West End Men’s 3rd Grade Round 5

 C Grade, General  Comments Off on West End Men’s 3rd Grade Round 5
Nov 272017
 
After a big downpour of rain late on Friday afternoon, the C’s were worried we would be washed out for the second game in a row. When we turned up at Colonel Waite the pitch didn’t fill us with much confidence as it looked soaked. However, with the sun roasting the pitch it quickly dried up and we had a 40 minute delay, meaning the game would be a 35 over game.

We won the toss and elected to bowl. It seemed like a good move when the ball was popping up and moving all over the place. Unfortunately our openers, Seb Porter and Hiran Lecamwasim were unable to control the ball movement and their feet, bowling plenty of wides and no balls to begin the innings. Woodville were looking good at 0/40.

Jamie Panelli (2/11) and Liam Scanlon (2/18) were brought on relatively early and were able to dry up the runs and take a few wickets to have Woodville in a bit of trouble at 4/53.

Next we turned to spin and Woodville had no answers. Eddy Greeves (4/8) picked up an important early wicket to have them at 5/68, which was followed by a sharp catch from Brayden Frost behind the stumps to give Tom Mackenzie (2/10) his first. A master stroke from the skipper earned Eddy his second wicket. He identified that deep square leg should be on square instead of behind square and moved him 5m to his left. The next ball was in the perfect slot, thigh height full toss down leg, to hit the ball perfectly to Scans in the deep, who didn’t have to move a muscle, a great learning experience for the young kids about bowling to your field.

Woodville’s tail didn’t show much and they were all out for 79. A score the C grade have been known to struggle to reach in the past. Not this time though, as our batters continued their good form.

After a shaky start with Scans and Michael Cotsios snicking good balls behind early, Ty Wundenburg and Dylan Silvy batted with positive intent and made batting look easy. It was a very good show of character from the pair and in the end we chased down the runs with ease within 13 overs.

West End Men’s 3rd Grade Round 4

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Nov 142017
 

Day 1,The 3rd grade lost the toss and bowled first on a nice wicket at colonel waite. We started off well but leaked a few runs, a back injury to Adam Clements meant he was heavily restricted and struggled to gather much pace as a result. He lasted four overs before been given a rest and never came back on. That meant we were a seam bowler down.

James Cleggett took our first wicket in a strange fashion, bowling their opening with a back of the hand slower ball full toss, dipping late beautifully onto the base of the stumps, with glenelg’s opening left clueless about what just happened. Glenelg 1/32.

Unfortunately it took a while before our next wicket and they were moving along at a fast rate. The ball was thrown to the man with the golden arm, Tom MacKenzie, who struck soon after, trapping their opener LBW.

Wickets were starting to come more consistently when Cleggett took his second, this time with a big shout for LBW, and T-Mac took two in two balls, and all of a sudden we were on top again with the score of 5-89.

Glenelg’s batters kept fighting on, targeting the short boundary to make their way to 136 before T-Mac was able to snag his fourth caught at first slip.

T-Mac continued his demolition of Glenelg, picking up the very handy of their set batsman caught behind trying to cut. When he picked up his sixth we were well and truly on top.

What followed was some of the most frustrating cricket we’ve seen in the C grade for a while, with balls flying into the pond, multiple dropped catches where it looked harder to drop than to catch, some players were even trying to run away from the catch at one point. To top it off, at the end of one of T-Mac’s over, he decided to throw the ball to Frosty behind the stumps, but a horrendous throw resulted in four runs and the ball almost into the creak, but we’ll forgive him because he took 6 wickets.

Eventually our go-to express wicket taker, Liam Scanlon, was able to save us from seeing anymore scratchy cricket from both sides with two lovely wickets, both bowled, to finish off their innings. All out for 240.

In what seemed a tricky patch for our openers, Michael Cotsios and Liam, we survived comfortably with some perfectly executed shots to be 0/48 after 13, putting us in with a really good chance of chasing down 240 next week.

West End Men’s 3rd Grade Round 3

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Nov 062017
 
Port Adelaide defeated Kensington
Day 1 
We turned up to the quite beautiful EP Nazar Reserve to find ideal team-bonding-sized change rooms (3m x3m). Port Adelaide won the toss and elected to bowl to our delight, as the wicket looked good for batting. Alex Chapman didn’t think so, however, as he was caught behind on the second ball of the match. Not long after we lost Michael Cotsios with a spooned drive to point and we were 2/20.We steadied the ship with two impressive innings from our south-east boys, Luke Pedlar (Kingston) and Dylan Silvy (Mount Gambier). They both played mature innings, pouncing on loose balls and consistently rotating the strike, to guide us to 2/100. At this stage Port were starting to lose hope and a big score was on the cards. However, once Dylan was dismissed we lost a few wickets in quick succession and we let Port back in the contest at tea at 5/125.The over after tea Jamie Panelli put the foot on the accelerator with help from some wild bowling from Port’s off-spinner, hitting 4 fours and making batting look easy out there. Unfortunately we couldn’t capitalise as Jamie was bowled next over. This sparked a collapse and we were all of a sudden 9/155. A battle for the 10th batting spot made Adam Clements and Eddy Greeves work hard to be the not out batsman, it was a fiercely fought contest with Eddy hitting all runs behind square and Adam whacking bombs. It ended as Eddy edged behind to finish the innings with a total of 181. We felt it was below par, but still plenty of runs to defend for our strong bowling lineup.Port started their innings very slowly, with tight bowling from James Cleggett and Adam, plays and misses were becoming a normality as they scored a miserly 0 runs from the first 7 overs. Finally Adam trapped their opener in front, a deserved wicket for the opening bowlers’ hard work. A strange moment ensued as we looked over to the boundary to see the next batsman, padded up, throwing throw downs to their number 6 batsman. It didn’t help as he was later bowled by Jamie for 0.

Port continued to build on their score, gradually increasing their intent. However, when Jamie (3 wickets) began his spell there was only one way it was going to go, bowling well in tandem with Steve Tanti (2 wickets), to cause chaos on the Port sidelines as we finished the day with Port on 6/29. It was a great session to end the day for Kensington to put us in a strong position to build on for next week.

Day 2
After putting ourselves in a dominant position in day one, scoring 181 and having Port 6/29, we wanted to take quick wickets to capitalise. We had the ideal start after James Cleggett managed to get a leading edge ballooning to cover. The eight wicket followed as Jamie Panelli hit the pads with the umpire’s finger raising quickly afterwards. Unfortunately it took a little while to take the last two wickets with two frustrating partnerships. When we finally took the last wicket 25 overs Port were on 66. This gave us the opportunity to enforce the follow on and try to win outright, a rare position to be in for the C grade. The equation was we had 53 overs to take 10 wickets to receive 10 bonus points.Things didn’t go to plan early on as the opening batsmen kept frustrating us with some missed chances and plenty of plays and misses. At the tea break Port were still without the loss of a wicket. Tom Mackenzie was finally able to take the first wicket with a beautifully bowled wrong’un, LBW. Our bowlers still toiled hard and T-Mac was able to snag a big wicket, the batter picking out cow beautifully. This was followed by two more for T-Mac and an LBW for Adam Clements and all of a sudden the outright win seemed a likely target again. T-Mac had the ball on a string at the point and everything he touched turned to gold, batsmen had no idea about his wrong’uns or his fielder at cow, in the end finishing with a thoroughly well-deserved 7 wickets.

The equation was becoming tricky as Port were inching closer to our first innings score, with overs winding down. We had two wickets to get in 7 overs, while still keeping the runs below 15. Jamie was able to sneak one through Port’s captain’s defence to give us only one wicket to get in the last 4 overs. Port trickled past our score, which meant we lost two overs because of the change over of innings. We had to take a wicket in the 50th over to give us 1 over to chase down the runs. On the fifth ball of the bowler Kensington had a huge shout for LBW with the batsmen not picking the wrong’un turned down, which seemed unbelievable to turn down and woud’ve set up an entertaining run chase of four in one over. But unfortunately it wasn’t to be. We picked up the last wicket with 2.5 overs remaining in the day and even with some wild Jamie celebrations the umpires were standing strong on the rules and all overs had been exhausted for the day.

It was a devastating end to such a grinding day, especially considering T-Mac’s heroics on the day, but ultimately it was an impressive team performance from the C’s.

West End Men’s 3rd Grade Round 2

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Oct 222017
 

C Grade went down to Trinity Gardens to take on a strong East Torrens team that we’d knocked out of the semi-finals earlier this year.

We won the toss and elected to bowl on a flat wicket that was only going to get better as the day went on. Opening bowlers Steve Tanti and Adam Clements got us off to a decent start but a partnership formed and they got away from us as they made their way to 80 two down. With two batsmen set and a good launch pad to build the rest of the innings the game was swinging in their favour but some tight bowling from James Cleggett and two wickets to Jamie Panelli opened the game right up for us and we managed to keep wickets flowing with Tom Mackenzie bowling an excellent spell and picking up four wickets including a sharp stumping by part time keeper Luke Pedlar. East Torrens managed to make their way to 8/175 after the 40 overs on a pitch that wasn’t offering much for the bowlers and a quick outfield, definitely under par thanks to good all round bowling and tight fielding.

With the bat, we didn’t get off to the greatest of starts losing Alex Chapman early and Michael Cotsios (16) not long after. Dylan Silvy (18) playing his first C Grade game for the club battled hard and worked well with in batsmen Michael Davies as they cruised toward the total. Silvy went first ball after drinks and that brought to the crease young batsman Luke Pedlar. After a shaky start Pedlar looked right at home in the C Grade putting the pressure on the bowling and making use of the quick outfield, hitting two big sixes over square leg off the fast bowling. Pedlar and Davies cruised through the middle overs and put the bad ball away managing to pass East Torrens in the 34th over without much stress, Pedlar and Davies finished with an unbeaten 62* and 60* respectively.

Overall a good display of cricket from the boys, beating East Torrens convincingly with both bat and ball. C Grade are now two from two taking some momentum into the 2 dayers that start next week.