and so leap-frogged Northern District to claim a place in the top four.  In the Sixers Conference, Lachlan Hearne’s 80 helped Mosman to a big win over Manly, which opened the door for University of NSW.  The Bees strangled Sydney’s batsmen with spin, then chased confidently – they’ll now take a place in the conference semi-finals, on 9 January.

She may not be running for Warringah, but Gladys gets around

Possibly hoping to be co-opted by the Prime Minister into some ill-advised, short-lived venture, sides all over Sydney competed furiously to win the Gladys Berejiklian Sudden and Total Collapse of the Week award.  Hawkesbury’s Thirds were 4-121 chasing Sydney University’s 243, but then lost six for 15, experienced seamer Lewis McMahon causing most of the damage with 6-16.  In the Little Bash, Easts attempted the rare Split Gladys, losing 3-0 at the top of its innings and 4-1 at the end, but spoiled things by scoring a few runs in the middle.  But the classic Gladys is an unforeseen collapse from a position of absolute strength, and no-one did that better than Easts’ Thirds.  Chasing Parramatta’s 194, Easts cruised to 2 for 162, with Jonah Trope cracking 86.  With only 32 runs needed, plenty of time and wickets in hand… enter Gladys.  Parramatta captain, Michael Ho, tried seven other bowlers before taking the ball himself, and his leg-breaks triggered a remarkable collapse in which eight wickets tumbled for 25 runs.  Parramatta somehow won by seven runs, Ho walked off with 8-40, and Easts walked away with this week’s Gladys.

Sometimes, it’s not just about the cricket

A few weeks ago, Archer Gray’s only problem was working out how to succeed as a sixteen year-old leg-spinner in Second Grade.  He was handling that pretty well, as it turns out: having been lifted straight from last year’s Green Shield (when he was named in the competition’s Team of the Year) into Wests’ Seconds, he started off with an impressive spell of 3-25 against North Sydney.   Players at Wests insist that he’s an excellent bowler, and an even better person.  But now he’s facing a batch of new problems, having been diagnosed with a brain tumour.  He’s already begun radiation therapy, and his family faces a tough time and steep bills.  The Western Suburbs club has launched an appeal to help with his medical costs, and the GoFundMe page is here.   This time of year, there are plenty of good causes to support, but please consider this one.  Already, Wests President Mike Swan reports that the support received has been fantastic, but every bit helps.

Five Things We Learned from Round 5

Robbie Aitken’s still playing

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last week, you’ve probably noticed that North Sydney all-rounder Robbie Aitken played his 500th First Grade match on Saturday.  He’s the first player to achieve that extraordinary milestone, although his father, Bob, certainly would have done so if teams played as many matches during his career as they do now.  When Robbie Aitken made his debut for Fairfield back in 1992, he didn’t score a run or take a wicket, and his 500th game was equally unproductive – and yet he played a crucial part in North Sydney’s win.  Aitken sent down his ten overs on Saturday for only 32 runs, and helped to contain a powerful St George line-up to an attainable total of 244.  Aitken hasn’t lasted this long by wasting energy; he barely bothers with a run-up these days, preferring a short shuffle into his delivery stride.  But that has the advantage that he hurries through his overs – on Saturday, he hustled through a maiden to Nick Stapleton in about 90 seconds.  North Sydney didn’t let Aitken down: they lost early wickets in the chase, but then Aiden Bariol (58), Tim Reynolds (68) and Brent Atherton (52 not out) combined to hand St George its first defeat of the season.

There was a grand final rematch.  Sort of.

 You could just about argue that the match at Drummoyne Oval on Saturday was a grand final rematch – Sydney outplayed Manly in last season’s decider only five games ago.  But that’s a difficult argument to sustain, because the two sides are now almost completely different.  Remarkably, only three players – Elliott Herd, Ryan Hadley and Ryan Farrell – remained from Manly’s grand final side, while half of Sydney’s side has also moved on.  Anyway, it was a tightly-fought contest between two good sides, and Manly squeezed out a win by only ten runs.  Ryan Hadley made the difference: from number ten, he bashed 21 not out to boost Manly to a defendable 206, and then he intervened with the ball when Nathan Doyle (72) seemed to be steering Sydney to victory.  First he bowled Doyle behind his legs, then he darted a ball through a tentative prod from Kain Anderson and with his next delivery he trapped Craig Di Blasio lbw – a match-winning spell of 3-1.  The other standout for Manly was reserve keeper Matt Brewster, who stepped into Jay Lenton’s shoes and blasted a quickfire 67 at the top of the order.

The par score at Chatswood Oval is 731

Not that we’ve calculated it scientifically, or anything, but that seems to be about what you need to score if you bat first at Chatswood and want to win.  Wests got their calculations slightly wrong, reaching merely 5-287 from their 50 overs on Saturday – enough to win almost anywhere else, but Chatswood has a very flat pitch and very short square boundaries.  Dylan Hunter followed a tidy, containing spell with the ball by smashing five 6s in a 97-ball 105 not out, while Taj Brar (108 not out) helped Gordon to a nine-wicket win with a ridiculous 44 deliveries to spare.  Three weeks ago, neither Hunter nor Brar had scored a First Grade hundred – now they each have two.

I’m Gladys, and so is my PG side

Let no-one say that we dish it out, but can’t take it.  This week’s Gladys Berejiklian Sudden Total Collapse Award goes to… Sydney University’s very own Poidevin-Gray side, which at one point was 2-48 chasing Campbelltown-Camden’s 2-113 in a game reduced to 16 overs each.  Spoiler alert: they didn’t get them.  Leg-spinner Owen Cole had 0 for 12 from his first 14 balls, and then everything went absolutely Gladys.  A full delivery was miscued to cover; the new batsman charged past the ball and was stumped; and Cole completed his hat-trick when the next player swept over the top of a full-length ball on off stump.  Six wickets fell for three runs in three overs of chaos (including a run-out with some comedic value), Cole walking off with 4-16.  But it’s a fickle game; about half the Campbelltown side stayed on to play in the Little Bash game in the afternoon, when Cole’s only over disappeared for 13 runs.

It’s finals time.  Nearly.

As the Big Bash kicks off, the Harry Solomons Little Bash is rapidly approaching a climax, with the last round before the finals to be played on Sunday.   The most interesting contests will be in the Sydney Thunder Conference, where Sydney University and Parramatta are certain to advance, but Wests and Northern District could, in theory, be overtaken by one or more of Blacktown, Penrith, Bankstown and Hawkesbury.  If Penrith can beat Wests, they’ll leap-frog them on the table, as then both sides would have 6.5 points and Penrith already has the better net run-rate.  But that doesn’t guarantee Penrith a place in the finals, because Blacktown can jump to 7 points by beating Hawkesbury. Hawkesbury is the longest of long shots, needing a huge win and about three other results falling in its favour.  Sydney University can take out first place in the conference by beating Northern Districts, but if they don’t manage that, Parramatta can take the top spot by beating last-placed Campbelltown.  Things are similar in the Sydney Sixers Conference, where St George and Mosman go through no matter what, and Randwick-Petersham and Manly will try to hold off University of NSW, North Sydney, Easts and Sydney.  It would be a strange white-ball finals series without Sydney, but the Tigers need to massacre University of NSW and hope that (among other things) Manly loses heavily to Mosman.  Even if that does happen, Sydney could miss out if North Sydney upsets St George.  Of course, all this assumes that it won’t rain, and it almost certainly will, in which case just about anything could happen.

Five things we learned from Round 4

Jay Lenton is hitting them OK

For a while there, the match between Manly and UTS North Sydney was quite evenly poised.  In the 21st over, Ollie Knight removed Joel Davies to reduce the home side to 4-102, and it was entirely possible that Manly could have been contained to a reasonably modest total.  That, however, was as good as it got for the Bears, who bled for 12 runs an over for the rest of the innings.  English import Tom Lammonby played his part to perfection, stroking an unbeaten 45 from only 26 deliveries, while Jay Lenton carried on his excellent form, reaching 120 not out.  Lenton began calmly enough – it took him 53 balls to reach fifty, a milestone he achieved by picking up a delivery from Robbie Aitken that was only fractionally short and pulling it into the tennis courts.  Lenton then got to have a bit of a rest, as no-one could figure out how to retrieve the ball, and when it was eventually recovered, he accelerated, carving 69 runs from his next 33 deliveries.  Aitken’s sixth over went for 21, with Lammonby launching a straight six before Lenton blasted two of his own, over long-off and extra-cover.  Lenton was on 94 when James Campbell took the ball for the 31st and final over.  Campbell is a good bowler who had been bowling well – one for 25 from six, at that point.  But it made no difference to Lenton, who carved the first ball high over long-off before celebrating exuberantly.  He then creamed a length ball over mid-on, missed a wide yorker and hit two sweet drives over long-off – four sixes in five balls, so that his two to long-off from the final ball was something of an anticlimax.  Lenton already has two hundreds this season, and looks to be hitting the ball as well as he ever has.

Dylan Hunter must be sick of white-ball cricket

Here’s the thing – Dylan Hunter is a decent bowler.  The Gordon left-arm spinner has pretty good control, varies his pace and flight, and turns it a touch.  And twice, in recent weeks, he’s been absolutely slaughtered.  There was that ten-ball, 35-run over against North Sydney, and last Saturday his four overs against Easts went for 53 runs.  Baxter Holt slapped his first two balls for 4 and 6, while Will Simpson cleared the boundary three times in his fourth over.  Hunter must be longing for a return to red-ball cricket, where the batsmen occasionally block one.  In a rain-reduced match, Easts raced to 9-220 in only 28 overs.  The ploy of opening with Marcus Atallah was a success, and Holt (60 from 43) and Simpson (69 from 33, with a ridiculous eight 6s) provided the acceleration.  Hunter thumped two retaliatory sixes of his own, but Gordon never got close to its target.  Weird statistic of the day belonged to Gordon seamer Ash Premkumar, who dismissed three batsmen (Angus Robson, Jono Cook and Rupert Lilburne) for golden ducks, but without taking a hat-trick or even being on a hat-trick.

It’s not always like this, Jack

Promising young Newcastle batsman Jack Hartigan made his First Grade debut for St George on Sunday in the Little Bash match against Sydney, and he could be forgiven for having an exaggerated opinion of the standard of cricket in the big smoke.  He found himself in the same side as three internationals – Kurtis Patterson, Nathan Ellis and New Zealander Colin Munro.  Patterson was back on club duty (for his 100th First grade game) after leading NSW during the week, while Ellis and Munro are in Sydney to prepare for the Big Bash.  Sydney batted first and St George, having some kind of theory about taking the pace off the ball, opened the attack with Kaleb Phillips’ unalarming off-spin.  It worked: the dangerous Ryan Felsch sliced the first ball he faced behind point, where Munro held the catch.  Ellis then removed Surrey batsman Laurie Evans, and the much improved Jono Craig-Dobson picked up two middle-order wickets.  A few late blows from Alex Glendenning made the score respectable, but not large enough to contain Munro and Patterson, who ran down the target with more than five overs to spare.  Munro thumped his way to 61 from 49 balls.  Hartigan didn’t bat or bowl, but it’s a safe bet that he learned plenty.

Hayden Kerr’s overnight success took a while

A highlight of last week, in between rain and Covid scares, was the performance of Hayden Kerr against Victoria.  Making his first-class debut in the Shield match in Sydney, Kerr played with remarkable maturity to score 62 not out and 11 not out, as well as picking up three useful wickets.  He followed up with a player-of-the-match effort in only his second Marsh Cup match, smacking 43 (with two sweetly-struck sixes) and picking up 2-16 in a tidy spell with the ball.  Which tells us what, exactly, about Premier Cricket?  Well, more than you might think.  Kerr was certainly a handy cricketer at Chevalier College, Bowral (where he played in the same side as Jack Preddey), but he was missed in sweep for talent in the junior pathways, and when he arrived at Sydney University he started in the Metropolitan Cup side.  For two seasons he bounced between Fifth Grade and Fourth Grade; in his third season, he was a key member of University’s premiership-winning Fourths.  It wasn’t until his fourth season that he reached Firsts, and his improvement from that point has been exponential.  The point being – the junior pathways are certainly one way to spot and develop talent, but there’s also a place for the player who develops a little later (or just gets missed when he’s 16), and Premier Cricket remains a very effective platform for developing them into top-class cricketers. 

We have a new contender

Regular readers will recall that Easts’ Fourths took out the Gladys Berejiklian Sudden Collapse of the Week Award in Round 3, losing five for one against University of NSW.  That only prompted a resounding “hold my beer!” from the UTS North Sydney PG side.  The Bears were up against it at Glenn McGrath Oval on Sunday, chasing Sutherland’s 3-141 from 20 overs.  They gave it a shake, and when Harrison Lee-Young cracked Will Straker for six over midwicket, they had reached 5-117 and needed a mathematically-possible 24 from seven balls to force a Super Over.  At which point, everything came up Gladys.  Lee-Young played all around a low full toss and was bowled.  John Nevell had strike for the final over, delivered by Sutherland captain Andrew Ritchie, but sliced the first ball to Kieran Weatherall at point.  Ritchie, a right-arm seamer, bowled full and straight and reaped the rewards as North Sydney’s tail swung away hopefully.  Everett Oxenham (with a name like that, could you guess that he went to The King’s School?) swiped his first ball straight up in the air, and Ritchie completed his hat-trick by knocking back Ben Knox’s off stump.  Toby Laybutt bunted his first ball back down the pitch, which was something of an achievement in the circumstances, but mishit the next to Cody Philipson at cover.  Ritchie had four wickets in five balls, and the Bears had lost 5-0 in six balls.  It’s an effort that will take some beating, but we’re sure someone’s up to the challenge.

Five Things We Learned from Round 3

Apparently Jack Preddey bats now

Jack Preddey is now in his fifth season with Eastern Suburbs (after stints with Campbelltown and RPs), and for most of that time you’d have ranked his batting as somewhere between nearly-an-all-rounder and handy-in-the-lower-order.  Last season, he made some useful runs in the bottom half of the order, without reaching fifty once in 16 innings.  But last Saturday, he promoted himself to number six, and played an innings that suggested he’s capable making a stronger impact with the bat.  Easts were down and (almost) out.  University of NSW, batting first, had posted a decent total of 7-277, with Tom Scoble hitting 73 and the impressively consistent (and consistently impressive) Jack Attenborough reaching 64.  In reply, Easts lost 3-43, and had recovered only slightly to 5-112 when Declan White held a return catch from Angus Robson.  At that point, Easts still needed 166 from 144 balls, which seemed a pretty hopeless task.  Preddey and Udit Mehta steadied the innings, but only 14 runs came from the next six overs, making the target 152 from 108.  But then Preddey began to accelerate, and started to clear the boundary.  12 runs came from the 38th over, 13 from the 39th, 11 from the 40th, 11 from the 41st.  Preddey hit only two fours in his innings, but lashed six sixes, and by the time Hayden McLean took the ball for the last over, Easts needed only six to win.  Preddey hit twos from the second, third and fourth balls to finish an improbable chase with two deliveries in hand, remaining unbeaten on 98 (from 79).  Preddey has now played 147 Premier Cricket innings without scoring a century.  We suspect this won’t be his last opportunity.

Nick Bertus still bats

On yet another day when the New South Wales top order collapsed, Nick Bertus took yet another opportunity to remind anyone watching just how good a batsman he can be.  Batting wasn’t easy at Chatswood Oval, but Gordon’s modest total of 171 looked pretty good when Parramatta slumped to 6-68.  But Bertus was still there, and with support from Jacob Workman and Hayden Goulstone, he worked Parramatta back into contention.  The run rate was never a problem, so it was a restrained and disciplined innings for the most part, although Bertus did allow himself the luxury of smacking three successive boundaries from Ben Parsons.  Bertus was run out for 74 with Parramatta in sight of its target, but Owen Simonsen and Luke Hodges finished the job with nearly four overs in hand.  Bertus’ career for the Blues was brief and unfulfilled, but innings like the one he played on Saturday raise the question of how he might have performed if allowed an extended run in the side.

The British are coming

One outcome of the Covid pandemic has been that, over the past couple of seasons, the flood of English county players to Premier Cricket slowed down to a trickle.  Now there are signs that they’re starting to return, like Christmas beetles and mosquitos, at the start of summer.  Tom Lammonby of Somerset has lobbed into Manly with a glowing reputation as a batsman and… well, not much reputation at all as a bowler.  Yet it was with the ball that he made his first impact, bowling left arm seamers at a respectable clip.  He persuaded Josh Clarke to play around his pads, winning an lbw decision, then hit the top of Oliver Hing’s off stump, finishing with 2-26 from 8 overs.  Defending 170, Wests were in the game when Manly lost 4-62, but Lammonby and Joel Davies then built a critical partnership.  Lammonby played well enough for his wristy 23, but was overshadowed by Joel Davies, who compiled a matchwinning 70 from 119 deliveries in only his third innings in the top grade.  The compact left-hander played with impressive maturity before dabbing hard-working Jack Bermingham to Hing behind the stumps.  Meanwhile, at Glenn McGrath Oval, Lachlan Hearne’s century for Mosman was scored in partnership with Jordan Cox, a well-regarded keeper-batsman from Kent, who remained unbeaten on 70.  Cox turned out for Easts when he last played in Sydney.

La Nina is Spanish for washout

The most significant event of the week occurred, not on the field, but in the office of the Bureau of Meteorology, where whoever is responsible for these things declared a La Nina event.  Now, there’s lots of science that goes into this, but we did Latin for five years at school, so we’re not exactly trained scientists, and it makes absolutely no sense at all to us.  What it seems to mean, though, is that we can expect it to rain.  A lot (and even, it seems, in India).  We’ve already lost the whole of round two of the T20 Little Bash, and there’s rain forecast for at least the next two weekends.  The more usual rain patterns often impact the closing month of the season, but this time around the luck of the weather seems likely to play a part throughout the competition.  Time to upgrade those covers, maybe.

We have a contender…

The Gladys Berejiklian Sudden Collapse of the Week Award goes to Easts’ Fourth Grade side.  Facing a testing target of 236 against University of NSW, Easts began well enough, reaching 1-37 after eight overs.  But then it all went very Gladys, very quickly.  Mitchell Law removed Oliver White.  Oliver Maxwell (who surely ought to be playing quite a bit higher than Fourth Grade) tapped a single, but in the next over hit a catch straight back to Ed Walker.  Luca La Costa missed his first ball of the season and was ruled lbw.  After Law bowled a maiden to Nick Farrar, Walker was removed from the attack and replaced by Arunav Duggal.  Farrar was run out from the first ball of the over, and Duggal then had Max Cotter caught from his next.  Five top-order wickets had fallen for only one run in the space of 19 balls.  We can look forward to plenty more collapses this season, but surely this one sets the benchmark.

Five Things We Learned from Round 2

Bon Andrews is a horrible place to bowl

Sometimes we’ve wondered (usually, if we’re honest, while bowling there) just how effective those fences at Bon Andrews Oval really are.  You know the ones – the high ones on the eastern side of the ground that are supposed to protect North Sydney Council against the catastrophic consequences of a cricket ball dropping through the windscreen of a car travelling at 70kph along the Warringah Freeway.  Well, the fences will seldom be tested out as thoroughly as they were on Saturday, when UTS North Sydney and Gordon forgot all about cricket and decided to play a game of Bat instead.  Bon Andrews (North Sydney No2, if you’re old) is not a large ground, and even though the outfield was covered in sand, it was lightning-fast.  To top it off, the pitch may as well have been dropped in from the nearby Pacific Highway.  North Sydney batted first, and Jack James sliced the first ball of the day past point for four.  The scoring rate did drop after that, but not by much.  Justin Avendano smashed his way to an absurd 171 from 122 balls, clearing the fence 11 times.  Avendano actually constructed his innings quite carefully; it took him 13 balls to reach double figures, and after facing 45 balls he had only scored 39 runs.  He then accelerated so effectively that his century came from the 92nd ball he faced, when he punched Quincy Titterton to long-on for a single.  But the real impetus came when left-arm spinner Dylan Hunter was recalled to bowl the 42nd over of the innings.  The first ball, flat and quick, was muscled over long-on for 6; the next soared over cow corner for 6 more, and disappeared southbound towards the Harbour Tunnel, so that a replacement ball was required.  Avendano missed a swipe at the next delivery, but heaved the fourth over wide long-on, after which things rather disintegrated.  Hunter replied with two wides outside off-stump and a chest-high no-ball that was pounded over mid-wicket for yet another 6.  Avendano then launched yet another 6, and Hunter served up another no-ball.  Anything could have happened on the next delivery, a free hit, but Avendano got so wound up that in the end he slipped and fell swiping at a full toss, which trickled away for a single.  The over lasted for ten deliveries and produced 35 runs.  Yet it was Hunter who had the last laugh: his 123 included five 6s of his own, and his stand of 165 with Taj Brar (in which both hit their maiden First Grade century) set up Gordon’s run chase, which was completed by an excellent late cameo from Jack Ritchie.  Maybe next week they might move those big screens from the eastern side of the ground and put them between the bowler and the batsman.  The bowlers need some kind of protection.

Dugald Holloway found his rhythm

The Harry Solomons Little Bash is back, and in its first T20 match of the season, Blacktown made a solid start to its chase at Sydney University Oval.  Chasing a more-or-less par score of 5-152, the Mounties reached 1-47 until Dugald Holloway stepped in.  There’s a kind of Mitchell Johnson-ish quality to Holloway’s bowling; he’s a tall left-armer, sharp, with a slightly unorthodox action, and some days, he bowls to the left, he bowls to the right.  Other days, though, it all clicks in a way that makes life extremely uncomfortable for any batsman who gets in the way, and he can turn the course of a match in no time at all.  Sunday was one of those days; in his first over, Holloway accounted for James Newton with his third ball and had Yianni Theodorakopoulos caught behind from his next delivery.  James Fawcett got the hat-trick ball away for four, but the last ball of the over crashed into his stumps, and Holloway then had Hayden Fox caught from the first ball of his second over – a ridiculous sequence of WW4WW.  Holloway ended up with 5-24, his best return in Firsts, as a tight contest turned into a very comfortable win for the Students.

Too many Blakes are never enough

 Three centuries were scored at Bankstown Oval on Saturday, and naturally all the attention went to Dan Solway (109 not out), Blake McDonald (109 not out) and Blake Nikitaras (105 not out).   It is, after all, a batsman’s game.  We haven’t checked this, or anything, but we’re pretty sure that this was the first time in the long history of the First Grade competition that an unbeaten double-century partnership has been shared between two unbeaten century-making batsmen both called Blake.  Blake squared made short work of St George’s target – they ran down Bankstown’s 5-216 with 13.2 overs to spare, McDonald lashing five sixes and Nikitaras three.

 For our money though, and without in any way detracting from the efforts of the Blakes, the standout player on the field was St George opening bowler Peter Francis, who grabbed three early wickets to reduce Bankstown to 3-32.  Francis ended up with 3-46; the other bowlers in the match managed 3-338 between them.  He moves the ball away from the bat at a decent pace, bowls with plenty of aggression, and gives the St George attack a genuine cutting edge.

 John who?

 It should, in theory, be possible to write a paragraph or two about Elijah Eales without mentioning his father.  Here goes.

 Almost no-one expected Mosman to win its first T20 game of the season, against white-ball experts Sydney, especially after the Whales posted a so-so target of 137 at Drummoyne Oval.   But Eales (who bowled off-breaks not so very long ago) opened the bowling with his accurate seamers, and in his first over he convinced Will Fort to chip a drive to mid-on, where Matt Junk bobbled the catch before holding it.  Things then got worse for Sydney – Ryan Felsch, after doing his best to run himself out first ball, then smacked a shortish ball from Jake Turner straight to Harry Dalton on the cow-corner fence.  All of the Sydney middle order made a start, but each time the Tigers looked like getting the initiative, Eales took a wicket – Justin Mosca sliced the ball to point, Nathan Doyle clipped a full ball to mid-wicket, and Matt Rodgers hoisted one to Matt Moran behind square leg.  Eales doesn’t look like a bowler who’ll run through a side in a two-day game, but he has good control, bowls thoughtfully, and built enough pressure to induce reckless strokes.  Mosman ran out winners by the surprisingly convincing margin of 23 runs, with Eales (4-17) the difference.

 Ronak Bedi has improved

 Sydney’s lower-grade players have never had a longer off-season in which to work on their game, and not many players have used that time as well as Ronak Bedi seems to have done.  Last season, the Sutherland leg-spinner played four matches in Seconds, taking just a single wicket for 155 runs.   But his improvement this season has been striking, and after collecting three wickets in Round One, he produced an astonishing spell against Hawkesbury on Saturday.  Chasing 236, Hawkesbury had begun to rebuild its innings after an excellent opening burst from Will Straker, in which the first three wickets fell for only two runs.  But Bedi shredded the lower order, and the last five wickets fell while only two runs were scored. Incredibly, seven Hawkesbury batsmen were dismissed without scoring.  Bedi wrapped up the innings for just 64, grabbing 5-8 from 4.4 overs.  His bowling average in Seconds so far this season is approximately 26 times lower than it was last season.

Five (and a bit) things we learned from Round One

Sydney still looks pretty good

Anyone who thought that the reigning premiers might be rattled by their unsettled off-season received a sharp wake-up from the Tigers’ strong win over Sydney University in the opening round.  From last season’s Grand Final, Sydney has lost a couple of Manentis (to Tasmania), Anthony Mosca, Dan Smith (captaining Seconds) and Nic Bills (retired) – as well as long-serving, highly successful coach Mick Haire.  Yet they won their first game by five wickets, with almost 13 overs to spare.  Ryan Felsch was in the thick of things, as he so often is in the shorter game, gutting the University middle order before whacking 53 from 42 balls.  Felsch began unusually slowly, and might have been caught from a steepling hit that went an enormous distance into the air though not all that far from the pitch.  He responded to his let-off by thumping six sixes in ten balls, four of them from a single over.  After Felsch missed a sweep at a Ryan McElduff off-break, Sydney captain Matt Rodgers steered his side home with a measured, positive innings.  Possibly the standout performer for Sydney, though, was young quick bowler Jack Nisbet, who impressed with his economical action and steep bounce.  The large number of 50-over matches at the front end of the season certainly plays to Sydney’s strengths.

Krishna Padmanabhan made a memorable start

New recruit Krishna Padmanabhan, formerly of Melbourne’s Richmond Cricket Club, made a memorable debut in Sydney cricket for University of NSW, helping his new club to a solid win over Sutherland.  Padmanabhan’s unbeaten 26 from 22 helped the Bees to a strong total of 7-262, to which the most important contribution was Jack Attenborough’s polished 71.  Bowling whippy spin with a rapid arm, Padmanabhan then struck three times in his first three overs, holding a return catch from Ben Dwarshuis, luring Callum Weatherall into a misguided chip into the on-side, and then removing James Arnold with possibly the filthiest delivery that will be seen on any First Grade ground this season.  Arnold was so surprised by a very slow, very loopy full toss that he could only bloop it tamely into the hands of Jack Attenborough at mid-on.  Padmanabhan ended the day with 4-20, capitalising on a very effective new-ball spell from Chris Tremain.

Scott Rodgie is in form

On paper, a Manly team top-heavy with representative players looked a bit too strong for Northern District but, as legendary Rugby League coach Jack Gibson used to say, your scrapbook never won any matches (actually he said “yer scrapbook”, and added a colourful adjective, but as a University club we do need to observe some standards).   Manly started well enough, reaching 2-55 with Jay Lenton (who cracked one delivery into the tennis courts) and Ollie Davies hitting the ball cleanly, but then Scott Rodgie intervened.  Rodgie wasn’t the most obvious threat to Manly’s batsmen – his handful of wickets last season were fearfully expensive – and 8 runs came from his first 14 balls.  But then Ollie Davies spooned a loose drive to cover, and the middle order folded rapidly.  Ryan Farrell sliced a drive to Toby Gray at a wide slip, Jay Lenton slashed without moving his feet, and Manly lost four wickets while adding just a single.  The eventual total of 118 never looked like enough, and Rodgie collected four for 10 from his last 46 deliveries.  Northern District lost three early wickets, but Rodgie followed up his bowling effort with a forceful, unbeaten 40 (in company with former Manly player Chris Green) to seal the result.

Age shall not weary them.  Much.

36 years ago, a quietly-spoken, lean, intense left-hander from Armidale made his Grade debut for Western Suburbs at Blick Oval, marking his arrival with a match-winning century (after which he became a little less quietly-spoken).  Paul Ryan went on to have a highly successful First Grade career as a keeper-batsman with Wests, St George and Mosman, scoring 8202 runs until he retired from Premier Cricket in 2004.  Now he’s back where it all started, lured out of retirement by Wests president Michael Swan to captain Second Grade.  It didn’t take Ryan long to feel at home – Wests’ top order collapsed, and James Aitken was bowling, so it was pretty much exactly like a game from the 1980s.  Understandably, Ryan started slowly, but he warmed up with a trademark whip off his toes to the midwicket boundary, and stabilised the innings in a stand of 69 with Liam Sparke.  Despite his advanced years, Ryan even cleared the boundary, swinging Kobe Allison over fine leg.  His 50 steered Wests to 8-226, which turned out to be far too many for UTS-North Sydney.  It looks as though this season the players in Wests’ Seconds will learn quite a bit about competing intensely, batting sensibly, and sore muscles.

Davo was one of a kind

Round One began a few days after the passing of Alan Davidson, which makes this the first Sydney season in 73 years in which he hasn’t been involved in some way.  Davo began his Grade career in 1948-49 with Northern District, and moved to Western Suburbs four seasons later when his bank job moved him to Strathfield – where he lived for the rest of his life.  At a time when international players appeared regularly in Grade cricket, Davidson was one of the last men to attract large paying crowds to club games.  They came for his hostile swing bowling and brilliant fielding, but most of all for his dynamic hitting – the lawn bowls games next to Pratten Park were frequently interrupted by Davidson’s bigger hits.  After retiring from first-class cricket, Davidson played on with Wests, steering the club to a First Grade premiership in 1963-64.  He might have repeated that success the following season, but he was injured in the semi-final, while scoring a matchwinning even 100 out of his team’s total of 167.  Less publicly visible was the fact that, for many years after his retirement, he’d still turn up at club committee meetings and contribute to the running of the grass-roots game.  He’ll be missed.

And one bonus thing

Imitation is, of course, the sincerest form of flattery, and we noticed with interest the Cricket NSW website running a piece that seems to us to borrow rather heavily from the (obviously, massively popular) Five Things format.  Go to https://www.cricketnsw.com.au/news/the-opening-spell-round-one-premier-cricket/2021-11-08 and decide for yourself.  Does adding the sixth “thing” make a difference?  Our copyright lawyers will let us know soon.

Five Things We Learned from Round 15

The Saints went marching in

St George hasn’t appeared in the First Grade finals since 2015-16, and looked the longest of long shots to make it when the final round began last weekend.  As we observed here last week, they needed Gordon to lose to Easts, and then they needed to beat Parramatta with a bonus point.  Easts obliged by containing Gordon to 221, and could have snatched sixth place with a bonus point.  Tim Armstrong got the chase off to a lively start, but Dylan Hunter applied the brakes, allowing only 35 runs from ten mean overs of left arm spin.  In the end, Hunter was probably the difference between Easts playing next weekend or taking the early holiday.  Will Simpson’s 67 got Easts home, but St George was now able to claim the last finals place by chasing down Parramatta’s 6 for 239 inside 40 overs.  Saints went out hard, but lost early wickets, stumbling to 2 for 38, but Kaleb Phillips (77 off 59) and Tom Vane Tempest (50 off 35) revived the innings with a furious partnership.  In the fourteenth over, Vane Tempest got under two good length balls from Jacob Workman and carved them over midwicket for six; Phillips hit straighter, lofting both Luke McNaught and Hayden Goulstone over long-on for sixes.  That partnership ensured that the run rate would be no problem, but wickets began to fall and at 8 for 202 there was a serious risk that St George would be bowled out.  Peter Francis, whose bowling has been so impressive this season, picked the right time to show that he can bat a bit as well.  He and Joe Graham needed only 20 balls to pick off the last 40 runs, plundering 15 from Goulstone’s last over before Francis ended the game by whacking a leg-break from Gabriel Joseph straight down the ground for yet another six.  Saints needed only 29.4 overs to seal the bonus point win, and a place back in the finals.

Premier Cricket set a new record.  Not a particularly good one.

What do these players have in common?  Peter Nevill.  Stephen O’Keefe.  Trent Copeland.  Morne Morkel.  Kurtis Patterson.  They were, of course, the only Test cricketers who appeared in the First Grade competition this season.  Never before in the 127 year history of the competition have so few Test cricketers taken part in a season’s matches.  Of course, there are mitigating circumstances.  Covid bubbles made life unusually difficult for representative players, and the expanded Big Bash increased their representative commitments.  Travel restrictions all but eliminated the presence of overseas players.  Even so, it’s the culmination of a bleak trend (8 Test players appeared in 2019-20, ten in 2018-19).  No one expects a return to the days (say, 30 years ago) when current Test players could play over one third of a club’s grade games.  That will never happen again, and for good reasons.  But the complete separation of international cricket from Premier Cricket weakens the pyramid structure which has served the game well for a very long time.  Let’s hope a few more, suitably vaccinated, representative players find time for a couple of days with their clubs next season.

There’s some average chat out there

Manly and Sydney University have played some epic contests over the last few seasons, and last Saturday’s game was up with them, Manly edging this one with one wicket to spare, thanks largely to Stephen O’Keefe, who bowled beautifully and showed all his experience with the bat at the end.  For University, Liam Robertson struck the ball sweetly and ran out two batsmen, while Dugald Holloway was at his penetrative best with the ball.  The result allowed Sydney to leapfrog the Students to claim the minor premiership, while Manly clinched third place.  Things you won’t see often: Hayden Kerr and Jack Edwards both batting eleven (both due to injury).  Manly looks well placed to make an impact on the finals, but seriously needs to improve the quality of its chat.  Someone insists on shouting out, when Elliot Herd is bowling, “Come on, the Herd Locker”.  The “Herd Locker”?  Look, we understand that it’s a movie reference (Best Picture at the 2010 Academy Awards, we get it).  And we appreciate that Herd sounds a little bit like “Hurt”, especially after the fourth beer.  But as a nickname, it makes no sense, especially when Liam Robertson has just smacked you over long-on for a third six.  All teams need to lift for the finals, so when better to introduce a new nickname?  We would suggest TS (TS Eliot, try to keep up) but apparently those initials mean something different these days.

Ryan Smith went out in style

After 14 years of running in to bowl for Penrith, Ryan Smith’s knees have had enough, and they’ve announced that he’s retiring.  Smith is revered at the foot of the mountains, partly for his long and tireless service to the club, but especially because of his efforts two seasons ago, when he took 62 wickets (a club record) and led the Panthers to a First Grade premiership.  It didn’t seem appropriate for him to go out with a loss, but that was the way it looked late on Saturday afternoon, when Mosman was four for 177 chasing a modest target of 207.   Smith had taken the early, key, wicket of Peter Forrest, who chopped a ball onto his stumps, and kept things tidy in his first six overs, allowing only 18 runs.  When he came back for his final spell in Premier Cricket, Mosman needed 33 runs from eight overs with six wickets standing.  Matt Moran skied his fourth ball to point, where Jordan Browne held the catch.  Three runs came from Smith’s next over, and Mosman needed eleven runs from 24 balls when he bowled the 47th over of the innings.  Which was chaotic.  Ash Doolan (the only man, as we reminded him last week, to be dismissed twice in First Grade by Damien Mortimer), got the first ball away for four: seven needed off 23.  He then missed what we’ll charitably call a slower ball, which hit him just below the knee roll, on the full, in front of his stumps.  Luke Shelton hit the next for two, but nicked the following ball to Tyran Liddiard.  Jake Turner unaccountably carved his very first ball to Kaine Balgowan at deep cover, and suddenly Mosman was nine for 203, still needing five runs.  Greg West and Dean Crawford scrambled a couple of singles and a leg bye, and then West turned Ryan Fletcher behind square leg.  The first run was completed easily, but West turned ambitiously for the match-winning second, and the throw to Liddiard was accurate enough to beat him home.  So the game ended in a tie, and Smith ended his career on a memorable note, with three wickets in four balls and 5-34.  He couldn’t have scripted it better.

Chris De Krester is a First Grader

Eight seasons ago, Chris De Krester left the Sydney University club because he thought he could play higher than Fifth Grade.  Gordon agreed, and picked him in Thirds.  He had three seasons with Gordon, playing a couple of games in Seconds, flirted with Hawkesbury in 2015-16, then rejoined the Hawks last season.  This year, he’s been a valuable member of the Second Grade side, doing nothing spectacular, but bowling tidy leg-spin and contributing handy runs in the lower order.  And for Round 15, he was promoted to Firsts for the match against Campbelltown-Camden.  It took him nine years and 136 Premier Cricket matches to win his first First Grade cap.  He didn’t let the Hawks down, bowling ten neat overs and picking out two wickets, both caught at mid-on by Mohammad Shinwari, and added some handy late-order runs.  He would probably have enjoyed the day more if Hawkesbury had won, but no matter.  A lot of players turn out in First Grade week after week, and many of them take it for granted.  For others, it’s a goal that needs to be strived for, and when they get there, they deserve credit and respect for the persistence and self-belief that it took to achieve it.

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.