Canada, you missed out
Last Sunday, Game Seven of the World Series became the most-watched baseball game of all time. It led the TV ratings in the United States, recorded colossal figures in Japan and, apparently, was watched at least in part by 45% of the population of Canada (owing to the involvement of the Toronto Blue Jays). Why these people were watching baseball when they could have been following the livestream from Old Kings Oval is anyone’s guess.
Because our weird game of the week featured more action, excitement, twists and turns than a baseball game in which the lead changed once and a pitcher was praised for his extraordinary endurance because he sent down the equivalent of twenty overs in two days.
It started conventionally enough: Parramatta batted, and Ben Abbott and NSW Under-19 representative Nitesh Samuel put together a partnership of 40 in 15 overs. Then Abbott chipped Fletcher May to mid-on, after which all ten Parramatta wickets went down for just 72 runs. The pitch was invitingly green, May and Kieran Tate (playing his 100th First Grade game) bowled a fourth-stump line, the ball nibbled around and Tim Cummins kept taking catches – he finished up with six (and has not, as far as we know, announced that he’s unavailable for the first Test). May ended up with 5-35 and the Students were faced with a very gettable target of 112. At one for 22, with Yuvraj Sharma looking ominously good, that seemed like a straightforward task. But Michael Sullivan and Isaac Earl know all there is to know about bowling at Old Kings, and by stumps University had crashed to 9 for 49 – at one stage losing five wickets for five runs. Early on the second day, Parramatta took an improbable lead of 55 on the first innings. Samuel and Abbott increased that lead by 62, and when Parramatta declared at 4 for 144, University needed 200 in 33 overs. That seemed well beyond a team that had scored 57 in its first attempt, especially when Michael Sullivan broke through with the second ball of the innings. But Jack Attenborough gave himself room to drive cleanly through the off side, Sharma played a handy innings and Patrick Xie applied the accelerator against his old club, cracking 60 from only 50 balls. In the 26th over, Xie slog-swept Hayden Goulstone for six over midwicket, blocked a quicker ball, and then sent the next one even further in the same direction. Xie and Attenborough added 104 before the excellent Sullivan removed them both, leaving it to the veterans Cummins and Mortimer to see University home. The shared points kept both University and Parramatta in the top six. And at least 45% of Canadians missed it.
The number of the week is 35
It's early days, but the First Grade competition looks pleasingly even this season, with every club having recorded at least one win in its first four games. Not only that, but there were some excruciatingly close finishes on Sunday. Campbelltown-Camden was winning its game against Fairfield-Liverpool right up until it didn’t. The Ghosts ran up 356, mostly through Bailey Abela (85), Henry Railz (71) and Imrul Kayes (56), and then Railz and Jeremy Nunan reduced Fairfield to three for 49. For the second week running, Jaydyn Simmons carried his side’s batting almost alone, until Yuva Nishchay hung in to help add 153 for the sixth wicket. Still, when Simmons missed a drive at Railz with his score on 143, Fairfield’s last two batsmen still needed 35 runs. Spoiler: they got them. Jaiveer Singh Dhanoa levelled the scores by whacking Railz through cover for four, survived a furious lbw appeal from the next delivery, and heaved the next ball past square leg to end the game. It went the other way at Sutherland Oval, where Seamus Meaker’s 101 and 59 from Matt Rodgers allowed Sydney to set the hosts a target of 297. Ben Roughnan and Charlie Howard took early wickets as Sutherland stumbled to 3 for 31, but Callum Barton (73) and Luke Ritchie (58) hauled Sutherland back into the game. Last pair Flynn Parker and Will Straker were left with 35 runs to win – the same task that faced the last Fairfield pair – and had made 29 of them when Roughnan found some extra bounce to catch Parker’s outside edge.
Connor Cook went OK
Player of the Match is, usually, a deeply flawed concept: in most matches involving 22 players, any number of contributions play an important part in the outcome. Sometimes, though, one player really does stand out. Gordon, at sea against Usman Qadir’s leg spin, collapsed to 8 for 120 against Hawkesbury before Connor Cook turned the game on its head by belting 75 from 64 balls. He got underway by pulling two short balls from Aarush Soni for four each, and then heaving the over-compensating full toss over wide mid-on for six. Ryan Fletcher bowled his first six overs for just seven runs: from his next two, Cook drove and swiped five boundaries. Even so, at 1 for 54 chasing 201, Hawkesbury looked well-placed. But Joe Pocklington broke through, and Cook chipped in with his off-breaks, taking 3-40. Pocklington ended up with 5-30, which in any other game might have been the standout performance. Not this time.
Param Uppal is in form
Param Uppal belongs to that small, select group of cricketers who you have forgotten played for New South Wales. Uppal was only 19 when he played two Sheffield Shield matches towards the back end of the 2017-18 season, at that time when selectors got excited about the idea of picking players on the basis of how good they might be four years later. Uppal didn’t fail, exactly – he reached twenty three times, and bowled tightly – but nor did he do quite enough to demand another chance. He might be worth another look now. So far this season, for Randwick-Petersham, he has 533 runs at 106.60, with three centuries. He still bowls: 14 wickets at 18.57. On the weekend, he set up a big win over St George with a polished 164 not out. It’s just possible that Uppal has actually turned out to be as good as the selectors thought he would be. If only he were still 19.
Sometimes, cricket makes no obvious sense
If you ever have to explain cricket to someone, you might start by telling them what a run is, and then point out that the team that scores the most runs wins. At that point, probably, you’d get diverted into explaining draws, but you get the drift. Anyway, at Trumper Park on Saturday, Easts scored 9 for 201 from 36 overs (Nick Taylor hitting 79), and Northern District lost its last wicket from the last ball of the 36th over, when Mitchell Brooks was run out with the score on 200. So the result, of course, was a tie. That happened because rain shortened the Easts innings, and the application of the DLS formula adjusted the winning target by one run. Try explaining that to 45% of Canadians.