Five Things We Learned from Round 6

Jaiveer Singh Dhanoa bowls straight

To be honest, we still haven’t quite figured out Jaiveer Singh Dhanoa.  The Fairfield-Liverpool opening bowler ambles in from a short run (which starts with a hint of a Jasprit Bumrah stutter), doesn’t seem disconcertingly quick or bouncy, and doesn’t move the ball around dramatically.  He just keeps getting good batsmen out.  After Brent Williams’ dominant 152 not out allowed Fairfield to close at 9 for 303 against Bankstown, Dhanoa struck two vital blows at the end of day one, bowling Justin Felsch in his second over, and pinning Daniel Solway lbw two balls later.  On the second day, he removed Ryan Felsch and was too good for the tail, as Bankstown collapsed for only 118.  Dhanoa finished with 6-42, five of them bowled or lbw.  As far as we can tell, he’s a touch quicker than you expect from his approach, hits the seam a lot, and bowls very, very straight.  Dhanoa is still in the Under-19 pathway, and his development over the next few years will be interesting to watch.

Dan Christian is still handy

Dan Christian is 41 years old, and it’s been a while since he played in a match that lasted longer than 40 overs.  But he’s still a pretty useful player to have in your First Grade side.  Turning out for University of NSW against Sutherland, Christian went to the crease with his side in trouble at 3 for 46.  He took guard, poked at the pitch for a bit, and then, calmly as you like, drilled his first ball from Zac Philipson through cover for four.  It was a remarkable stroke, with no great backlift and no extravagant swing – just a short, perfectly-timed punch.  In the next over, Thomas Pinson strayed onto Christian’s pads and was whipped to the fence at midwicket.  And Christian carried on in the same vein for the next three hours, picking off every loose ball and hitting it for four – there were 24 of them in all, in his innings of 130 from 156 balls.  Oh, and he bowled, too, running in hard and picking up three wickets.  In his 13th over, he snared Luke Ritchie and Rhys Cattle with successive balls, leaving Pinson to avoid the hat trick by prodding forward hopefully.  The Bees won by a lot.  One thing that has helped to sustain the club over a difficult few years has been the fierce loyalty of a core group of former players, and Christian’s enthusiasm is a perfect example of that spirit.

Sydney can’t be underestimated

It’s doubtful that many people gave Sydney much of a chance of beating Eastern Suburbs but the Tigers showed, not for the first time this season, that they’re not to be underestimated.  Given first use of an unusually spicy pitch at Cricket Central, Sydney’s bowlers made the best of it, budling out the Dolphins for only 119.  Cian Egerton, whose run-up starts from somewhere near deep extra cover, bowled a dangerous line and jagged one back to remove James Matthews lbw.  Two balls later, Angus Robson nicked to third slip, where Will Fort held a sharp, low left-handed grab, and when Trystan Kennedy edged behind, Egerton had taken 3 for 3 in seven balls.  But Sam Skelly was just as effective when Sydney batted, and at the end of the first day, Sydney still needed seven to win, with only two wickets standing.  When play resumed, Tyler Robertson was run out after pushing a single, which left the last pair to make six runs.  Kain Anderson hit Skelly for four, reducing the target to two, but Skelly and Tom Aspinwall then bowled three excruciatingly tense maidens until Kain Anderson sliced skelly away for the winning runs.  Easts had the better of what was left in the game, but it was too late to deprive the Tigers of six valuable points.

Jack James is seeing it well

Also, probably, in the upset category was Hawkesbury’s romp to victory over Randwick-Petersham.  Randwick-Petersham raced to 340 on the first day, scoring at almost four and a half an over and playing with almost cavalier confidence.  But Jack James and Taj Brar ran up an opening partnership of 222, James following his century against UTS North Sydney with an innings of 138.  His last four innings have included two centuries and a 66; it’s fair to say that he’s in decent form.  Brar batted for four and a half hours for his 120, and veteran Dale McKay finished things off with an unbeaten 66.  The result pushes the Hawks into the top six on quotient.

Ryan McElduff is out of place in Seconds

For about twenty minutes, it looked as though the Blacktown Mounties might be able to stop Sydney University’s unbeaten run in Seconds: batting first in tricky conditions, the Students slumped to 2 for 15.  Which brought in Ryan McElduff, who’s playing Second Grade this season through his own choice.  Just over four hours later, University declared at 4 for 349, with McElduff still there on 206.  He played shots all round the ground, especially strong through the on side, and cracked 19 fours and two sixes.  It was the first double-century of his career, the ninth double-century for the club in Seconds and the fifth-highest score ever recorded for the Students in Seconds.  McElduff already has 599 runs for the season, including his 206 not out, a 186, three fifties and an incongruous first-ball duck.  The message for Second Grade attacks this season is to get him first ball, or be prepared for a long afternoon.

Five Things We Learned from Round 5

Jack Hill is less like red wine than you think

Unanticipated MVP of the week was Sydney University’s Jack Hill, whose maiden First Grade century steered the Students to the points against Penrith.  There’s nothing inherently surprising about Hill scoring a First Grade hundred: he began the season in good form, and has over 3000 runs to his name in Seconds, including a double hundred.  It’s just that he made his debut for Sydney University in 2006, and was playing in his 251st Premier Cricket match, and had never before scored more than 19 in First Grade.  We’re reluctant to claim records we can’t quite prove, but we haven’t been able to identify anyone else who has played so much Premier Cricket before reaching three figures in Firsts.

If we were just five percent lazier than we actually are, this is the point where we’d roll out the line about how Hill improves with age like a fine red wine.  But we won’t do that, partly because it’s an awful cliché, and partly because that really isn’t how red wine works.  Certainly, most reds don’t keep getting better once they’ve been in your cellar for 18 years, which is how long Hill has been cellaring in Seconds and Thirds.

Hill batted for three, very different, sessions.  The first was an uncomfortable passage of play on the first evening after University had dismissed Penrith for 124.  The pitch was green and quick, the light indifferent.  Liam Doddrell was hostile and menacing, Sam Grant probing and insistent.  Hill could have been dismissed half a dozen times, but he clung to his wicket tenaciously and guided his side through to stumps with only one wicket lost.  On the second morning, he batted carefully and responsibly with Tim Cummins to take University to within a single run of victory.  Then, after lunch, he stood and delivered, driving, pulling and hacking boundaries all around the ground.  He reached his hundred by carving Doddrell through cover for four.  It was a memorable innings: reports that Hill celebrated with a glass of red wine remain unconfirmed and dubious.

It was a good round to bowl first

Green pitches, heavy skies: it was a good round to bowl first.  The side bowling first won in eight of the ten First Grade matches.  The game between Parramatta and Bankstown was effectively decided within the first 22 overs, in which Bankstown was bundled out for only 80.  Isaac Earl pinned Dan Solway lbw with his second ball, after which Bankstown’s batsmen kept nicking the ball to Dhruv Kant, who held no fewer than six catches (including one spectacular diving grab to remove Riley Kingsell).  Parramatta lost only one wicket before claiming the points.  Similarly, Wests seized the chance to bowl first against Sydney, who managed only 124.  Muhammad Irfan (6-42) did most of the damage, but Finn Gray had the game of his life, taking 4-19 before scoring his first First Grade hundred as Wests piled up a hefty lead.

Riley Ayre is in form

He has always been an all-rounder, but at the start of his career, Riley Ayre probably a bowler who batted.  More recently, he has been more of a batsman who bowls.  This season, though, he bats at four and takes wickets for fun.  On Saturday, against his old club Sutherland, he took a career-best 8-29, the best First Grade bowling figures ever recorded for Randwick-Petersham.  His first wicket was, perhaps, a little lucky: Matthew Hopkins clipped the ball firmly, only for Max Robinson to hang on to a reflex catch at short leg.  Andrew Deitz then slashed at a quicker, wider ball and Anthony Sams juggled the ball before hanging on to it.  Adam Whatley played an extraordinary innings, sweeping his first ball for six, missing a second sweep, and slicing his third ball to slip.  Lachlan Ball was beaten in flight, and prodded the ball to short mid-wicket.  Ayre, left arm orthodox, didn’t turn the ball alarmingly, but he was relentlessly accurate, used the conditions expertly and varied his attack thoughtfully. 

Spencer White looks alright

Every club enjoys it when one of its local products nails down a First Grade place, and Spencer White is the latest batsman to come up through the ranks at Northern District.  White, a graduate of Marist College Eastwood and ND’s Green Shield team, spent most of last season piling up runs in Second Grade, but has well and truly grabbed his opportunity in Firsts this year.  White notched his first century against Campbelltown in Round 4, and followed it up with a savage display at David Phillips last weekend.  There wasn’t all that much pressure when he went in at 3 for 291, but even so, his 57 not out occupied only 26 balls and was an impressive piece of hitting.  He launched five 6s, and with Lachlan Shaw added 104 runs in only 8.5 overs of mayhem.  He’s not, perhaps, the most elegant of batsmen, but he picks up the length very quickly and has a wide range of scoring strokes when giving just a little room to free his arms.  It will be interesting to watch his progress over the course of the season.

The British are coming

The annual influx of English county professionals is now well and truly underway.  It’s not impossible to imagine a universe in which Dom Bess would now be resting up from England’s tour to Pakistan and getting himself ready for a trip to New Zealand.  As it is, the off-spinner played the last of his 14 Tests in 2021 and seems to have fallen off England’s radar altogether.  His first outing for Mosman this season was a mixed bag: he scored a rapid 49 opening the innings, but made no impact with the ball as Fairfield chased down its target with ease.  Leicestershire all-rounder, Ben Mike, picked up an early wicket for Northern District at David Phillips, and his county team-mate Louis Kimber turned out for Sydney against Wests.   Kimber made headlines last season with an absurd innings against Sussex: he went in at 6-144 with Leicestershire chasing 464 to win, and hammered 243 from 127 balls, including 21 sixes (and 43 from a single over bowled by England seamer Ollie Robinson).  No such fireworks this week, but Kimber did follow his four-ball duck by taking two wickets with his off-breaks. The most successful of the imports this week was Lancashire medium-pacer Tom Aspinwall, who collected 4-43 in Eastern Suburbs’ close loss to Manly.

Five Things We Learned from Round 4

We have a winner

Last time we were here, we suggested that maybe St George’s batting strength might be the decisive factor in the final of the Kingsgrove Sports T20 competition.  That prediction looked as clueless as all our other forecasts when, the day before the finals, St George was absolutely rissoled for 93 by Fairfield’s Yuva Nishchay and Jaiveer Singh Dhanoa.  So who did St George play on Sunday in the grand final?  Fairfield-Liverpool again.  Fairfield set St George a target of 166, powered by Coby Holland’s boisterous 65 from 37.  That, on North Sydney Oval, wasn’t obviously a winning score, but after Blake Nikitaras and Kurtis Patterson took 31 from the first five overs, Patterson sliced Hamish Reynold’s first delivery straight to Jaydyn Simmons at point.  Two balls later, Blake McDonald swished at a wide delivery and nicked it to Holland behind the stumps.  Reynolds might even have had a third wicket in the over if there had been a slip in place to intercept Nikitaras’ outside edge.  But in the following over, Brent Williams held a blooped return catch from Matt Rodgers, and St George was deep in trouble at 3 for 36.  At that point, Nikitaras had scored 16 from 17 balls.  From his next 42 balls, he smashed 91 runs.  And he did it, mostly, with pretty conventional batting, rather than reverse dinks and inside-out scoops.  Mostly, he stood still and whacked the ball through the off side whenever he was given any width.  He clipped Reynolds off his toes for four, and when Luke Hodges came on, he picked up a shorter, quicker ball from the left-armer and swung it behind square leg for six.  In the fourteenth over, he chopped Liam Hatcher past slip for four, sliced a drive to the fence at backward point and then hit a third boundary with a sweetly-timed square drive.  He raised his century by driving Hodges high over mid-off, and hit the winning boundary in the following over, with 15 balls to spare.  As if that wasn't enough, he backed up the next Saturday to hit 152 from 117 balls in the second innings of the grade game against Fairfield, who by now must have been sick of the sight of him.  Not a bad week’s work.

Matt Moran came back

Matt Moran hasn’t played for Mosman for a couple of seasons – we assume he’s been trying to perfect the pepper sauce at Aria, or something, although it’s possible we got a bit confused there.  Anyway, on his return to First Grade, he walked out to bat in the local derby against Manly, with the score on 6 for 87 and Ryan Hadley bowling with his tail up.  Understandably enough, Moran started cautiously, but he found things a touch easier when Andrew Boulton replaced Hadley, striking a perfectly timed drive past cover, and playing with wristy elegance whenever the ball went near his pads.  Then he took the attack to the Sussex off-spinner, Bertie Foreman, with a fierce pull shot and a drive through mid-off.  When Hadley came back after tea, Moran was well set, and hooked a short ball in front of square for a flat six.  He added 118 runs with Shehan Sinnetamby, and reached his own century (from 138 balls) by dabbing Thomas Kaye to the third man boundary.  It probably should have been a match-winning innings, but wasn’t, because Mosman batted on into the second day until they had scored 361 and only 80 overs remained.  That turned out to be not quite enough time to bowl Manly out.  Jay Lenton, driving crisply, peeled off his 16th century for Manly – a new club record – but there were 47 balls left when Manly’s ninth wicket fell.  Mosman crowded the bat, but Kaye and Josh Seward played out the draw.

Justin Avendano has resumed usual service

It has been odd this year to watch Justin Avendano turning out for the Blacktown Mounties, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we’re just so used to seeing him with North Sydney.  Possibly he’s been disoriented, too, because his start to the season hasn’t been as productive as we’ve come to expect.  Well, normal service has been resumed.  University of NSW set the Mounties a testing target of 285 and made some early inroads through Thomas Gibson and Gavin Hoey.  But Avendano and Puru Gaur then took control with an unbroken third-wicket stand of 215, in which they both completed their own centuries, to provide the Mounties with their first win of the season.

Randwick-Petersham look solid

Randwick-Petersham produced the round’s most dominant performance, a clinical effort to crush a pretty decent Western Suburbs side.  A massive total of 5 for 375 was based upon the second-wicket stand of 179 between Austin Waugh (121) and Eknoor Singh (135 not out), each of whom hit his first hundred for the club.  Then skipper Riley Ayre baffled Wests with his left-armers, grabbing 5 for 16 in 16 overs.  As always, Randwick-Petersham seems to have a team composed almost entirely of all-rounders, providing depth in the batting and plenty of options with the ball.

There’s a reason this ground was named after a batsman

There are still a few Sydney University players who have sleepless nights over that game at Mark Taylor Oval some years back, when University seconds declared with a score of 500, an hour before stumps on day one, and lost.  Well, there’s a reason the ground was named after a batsman.  Mark Taylor Oval is back in action this season, and very welcome it is, too – unless your idea of fun on a Saturday afternoon is bowling.  Northern District’s Thirds ran up the small matter of 4-403 against Campbelltown-Camden, with William McFadden – who had a couple of games in Seconds last season – racking up 201 not out from 205 balls.  No sixes!  But he did hit 26 fours, and added 225 for the fourth wicket with Elijah Stead, who hit a hundred of his own.  So that’s a winning score, right?  Well, only if you can take ten wickets.  Northern District took six.  Both Campbelltown-Camden openers (Agnik Podder and Karanbir Kahlon) hit centuries, and the game ended in a draw, in which ten wickets fell for 739 runs.  University of NSW Seconds play at MTO this week.  Spare a thought for their bowlers.

Five Things We Learned from Round 3

It’s finals time!  Already!

To those of us above a certain age (say, 21), October seems a touch early for a cricket final, but here we are: the last day of the Harry Solomon Little Bash is this coming Sunday, at North Sydney Oval, where Bankstown meets St George and Northern District faces Fairfield.  The winners will advance to the grand final, later in the day.  Bankstown advanced largely through the efforts of marquee player Will Bosisto, who had a big day last Sunday, cracking 86 from 50 against Sutherland and 88 from 48 against UTS North Sydney.  Lachlan Shaw’s 107 from 57 was the main difference between Northern District and Eastern Suburbs.  Perhaps the best of the quarter-finals was at Old Kings, where Fairfield-Liverpool needed nine from the last over of the day, and got there when Coby Holland hit Michael Sullivan’s fifth ball to the fence.  As for this Sunday… Five Things doesn’t do predictions, but St George’s batting looks pretty formidable.

Saturday was a grim day for bowlers

It was no fun at all bowling at Sutherland on Saturday – cold and unpleasantly windy – and apart from about ten minutes the game was dominated by the bat.  During those ten minutes, Andrew Ritchie took the first two Sydney University wickets, and Sutherland looked, briefly, like defending its total of 237.  But Jack Attenborough set off with a string of boundaries – his first four scoring strokes went to the fence – and Tim Cummins matched him in a third wicket stand of 150.  Cummins, busy and positive, accelerated through the middle overs and remained unbeaten on 92, while Damien Mortimer, in rich form this season, finished off the chase with 49 not out from 50 balls.  University’s bowlers were little more penetrative than Sutherland’s, but they kept things tight, holding Sutherland to a reasonable total despite Andrew Deitz’s disciplined 116 not out.

You always remember the first one

By which we mean, of course, your first First Grade wicket.  Certainly, Bankstown leg-spinner Mitchell Constantinou will remember his.  And so will his victim, Gordon’s Mitchell Lole.  Constantinou, an Illawarra product, came into the attack to bowl the 32nd over.  Gordon was 5 for 143 and Lole, on 14, looked to be the key man if Gordon was to post a decent total.  Constantinou’s first ball stuck in his fingers.  It happens.  The ball possibly landed in Lole’s half of the pitch, but only just.  He could have hit it anywhere.  But, with unerring precision, he picked out Daniel Solway at short mid-wicket.  You can see it here, https://www.instagram.com/gordondcc/reel/DBDpYEvJ2Yh/, unless Lole has managed to get it taken down in the meantime.  Constantinou went on to bowl six tidy overs for only 20 runs, which everyone is much less likely to remember.

Harry Manenti had a good day

Limited-overs games in October are usually played on flat, slow pitches and dominated by batsmen, so it’s worth acknowledging Harry’s Manenti’s effort for Easts against University of NSW on Saturday.  The fourth bowler used by the Dolphins, Manenti bowled straight at a decent pace, trapping Ryan Meppem lbw, bowling Thomas Byrnes and removing Irish newcomer Gavin Hoey in his first spell.  When he came back at the end of the innings, he was ever deadlier, ripping through the tail in a spell of 4-7 – and that included the five wides he sent down in an over-enthusiastic effort to complete a hat-trick.  The Bees succumbed for only 147, a target that posed no real challenge to Easts openers Daniel Hughes and Will Simpson, who needed only 21 overs to knock off the runs.

The game at Hurstville might be the one when you rest that tight hamstring

We’re not suggesting that the NSW selectors have made a mistake, but there are plenty of grade bowlers hoping that they reconsider the question of whether Blake Nikitaras and Kurtis Patterson are Sheffield Shield batsmen.  On Saturday, they dominated a very respectable Northern District attack, both hitting hundreds while sharing a second wicket partnership of 222 in just over 36 overs.  Patterson was marginally faster, hitting 114 from 112 balls, but the feature of the partnership wasn’t massive hitting, but the ruthlessly methodical way in which the two left-handers rotated the strike and kept the score moving with sharp running and deft placement.  The big hitting came on Sunday morning, when Nikitaras (86 from 46) and Patterson (63 from 38) needed only 14 overs to chase down Penrith’s 146 in the T20 elimination final.  Unless the selectors change their mind some time soon, bowling at Hurstville Oval will not be an enjoyable experience this season.

Five Things We Learned from Round 2

Ahilen Beadle is still going

According to the record books, Ahilen Beadle is only 38, which we suppose we have to believe, although it feels as though he’s been around for a bit longer than that.  That’s more or less how Blacktown’s bowlers felt about him last Saturday, since he faced the first ball of Manly’s innings (bowled by Hunar Verma), and also faced the last (again bowled by Verma), on his way to an unbeaten 190 from 138 balls.  We don’t usually think of Beadle as a big hitter, but on Saturday he helped himself to 120 runs in boundaries, clearing the ropes 12 times and adding 12 fours.  He began to accelerate as early as the fourth over, when he hit Guy Hammond for three fours in succession; then he turned his attention to off-spinner Atharv Deshpande, whose ten overs leaked no fewer than 95 runs.  Beadle swung freely across the line, planting the ball over midwicket so often that the tennis players in the adjacent courts should probably have been issued with helmets.  Joel Foster was a little slower to start, but it scarcely mattered; when Foster was out for 63 in the 30th over, the openers had already added 175.  By the end of it all, Beadle had scored exactly half of his side’s 5 for 380.  Blacktown’s bowlers didn’t help themselves, donating four extra overs to Manly through a coach-killing 23 no-balls.  Beadle first played First Grade back in 2003; this was his 14th first grade century, and easily his highest.

Easts had a day out

Penrith was in the game at Waverley Oval for about five overs, which was how long it took Liam Doddrell to remove Easts opener Nicholas Taylor.  After that, Will Simpson and Angus Robson methodically batted the Panthers out of the game.  The second-wicket pair – the left-handed Singapore international and the former county pro – added 179 in a match-defining partnership.  There were no great pyrotechnics, though Robson did hit five sixes: it more a display of controlled, purposeful batting.  Simpson is tall, left handed and graceful through the off-side; the more nuggetty Robson is professionally ruthless through the on side.  Together they put the match beyond Penrith’s reach, and a mercilessly efficient performance by the Easts attack bundled out Penrith for just 97.

Records were threatened at Pratten Park

Sydney University was without Kieran Tate on Saturday, and Will Salzmann was unable to bowl, leaving the Students with a very inexperienced attack.  Wests openers Josh Clarke and Nick Cutler cashed in, almost batting through the whole of the innings.  Nick Cutler had scored 110, and the total was 262, when he missed a sweep at Bailey Lindgard on the first ball of the 47th over.  Actually, the University bowlers contained Wests reasonably well for lengthy periods, but with wickets in hand, Clarke was able to accelerate with some fearless hitting at the back end of the innings, lashing nine 6s on his way to an unbeaten 175 for 140 balls.  His innings was the highest ever recorded for Wests in a limited-overs game -although the opening partnership was a long way short of a club record.  That would be the unbroken 309 assembled by State batsmen Austin Diamond and Jim Mackay against Middle Harbour in 1905-06 – in, since you ask, just 90 minutes.  Salzmann, Damien Mortimer and Tim Cummins all hit half-centuries in University’s reply, but Wests ran out comfortable winners.

Finn Nixon-Tomko had the best day ever

According to the well-known theory advanced by The Grade Cricketer, the ideal result for a batsman is to score a century in a losing team – because, presumably, then you get all the credit for everything, and none of the blame.  So what do you call it when you score a double century in a losing team in a 50 over game?  If this has ever happened before, we can’t find it, but on Saturday, Gordon’s Second Grade built an apparently unbeaten total of 5 for 385, after centuries by Apurv Sharma and Jamie Bekis.  In the Bears’ reply, three of the top five batsmen were dismissed for 1, but Finn Nixon-Tomko, who went in at three, batted through 48 overs to remain unbeaten on 207.  The left-hander, whose previous best effort in Seconds was a 61, relished the proximity of the Bon Andrews boundaries, cracking 18 fours and 10 sixes.  Gordon still won, but only by 43 runs and after a couple of seasons of decent but unremarkable performances, Nixon-Tomko – son of the former Sydney University and Gordon batsman Craig Tomko – suddenly looks like a very different player.

Peter Ferguson was a link to another time

There are probably few current grade players who have much memory of Peter Ferguson, the former Western Suburbs and Sutherland spinner, who died last week at the age of 74.  But he was certainly a memorable cricketer.  He first played for Western Suburbs in the club’s Saturday afternoon Under-16 team, when he was just eleven.  At the age of fourteen, he took 43 wickets in that competition, 18 in Green Shield, two in Poidevin-Gray, and 60 in Fourth Grade – 123 wickets in that 1964-65 season.  Wests held him back a bit – a young left-arm wrist-spinner was a valuable commodity, and they didn’t want to expose him to First Grade too early.  Still, he made his debut at 17, and took 263 wickets at 21.06.  He played with a smile on his face, turned the ball a very long way, and scored runs rapidly in the lower middle order.  He never quite managed a First Grade hundred, but twice he was left not out in the nineties.  Lesser cricketers appeared for NSW during his career, but he played at the same time as David Hourn – arguably the best bowler of his type that the State has ever produced – and there was room for only one of them in the representative sides.   

A look back at Ferguson’s career reminds us how different grade cricket was back then.  Ferguson was part of the Wests team that won the Rothmans Cup knockout in 1967-68.  But he didn’t bowl much, because usually the opposition was bowled out by Wests’ two Test bowlers (Bob Simpson and Grahame Corling) and two NSW bowlers (Brian Rhodes and Wally Wellham).  In 1975-76, Ferguson was a key member of the Wests side that reached the First Grade finals – which included six current or future Test players (Simpson, Peter Toohey, Steve Rixon, Gary Gilmour, Greg Dyer and Dirk Wellham) as well as NSW representative Wally Wellham.  Never again.

Five Things We Learned from whatever round that was

If your club missed the T20 finals, you’re a touch unlucky

So your club made it through to the finals of the T20 Little Bash?  Well, that’s great – but so did eleven other clubs, which seems just a little bit excessive.  The four pool winners – Campbelltown-Camden, UTS North Sydney, Parramatta and Northern District – go through to the quarter-finals, where they’ll play the winners of the four elimination finals played on 13 October.  In those games, Sydney University plays Easts, Fairfield meets Wests, Penrith will play St George, and Bankstown faces Sutherland.  It’s a touch surprising that teams as strong as Randwick-Petersham and Manly missed out, but early-season T20 is not a predictable game.

Josh Philippe is seeing it OK

Fresh from scoring a century in his first game for NSW, Josh Philippe added another hundred in his first game for Western Suburbs – the first time, we think, that this particular double has been achieved.  Have you seen Philippe bat?  If you pitch the ball up, he whacks it, and if you bowl short, he whacks it.  You could try bowling a length, but then he whacks it.  Chasing 149 against University of NSW, he shouldn’t really have had time to score a century, but he hit 110 not out from only 49 balls.  In the first over, Aryan Patel kept him fairly quiet – he hit only two fours, and ten runs in all.  But the third over, also bowled by Patel, went for 26, with Philippe launching the first ball, and each of the last three, over the boundary.  He ended the game by blasting Tyler Grainger-Baldwin for the tenth six of his innings, giving Wests the points with a ridiculous 43 balls to spare.  Incidentally, this is as good a place as any to express our deep disappointment that Blaize Irving-Holliday stopped playing for University of NSW before he had the chance to turn out alongside Tyler Grainger-Baldwin and Jack Hardwicke-Owen (but then, we are very easily amused).

Tim Cummins has been around

Sydney University’s second T20 match last Saturday was Tim Cummins’ 300th First Grade match, a rare milestone and one which serves as a handy reminder that he’s been one of Sydney’s best keeper-batsmen for some time now.  Last weekend, his keeping was as sharp as ever (he both caught and stumped Blacktown’s Kunj Changela from the same delivery) and his calm leadership steered the inexperienced Students into the elimination finals.  University seems to be short a reliable sixth bowler, which limits Cummins’ options in the field, but Kieran Tate showed his best white-ball form with a four-wicket burst against Blacktown, Dylan Hunter bats like a left-handed Josh Philippe, Damien Mortimer is in good touch, and newcomer Bailey Lidgard has shown a very handy ability to kick the score along in the closing overs. 

One super over is unlucky, but two is ridiculous

We suspect that very few club sides bother practising specifically for a super over, because, be honest, how often is that going to happen?  Well, only twice in two days, if you’re Randwick-Petersham.  It worked out well enough on Saturday, when RPs and Gordon each managed 129 from their 20 overs.  Angus McTaggart held Tym Crawford and Axel Cahlin to just eight runs, before Jack Wood launched Quincy Titterton for six to win the game with a ball to spare.  On the Sunday, ridiculously, Randwick-Petersham tied again, despite drawing level with Northern District’s 164 with six wickets to spare and two balls remaining.  At which point, Riley Ayre was run out attempting a match-winning single, and Alex Ross cracked Toby Gray’s final delivery straight to Lachlan Fisher.  Gray kept the ball for the Super Over, conceding only seven runs, and Nikhil Chaudhary needed only two balls to settle the issues, hitting Ayre for two sixes.  Northern District sailed through to the finals as pool winners, while Randwick-Petersham missed out.  It can be a game of very fine margins.

The round’s silliest game was at North Sydney

The lower grade competition kicked off on Saturday, and the most irrational game of the round was in Second Grade at Bon Andrews Oval, where Bankstown collapsed to 9 for 114 against the home side.  At which point, Koby Layton (who hit four 6s in his 66 not out) and Gurinderjeet Hara (57 not out) put together a rapid, unbroken last wicket stand of 136, more than doubling the score and allowing Bankstown to post a more-or-less par total of 9 for 250.  That looked distinctly useful when North Sydney lost its first five wickets for only 126 runs, with Hara (5-40) completing a memorable double.  But North Sydney’s lower order fought hard, and the game was settled by the other last-wicket pair: Jack Atkinson hit the match-winning boundary with only two balls left in the game. 

Five Things We Learned from Opening Day

Don’t worry, we’re as confused as you are

It’s going to take a while to sort this out.

When the season kicked off last Saturday, with the first two rounds of the Harry Solomon Little Bash, most teams were packed with new players, alongside countless old players in new colours.  It was all very confusing.  Sydney University fielded no fewer than four debutants (Bailey Lingard, Cameron Frendo, Mikey McNamara and Darcy Mooney).  Justin Avendano turned up to play at North Sydney, which is usual, but was playing for Blacktown, which isn’t.  Easts’ top six included three newcomers in Trystan Kennedy (formerly of Gordon), Harry Manenti (ex Sydney) and Jake Cross (from Ipswich).  Connor O’Riordan played in the Randwick-Petersham/St George game, but for St George, not Randwick-Petersham, which felt like Opposite Day.  The point being, sides have changed a lot since last season.  Bear with us.  We’ll probably catch up some time around Christmas.

Dylan Hunter still goes off

There should probably be, somewhere in the playing conditions, a rule that prevents Dylan Hunter from playing at Bon Andrews Oval.  That ground, which some of us still think of as North Sydney No2, isn’t quite big enough to contain him, besides which an expressway runs past it, creating some fairly obvious risks.  Western Suburbs’ total of 7 for 177 felt slightly under par, but it was at least defendable – until Hunter clicked into gear.  The bare statistics of the left-hander’s innings are impressive enough – 123 not out from only 64 balls, with 8 fours and a ridiculous 11 sixes – but what that doesn’t tell you is that Hunter didn’t score at all from the first eight balls he faced.  He got over it, though, hitting Hanno Jacobs for 4 and 6 to get moving, and then carving 18 runs from Jack Bermingham’s first over.  Hunter continued to clear the fence with unusual frequency, and when he slammed the last ball of the 18th over to the boundary, University had strolled to a comfortable victory.  Hunter’s move to Canterbury last season allowed him the opportunity to make his first-class debut and play three List A games, although curiously the New Zealand province didn’t use him in any of its T20 (sorry – make that “Dream 11 Super Smash”) games.  As he showed on Saturday, while he’s a good player in any format, he can be especially destructive in the shortest of them.

Some bloke called Warner showed up

And all credit to him.  It’s rare for any representative player, even a recently-retired one, to show up in Premier Cricket these days, and a batsman like David Warner has little to gain and a lot to lose.  If he’d scored big runs for Randwick-Petersham against Bankstown, that would only have been what was expected, and if he missed out, he left himself open to criticism.  But he turned up and played, and made a memorable game (to the extent that anyone remembers any T20 game) a bit more special for both his teammates and his opponents.  For the record, he started out with two dabbed singles, missed an attempted pull shot and then skied a leading edge from an inside-out drive at Ryan Felsch to deep cover, where Jake Smith held the catch.  Randwick-Petersham really should have won: they needed nine from the last over, with seven wickets in hand and Jason Sangha (who had 72 from 46) on strike.  But Felsch produced a remarkable final over, allowing only two singles from his first three balls.  Alex Ross clubbed the fourth ball to long-on and scampered through for two – four needed from two balls.  Angus Campbell’s smart return ran out Ross as he attempted an impossible second run, which meant that Eknoor Singh needed to hit the last delivery for 4 to win the game.  But Felsch cramped him for room, and he could only chop it away for two, leaving Bankstown victorious by a single run.

The Ghosts are away to a good start

Campbelltown-Camden didn’t enjoy the best of seasons last year, but started 2024-25 in impressive style, winning both of their opening matches.  The Ghosts have recruited well: former Penrith all-rounder Jake Scott kickstarted their innings against Fairfield-Liverpool, hammering 62 from only 35 balls, and cracked 42 from 35 against Manly.  Scott also picked up handy wickets, and another newcomer, Jermey Nunan, showed his wicket-taking potential as well. 

Dave Dubey plays in Sydney now

Dave Dubey has been quietly making a name for himself in Canberra for a couple of seasons now, playing for ANU in the ACT competition and turning out for the ACT side in the Toyota Cup Second Eleven matches.  His start in Sydney was impressive: he opened for Penrith against Sydney and hammered 93 from only 46 balls.  Dubey, who’s only 19, is a tall, wristy batsman who looks capable of adding more power to his game when his spare frame fills out a little. Even so, he hit the ball cleanly enough, especially when repeatedly hoisting Tom Mullen’s spinners over the short midwicket boundary at Merrylands Oval.  He was within two hits of a debut hundred when he got underneath a scoop at Hugh Sherriff and skied it to fine leg, but it was a very promising start nonetheless.

Five Things We Learned from Round 16

Wests’ big week went wrong

It was poised to be a phenomenal week for Western Suburbs – first hosting the grand final of the First Grade Limited Overs competition, then needing only a first innings win over Campbelltown to cruise into the qualifying finals in First Grade. 

It didn’t quite turn out how it was supposed to.  Wests sent Northern District in to bat in the Limited Overs grand final, and bowled well enough early on to justify it.  Jack Bermingham took wickets with successive balls, knocking over Scott Rodgie first ball, while Hanno Jacobs and Muhammad Irfan kept things tidy.  But Lachlan Shaw was dropped twice in the 40s – neither a tough chance – and he took the game away from the Magpies, breaking up Tom Brooks’ line with meaty reverse sweeps and pounding the ball through the leg side.  His 117 from 114 balls was a decisive contribution, and NDs bowlers backed it up to secure what was, in the end, a deceptively comfortable victory.  Wests may well still have been wondering “what if?” when they returned to Pratten Park on Saturday to defend their modest total of 188.  Campbelltown resumed at 28 without loss, but Hanno Jacobs grabbed three wickets in no time at all, Jack Bermingham struck twice, and Campbelltown was soon deep in trouble at 5 for 41.  Brendan Smith (60) and Blake Smith (36) led a recovery but with the score on 139, Brendan’s limp pull at Jack Bermingham lobbed a catch to midwicket and brought Wests back into the game.  In the next over, Blake charged at Tom Brooks, missed and was stumped.  It was 8-143 when Ryan Clark was bowled offering no stroke to a ball from Jacobs that may have seamed back a touch.  Wests then looked back in control, but Thomas Patterson and Luke Meek steered Campbelltown to the points and allowed Randwick-Petersham to jump into the top six.  Wests will still have Seconds and Fourths in the finals, but will feel that things could have been very much better.

Next season, the average height of First Grade players will increase by 3.2cm

Sadly, Round 16 marked the final appearances of two of Sydney’s leading slow bowlers.  At Bensons Lane, Steve O’Keefe worked through 12 wicketless overs as St George made light work of a target of 289.  It was a strangely low-key ending for a career which was played out, largely, before bright lights and big crowds in the BBL.  But it was fitting that it ended more or less where it began – O’Keefe was a Hawkesbury Green Shield player, who worked his way into the Australian Under-19s as a batting all rounder.  His batting probably didn’t quite develop as it might have, but his bowling exceeded expectations. His 6-35 in each innings at Gahunje in February 2017 earned Australia a rare Test win in India, and his 224 first-class wickets for NSW cost only 25 runs each.  More recently, his ability to baffle batsmen with the slowest, nudest deliveries imaginable has enlivened the BBL.  O’Keefe is almost forty, so his retirement doesn’t come as a surprise.  Devlin Malone, though, is not yet 26, so his decision to leave the game to focus on his physiotherapy practice is unexpected.  Like O’Keefe, Malone was a teenaged prodigy, breaking into First Grade at Sutherland at 16 and striking three times in his first over.  He went on to take all ten Sydney University wickets in a Second Grade innings, before joining the Students – so there’s a nice symmetry that he went out last weekend with a win for his second club over his first. In all, he managed 364 First Grade wickets, earned through a combination of accuracy, bounce and variation.  He liked to attack the stumps, and was quick through the air, and perhaps the fact that he didn’t fit the conventional mould of a leg spinner told against him when representative teams were chosen.  A handful of State Second Eleven appearances doesn’t seem like fair recognition for a player who has been the leading spinner in Premier Cricket for several seasons – certainly, many less able slow bowlers have appeared in the BBL over that period.  Anyway, good luck to both – Premier Cricket will be a duller competition without them.

Jason Sangha is back in form

Once Wests stumbled against Campbelltown, Randwick-Petersham needed only first innings points over a depleted University of NSW side – missing the recently-retired Hayden and Brandon McLean – to claim a place in the finals.  That mission turned out to be fairly straightforward.  Predictably enough, the consistently excellent Angus McTaggart did the damage when the Bees batted, grabbing 5-25.  McTaggart, the season’s big improver, now has more than 50 First Grade wickets in this campaign.  But perhaps more importantly, Jason Sangha, who has been out of sorts since Christmas, showed some ominously good form with the bat.  Sangha cracked an unbeaten 130 from only 89 balls, smashing 11 fours and a ridiculous eight sixes.  Four times in his innings, he hit two sixes in an over, and three times he hit two successive balls over the rope.  With McTaggart supplying a cutting edge and Sangha now looking dangerous again, Randwick-Petersham can’t be underestimated in the finals.

Parramatta finds ways to win

Of the six sides in the First grade finals, you can argue that Parramatta is the least exciting on paper – sure, they have Ryan Hackney and Nick Bertus, but otherwise they’re a bunch of workmanlike, unglamorous players.  But they’re the reigning premiers for a reason – someone usually finds a way to get their side over the line.  In Round 16, Fairfield cruised to 4 for 189 and looked set for a large total, before Isaac Earl and Michael Sullivan got to work and the last six wickets added only 61 runs.  Then Parramatta found itself in a hole, after Jaydyn Simmons dismissed Hackney and three wickets were down for only 51 runs.  At which point, contrasting innings from Bertus and Patrick Xie steered Parramatta to a comfortable victory.  Bertus hung in for 145 balls for his unbeaten 67; Xie needed only 90 balls for his 102, cracking left-armer Cameron Frendo out of the attack and rushing to his hundred with a flurry of boundaries from Simmons.  Parramatta has a tough assignment against Northern District this weekend, but you wouldn’t bet against them.

It'll do a bit early…

Convinced that the odds of the game are skewed heavily in favour of the batsmen, Five Things loves a collapse, so we couldn’t go past the Fifth Grade match at Don Dawson Oval, where the last-wicket partnership for Parramatta (30, unbroken) was higher than any partnership that Fairfield-Liverpool managed in its two innings of 33 and 44, and was more runs than Fairfield managed from the bat (28) in the first innings.  The second Fairfield innings looked like a scorecard from the under-tens – nine bowlers were used, the best of whom, Aryan Kumar, took four for five from his six overs.  Kudos to Hrehnan Shah who, with 5 and 19, scored a third of his team’s runs.  For everyone else… well, there’s always next season.

Five Things We Learned from Round 15

Four First Grade finalists are settled

Just two Saturdays to go before finals, and the First Grade table remains more or less as it has been since Christmas – the top four is set, and the rest is a mess.  St George, despite its thumping at the hands of Penrith, will still finish as minor premiers even if they all get lost on the way to Benson’s Lane on Saturday (not that we advise this as a strategy, however tempting it may be).  Northern District, Manly and Parramatta will fill the next three, not necessarily in that order.  And then comes the cluster.  Gordon leap-frogged over Wests to sit in fifth with a strong win over Bankstown, featuring the inevitable Tym Crawford century.  They can make their place secure by beating Blacktown.  But Blacktown is in the mix too – if they beat Gordon, and Wests lose to Campbelltown, they’re in the mix.  Randwick-Petersham can make the six by beating University of NSW if other results fall their way.  You can even construct a scenario in which 12th-placed Fairfield beats Parramatta outright, and a whole heap of other sides lose or draw so that they sneak in to sixth.  And that’s before you factor in ties and rain!  But this is Five Things, not 38 implausible conjectures.

There’s another logjam in Seconds

Only three finalists are known for certain in Second Grade.  Bankstown (73) will be minor premiers if they beat Easts (51), unless Manly (71) beat Penrith (52) outright.  Northern District (65) are all but certain to hold their spot in the top three.  Wests sit fourth on 56, but there are no fewer than five teams who could overtake them with just a first-innings win, so they need to make sure they put away Campbelltown.  Sutherland (55) needs to beat Sydney University to remain in the six, and St George (54) needs a win against Hawkesbury.  If any of them stumble, then Parramatta (53) can sneak in with a win against Fairfield.  But St George will be confident after an impressive win over a strong Penrith side, led by Vansh Jani’s 148 from 100 balls, which included 112 runs in boundaries.

Sydney University will play in the finals in Thirds.  Nothing else is certain

A career-best 6-15 by Darcy Manners gave Sydney University a big win over Parramatta last week, and sealed the minor premiership for the Students.  They sit on 81 points, 14 ahead of Manly.  But even on 67 points, Manly is not absolutely certain to play in the finals.  Behind them sit Easts (65), Northern District (63), Parramatta (62), UTS North Sydney (62), St George (61) and Wests (57) – all of whom could potentially overtake Manly (whose quotient, 1.161, leaves it especially vulnerable).  Manly does have the advantage of playing Penrith, who sit dead last with only two wins.  And there’s one critical match-up: UTS North Sydney play Northern District in what looks like a straight shoot-out for a finals place.  If North Sydney loses, it will drop behind Wests if Wests can beat Campbelltown – who are running second-last with only three wins.

You ignore quotients all year, until you don’t…

Coaches like to shout that every run counts.  Well, sometimes every single run does count.  In Fourth Grade this week, fifth-placed Easts (59) plays Bankstown (53), and if Bankstown wins, it could slip past on quotient, where Easts hold a lead (1.402 to 1.387) so slight that it may not be strong enough to survive a loss by anything more than a run or two.  We don’t really do maths here (there’s a reason we don’t go past Five Things), but we calculate that difference in quotient to equal the over-aggressive throw to the bowler’s end that went for four overthrows back in Round Four.  Still, Easts have a couple of highly experienced players in Oliver Maxwell and Jackson Coutts, and pounded University of NSW last week – James Britnell, who opened the season with successive ducks in Fifths, hit a ridiculous ten 6s in his innings of 93.  There may be some jostling over final placings, but Manly (82), Northern District (75) and Wests (74) will all play in the Fourth Grade finals.  Then there are potentially eight teams jostling for the last three places.  Sydney University (60) has clung onto its place in the six for some time, and has a relatively comfortable draw against fourteenth-placed Sutherland (although more than one finals contender has slipped on that kind of banana skin).  St George sits in sixth, and really should see off last-placed Hawkesbury – but if that goes wrong, Gordon (54) and Parramatta (51) still have a hope.

Manly looks hard to beat in Fifths

Manly are your Fifth Grade minor premiers, having already earned a highly impressive 89 points.  Also safely into the finals are Parramatta (78) and Easts (71), while it would take a series of freak events to displace Gordon (67).  Eighth-placed Wests (53) need an outright win over Campbelltown and another series of freak results, which could include seventh-placed St George losing to last-placed Hawkesbury.  Wests are horribly unlucky – they didn’t get onto the field at all last week, when they would have expected to beat 19th-placed Blacktown.  Essentially, Sydney University (61) and UTS North Sydney (60) face an identical challenge – win and you’re in.  North Sydney’s batting has been unconvincing lately, but a decent attack, steered around by the experienced Patrick Lindsay, usually keeps them in the context. 

Five Things We Learned from Round 14

Mosman’s weekend didn’t work out as planned

With two rounds to go, the composition if the top six is… still nowhere near clear.  Mosman had a chance to cement its place in the six when it played Bankstown, and chose to bat first at Bankstown Oval.  But it took Ryan Felsch only two balls to remove Matthew Calder, after which the Whales fell in a heap.  Nick Browne stood firm for 52 overs, remaining 40 not out, but his team-mates gathered six ducks between them as Mosman was bundled out for only 75.  There was no way back from there, and Bankstown completed the outright win with eight wickets in hand.  Mosman’s next match, against Manly, suddenly looks very important indeed.

Wests had a big weekend

Wests, on the other hand, romped to a big win over Eastern Suburbs, jumping over Mosman to take fifth spot.  And the Magpies also advanced to the final of the Limited Overs Cup.  Yes, it’s still going.  Usually, the First Grade Limited Overs Cup is either compellingly interesting, if your club is still in it, or a bit irrelevant, if you’ve been knocked out.  But there was plenty of interest in Wests’ semi-final last Sunday, because they showed that St George can be beaten.  Muhammad Irfan played a key role, removing Matt Rodgers, Ed Pollock and Blake Macdonald in his first spell to reduce St George to 3 for 26.  Kurtis Patterson (87) and Nick Stapleton (85) then rebuilt the innings with a fourth-wicket stand of 172, which seemed to put their side back on top.  But Irfan (5-32) and Hanno Jacobs (3-41) bowled exceptionally well at the back end of the innings, and the St George total of 239 was a little short of par.  James Psarakis held the chase together with an unbeaten 77, but there was an agonising break for rain when Wests needed 27 from seven overs, with three wickets in hand.  When play resumed,  it took a flurry of late blows from Irfan, whose 32 not out occupied only 31 deliveries, to get Wests over the line.  Irfan, who has long levers and an idiosyncratic technique, hit successive boundaries to complete a memorable match for him and a perfect weekend for his club.  With two rounds remaining, Wests has one grand final appearance (against Northern District) booked, and all five grades are still able to reach the finals.

Smit Raval spoiled the fun for Randwick-Petersham

Needing to win to keep up with the top six, Randwick-Petersham couldn’t have asked for a better start: the increasingly impressive Angus McTaggart (6-31) triggered a collapse that left Blacktown in all sorts of trouble at 8 for 107.  At that point, however, Smit Raval somehow managed to squeeze another 89 runs from the last two wickets, assisted by some incredibly patient blocking by Josh Boyden, who lingered around for 132 balls while scoring 27.  Boyden, a brisk left-armer, was far more entertaining with the ball – he induced Blake Weymouth to prod a catch to Raval at leg slip, and had Jake Egan caught behind with a ball that angled across him.  Jermey Nunan shaped a ball away from Jason Sangha, who edged behind, and at the end of the first day, Randwick-Petersham needed 150 runs with seven wickets in hand.  It didn’t look all that demanding, especially when the score reached 3 for 72, but the introduction of Raval’s leg spin caused immediate chaos.  Ashley Burton, leaning forward, nicked another catch to keeper Gus Small; Riley Ayre was lbw, propping forward; and when Cam Hawkins, playing back, edged to Matt Day at slip, Raval’s spell had delivered three wickets for only two runs.  Blacktown won by the deceptively wide margin of 62 runs, and join Randwick-Petersham on 37 points, just three points away from sixth place.

Frankie Nicklin is on the way up

Without attracting a great deal of fanfare, Sydney University all-rounder Frankie Nicklin is enjoying the kind of season that suggests she has a very promising future in the game.  A 19 year old first-year university student, Nicklin was the leading wicket-taker in this season’s national Under-19 Championships, and her form in Premier Cricket has been consistently impressive.  Bowling tidy off-breaks with an economical action, Nicklin bowled immaculately against Gordon, taking 5-25 (she actually wrapped up the Gordon innings by taking five for five in her last three overs).  Against Campbelltown-Camden, she set up University’s win with a lively innings of 104, her first century of the season.  Her batting, like her bowling, is neat, correct and well-organised, and she has some fluent off-side strokes.  Nicklin, who has already played once for the NSW Breakers in the WNCL, has been identified as a likely prospect for some time, but her performances this season indicate that she’s ready to step up into representative cricket on a more regular basis.

Next week, the scorer’s opening the bowling

Weird game of the week was at Mike Pawley Oval, where Manly’s table-topping Fifth Grade side took on Parramatta.  Manly found itself struggling for numbers, and so pressed into action its Third Grade manager, Will Gustafson, and its Fourth Grade manager, Noah Vumbaca, neither of who had played for the club this season, or indeed, expected to play.  That didn’t seem very significant when Parramatta subsided to 9 for 132, but Harry Willoughby and Avyukt Iyer then made the game a little interesting by adding another 70 runs for the last wicket.  Parramatta captain Liam Gillies then grabbed five wickets to leave Manly struggling at 9 for 175, still needing 28 and with only the two late recruits to bat.  To begin with, they poked and prodded, picking up the occasional single, but Gustafson and Vumbaca inched closer to the target, and Vumbaca settled the issue by hitting two fours in the 80th over.  So across the two innings, the last wicket added 98 runs for the loss of one wicket, while 18 other wickets fell for 307 runs.  None of which makes a good deal of sense.

Five Things We Learned from Round 13 (and Taylor Swift)

At Five Things, we’re culture snobs who are hopelessly out of touch, but even we noticed that Taylor Swift managed to clean up at the Grammys this week, somehow becoming – simultaneously – the biggest story in American music, sport and politics.  So this week, we surrendered to the strange times we live in, and learned five things from Premier Cricket and Taylor Swift lyrics.  It’s an exercise that would have been a whole lot easier if Grade cricketers broke up with each other a bit more often, but here goes.

Puttin’ someone first only works when you’re in their top five

With three rounds remaining before the finals, there is now a fairly clear top five: St George marching onwards on 74, Northern District on 59, Manly on 51, Parramatta on 49 and Gordon on 40.  The first four of those seem all but certain to play finals cricket: Gordon now plays three teams in the bottom eight, and so it will fancy its chances too.  But as many as nine clubs will feel that they have a shot at the last place.  If Western Suburbs beat Eastern Suburbs next round, they probably end the Dolphins chances; but if Easts win, they jump above Wests on the table.  Mosman can hang on to sixth place by beating a rebuilding Bankstown side, and Randwick-Petersham can keep its hopes alive when it faces up to Blacktown.  Campbelltown Camden is still in the mix, but probably won’t be after this round, when they’re next in line to be beaten up by St George.

When you’re young, you just run, but you come back to what you need

Austin Waugh hit his first century in First Grade last weekend, which feels like a strange thing to write, because he’s been around for so long and was such a bright teenage prospect.  Then he became weary of the game, and needed a break, but now he’s back, apparently playing for fun and without much of the pressure he experienced on his way through the game’s pathways.  He certainly enjoyed himself against UTS North Sydney, picking up a couple of cheap wickets as the Bears were bowled out for 141, then holding the Sutherland innings together after the loss of three early wickets.  Waugh almost ran himself out on 98, racing off for an impossible single before being sent back, but he raised his hundred (from 161 balls) by cutting leg-spinner Nihal Desai for a sharp single, then getting up from his dive to take the overthrow.  Waugh defended watchfully, drove cleanly and cut hard – and then, for good measure, picked up the important wicket of Justin Avendano in the Bears’ second innings.  Another Shark who enjoyed a big match was former Sri Lankan Test off-spinner, Tharindu Kaushal, who scored 58 and picked up eight wickets over two innings.

Knew he was a killer first time that I saw him

It was a pretty good round for debutants.  Manly had slumped to five for 115 when Jordan Daly began his first innings in the top grade.  He survived a first ball appal for lbw, then tapped his next delivery into the off side to scramble a single.  He was a touch lucky early on – a careless waft at Will Salzmann might have gone anywhere, but flew through the slips to the fence.  After that he played more cautiously, until he cashed in during the final session.  The fact that Manly batted into the second day gave him a chance to post a century, but he was given out on 90 when Hunar Verma moved a ball away from him.  He didn’t seem altogether happy with the decision, though that might have been disappointment at getting so close to a rare milestone.  Even so, it was an exceptional start.  Meanwhile, the latest player to join the St George juggernaut is burly off-spinner, Dayle Carew, who returned an impressive 3-26 from 14 overs against Blacktown – not bad for a player who started the season in Fourths.

The world is spinning round

Usually, this is the part of the season when the pitches get greener and the seamers enjoy themselves.  But it was the leg spinners who prospered last weekend.  Western Suburbs’ Tom Brooks solved the season’s biggest puzzle – how to dismiss Tym Crawford at Chatswood before he scores 150 – not just once, but twice.  In the first innings, Brooks drew Crawford forward to defend a leg break that did just enough to clip the outside edge on its way to Josh Clarke at first slip.  In the second innings, Crawford aimed an airy drive at a fuller, higher-flighted ball, and edged to Clarke again.  Brooks ended up with 4-50 and 5-70, although the Magpies’ push for outright points was thwarted by Trystan Kennedy, who remained not out on 91 when time ran out.  At University Oval, Devlin Malone became the fifth-highest First Grade wicket-taker in Sydney University’s long history, taking five of the first six Manly wickets to fall.  He needed only four balls to take his first wicket, trapping Matt Brewster with one that skidded on, and two overs later he turned one past Joel Foster’s defensive prod.  He bowled an excellent, probing over to Jay Lenton, finally beating the left hander with extra bounce, and drawing a leading edge to short cover.  His five-wicket haul was the twelfth of his First Grade career.

I told you I’m not bulletproof.  Now you know.

Daniel Solway has been a colossal figure in Premier Cricket for several years, which is why it’s worth observing that when Parramatta’s Isaac Earl bowled him in Round 13, he recorded his second duck in succession.  This is not a usual occurrence.  Mind you, just as good players can lose form from time to time, they can also rediscover it – as Nick Bertus proved in the same game.  By his own standards, Bertus hasn’t had a particularly good season, but he came through in the clutch against Bankstown, helping his side regroup after the middle order collapsed to Bankstown’s spinners.  Bertus found an unlikely ally in Kyle Thornley, and their ninth-wicket stand of 35 edged Parramatta home for a vital win.  Bertus finished on 87 not out, a reminder that while players like he and Solway may not be bulletproof, nor can they ever be taken lightly.

Also, apparently, the players gonna play, play, play, play, play.  For three more rounds at least.

Five Things We Learned From Round 12

Realistically, there are two finals places to play for

So there are now four rounds to go, but already the shape of the top six is fairly clear.  St George, who have won 11 from 11, will be minor premiers unless every single player in the club tests positive for performance-enhancing substances between now and the end of March.  They’re a ridiculous 15 points clear of Northern District, second on 53, who are also certain to play in the finals.  Manly (45) and Parramatta (43) look pretty secure, because there’s a ten-point gap between Parramatta and seventh-placed Penrith (33).  Gordon (40) and Mosman (37) are potentially vulnerable to a chasing pack that includes Easts (33), Wests (32) and a bunch of teams on 31.  This week, Gordon play Wests, and Mosman plays Penrith – so Penrith has a chance to pass Mosman, and Wests could theoretically (with an outright) pass Gordon.  What complicates things is that all the remaining games are two-dayers (so there are 40 points still available) and it’s going to rain (which always creates the risk that good teams get no points at all).  Next week will shake things up, but the last two spots may not become clear for some time yet.

Nick Larkin still plays

Sydney University came within an over or two of taking first innings points against Bankstown on day one, and it wasn’t entirely coincidental that this was the game in which Nick Larkin returned to the top of the Students’ order.  Larkin has missed several games through a combination of BBL duties, Blues coaching work and parenthood, but if Bankstown were hoping he’d be rusty, they were disappointed.  Bankstown’s total of 139 seemed well under par on a slow and unthreatening pitch: Will Salzmann removed Daniel Solway for a first-ball duck, and the Bulldogs never recovered.  Kieran Tate, Devlin Malone and Harrison May all maintained the pressure, and University was left with 21 overs to bat at the end of the day.  Larkin got things moving by driving Ryan Felsch through cover, before whacking a delivery from Liam Marshall that was only fractionally short to the fence at square leg.  It wasn’t a bad idea to introduce spin early, but Larkin welcomed Kobe Layton into the attack by swiping a boundary through midwicket and launching a full-length ball over the bowler’s head for a straight six.  Larkin raced to 84 from 71 balls, and it took some dogged batting from Bankstown’s lower order on the second day to deprive the Students of full points.

Manly won the Green Shield

The upsets in the Green Shield happened in the semi-finals, when the two highest-placed teams, Northern District and Gordon, were knocked out by Manly and Parramatta.  Manly hosted the final at Manly Oval, batted first, lost a wicket in the first over and struggled to 5 for 110 against some disciplined bowling.  But Miles Milliner, who plays Shires cricket for Warringah, blasted Manly back into the game by taking on the Parramatta spinners.  The left-hander’s 76 came from only 58 balls and included four sixes, either driven straight down the ground, or pulled over midwicket.  Chasing 216, Parramatta was well in contention at 2 for 88, with the excellent Blake Noorbergen well set on 23.  But left arm spinner Myles Kapoor produced an arm ball that scuttled through to bowl Noorbergen, and medium pacer Bill Martin kept a good line and length to profit from some increasingly desperate lower-order slogging.  Martin collected 5-30, and the leg stump yorker with which he took the last wicket gave Manly is first Green Shield success since 1991-92.

Addison won the battle of the Sheriffs

UTS North Sydney all-rounder, Addison Sheriff, had a memorable game against his former club Sydney, which was made a touch spicier by the presence of his brother, Ellis, in the opposition.  Ellis was on top early, grabbing a couple of early wickets as Sydney reduced the Bears to 7 for 111.  But Addison was still there, and he received some sensible support from Olly Knight and Everett Oxenham, with whom he added 137 runs for the next two wickets.  Addison’s game is neat and well-organised, and is largely based on waiting for the right ball to drive, although he also cuts effectively when allowed any width.  He hit seven boundaries in his 111, reaching his first hundred in the top grade by dabbing left-arm spinner Tom Mullen away to third man.  Addison is still only 17, and it will be interesting to see what he does when he adds a touch more power to his game.  The Bears’ bowlers wrapped things up efficiently on the second day, when captain Mac Jenkins knocked over the tail and collected the absurd figures of 4-4.

Harpo was unique

Saddest news of the week was the loss of Neil (“Harpo”) Marks, at the age of 85.  Harpo was an outstanding young batsman, who burst into first-class cricket in 1958-59, scoring 180 not out on his debut for NSW against South Australia.  When he scored 103 in his second game, against Victoria in Melbourne, he was hailed as cricket’s next big star.  But he played only eight more first-class matches: he had a congenital heart defect, which required surgery in the United States, and afterwards he never returned to top-level cricket.  But he never left Northern District.  He scored the first of his 18 centuries for the club in Green Shield in 1951-52, and he remained an outstanding First Grade batsman for twenty years, until he decided to drop down to captain Seconds to help develop the club’s younger players.  His captaincy was a unique combination of fierce competitiveness – he set and demanded high standards – and affability, because he knew everyone in Sydney cricket, everyone knew him, and everyone liked him.  The success that Northern District enjoyed in the 1980s had its roots in Harpo’s Second Grade teams of the 1970s.  He was also an early promoter of the young Mark Taylor.  He became patron of the Northern District club – a devoted one-club man.  There was much more, of course – he was a State selector, a popular writer, an in-demand speaker.  He’ll be missed, and not only at Waitara.

Five Things We Learned from Round 11

New year, same old stuff

We’re a couple of weeks into the new year, which means that most of those earnest resolutions made late on 31 December are now receding into the distance.  Not much has changed in Premier Cricket, either.  On Saturday, St George won and Blake McDonald scored 184.  Chatswood Oval had a road where its pitch should be, and Tym Crawford smashed 164.  It’s just like 2023.

Will Salzmann hits it cleanly

Sydney University went down to Gordon at Chatswood Oval, after the inevitable (but still impressive) Tym Crawford century.  But they went down fighting, thanks in part to an exceptional all-round effort from Will Salzmann, who backed up his four wickets with a spectacular innings.  Opening the Students’ innings with Jack Attenborough, Salzmann played circumspectly for a couple of overs, and then put his foot down.  He hit Quincy Titterton for an off-driven four that was pure timing, pulled a good length ball over mid-wicket for 6 and cracked a free hit over cover for 6 more.  Salzmann was equally brutal when Nick Toohey bowled the sixth over, playing a casual flick off his hip over the backward square fence and cover-driving for 4.  A pull for 4 from Toohey’s bowling brought up his 50 from only 30 balls.  He’d reached 91 from 54 when he sliced a drive at Connor Cook to cover, but it was an exhilarating innings, full of clean hitting and deft timing. 

Baxter Holt is still pretty useful

Just a couple of seasons ago, Baxter Holt was the next big thing for the NSW Blues and Sydney Thunder.  He hasn’t played for either team this season, but he still has impressive credentials as a keeper/batsman, and he bailed Eastern Suburbs out of a hole at North Sydney on Saturday.  The Bears batted first and posted 241 – not a big score at North Sydney Oval, but something of a recovery after Sam Skelly struck twice in his second over.  That included the big wicket of Justin Avendano, caught by Holt without scoring.  But Easts didn’t do much better against the new ball – they lost two for seven, and were then 3-56 when Angus Robson was dismissed.  It took Holt nine balls to get off the mark, but he did it in style, clipping Ollie Knight through mid-wicket for 4, then repeating the stroke to the next delivery.  He then welcomed Harrison Lee-Young to the bowling crease with a sweetly timed cover drive to the fence.  Lee-Young, who has a distinctive, slightly slinging action, made an important breakthrough when Angus Robson top-edged a pull shot straight up in the air, but Holt and Will Simpson settled the game with an unbroken stand of 177 in 31 overs.  Holt was clam, well-organised and unhurried, and ended up unbeaten on 104 from 109 balls.

Sometimes it does a bit early

Anyway, one thing we definitely learned is that if you play at Blacktown International Sports Park, the surface seems to be quite helpful to bowlers with the new ball in hand (as the late, great Alan Davidson used to say, “it’s a bit conducive”).  Mosman played Northern District at Blacktown on Saturday, and it took only three balls for Elijah Eales to remove Cameron Tunks.  After 16 overs, a pretty handy Northern District lineup had crashed to 6 for 48.  Most of that damage was done by St Patrick’s Strathfield schoolboy, Josh Malone, whose haul of 4-20 from ten overs included Scott Rodgie and the in-form Mitchell Crayn.  But former Mosman player Danul Dassanayake steadied the innings, Josh Baker contributed 41 from number ten, and Northern District battled their way to 178.  But what Elijah Eales and Josh Malone can do, Ross Pawson and Jake Cicotta can also do, and Mosman slumped to 5 for 44 in reply.  There was no recovery for the Whales – Cincotta ended up with 5-19, and having been 6-48 early in the game, Northern District won by 70 runs.

There’s still plenty of fight left in Sydney

For quite a while, the game between Penrith and Sydney seemed to be going the way you’d expect.  Penrith, playing for a place in the top six, batted first and racked up five for 283, with Nick Adams hitting 102 and Brent Williams 84.  Sydney, playing for self-respect and to avoid the foot of the ladder, lost its first two wickets to Ryan Fletcher with only seven runs on the board.  So far, so predictable.  But Sydney captain Nathan Doyle wrestled his side back into the contest with a fighting innings of 102 and Sydney looked well placed at 3 for 173.  But Luke Hodges produced a mean spell of slow bowling, picking up three important wickets, and with four overs remaining, Sydney still needed 42 runs with two wickets in hand.  At the crease were Thomas Mullen, who had reached double figures only twice in 14 matches this season, and Ellis Sherriff, who bats behind Thomas Mullen.  The left-handed Mullen began by swishing hopefully at Fletcher, but then started to make contact, clubbing an inelegant slog past mid-on for a couple, and flat-batting a 4 through cover.  36 needed from three overs.  15 came from the 48th over, bowled by Liam Doddrell, including a ridiculous stroke played by Mullen from several feet outside leg stump, that sent the ball to third man for 4, and a nicely-timed pickup from Sherriff over mid-on for six.  The excellent Fletcher pulled things back in the 49th over, allowing only five singles, which meant that 16 runs were needed from Doddrell’s final over.  Mullen, giving himself room, clubbed 4 past point and punched a single to deep cover.  Doddrell bowled a length ball to Sherriff, who slog-swept it over midwicket for 6.  That meant that Sydney wanted five runs from three balls, but Sherriff needed only one of them, picking up a low full toss and swinging it over the boundary for, maybe, the most implausible win of the season so far.

Five Things We Learned from Round 10

There’s a top six starting to form

With this frantic season pausing for two weeks to catch its breath over the new year, the top six in First Grade is slowly taking shape.  Anyone taking odds on who’ll be there will have closed the book on St George, who have opened the season with nine straight wins.  Five Things usually reckons that, to make the finals, a side needs something between 54 and 60 points, which means that St George (on 56) could lose every game between now and March and still have a pretty good chance (although we do not recommend this approach).  Saints are followed by Northern District (41), Mosman (37), Manly (33), Penrith (33) and Parramatta (31).  But Penrith and Parramatta play each other in the next round, and Gordon (28), Easts (27), Wests (26), Fairfield (25) and Randwick-Petersham (25) will be looking to make up ground on whoever loses that one.

McElduff got the Students back on track

Sydney University’s recent slide looked like continuing when the Students slumped to 3 for 22 at North Sydney Oval.  But the Students have found a way to win from tight corners against North Sydney in recent seasons, and Ryan McElduff (88) and Tim Cummins (69) rebuilt the innings with a partnership of 136.  Cummins got off the mark with an effortless cover-drive for 4 off James Campbell, and played with the confident aggression that has marked his batting form this season, which is the most consistent of his career.  McElduff survived a few anxious moments early in his innings, but quickly grew In confidence, playing his trademark flick off the pads, and hitting a sweetly timed back foot drive for 4 against Nic Bills.  He welcomed Everett Oxenham into the attack by thumping the off-spinner over long-off for 6, and cleared the fence again when he swung a short ball from Campbell over backward square.  University’s 9 for 262 proved too steep a target for North Sydney, who lost wickets regularly to the spin combination of Devlin Malone and Andrew Hazard.  Harrison May, making his First Grade debut for the Students against his old club, struck with only his second ball, when Tim Reynolds chipped a catch to mid-on.  May’s attempt to revive the 1980s-style headband is a bold fashion choice but not, we suspect, one that’s likely to catch on.

Ed Pollock went off

The interesting thing about St George’s unbeaten run is that every week they have a different matchwinner.  This time it was Worcestershire batsman Ed Pollock, who made chasing 251 in 50 overs look like a walk in the park, if that walk included bashing everything that came across your path.  Pollock drove his first ball, from Connor McKerr, straight for 4, and barely slowed up after that.  His innings included a few uncertain swishes, but plenty of fluent drives and a number of shots that defy orthodox description, like his short-arm slog-pull for 6 from Josh Baraba.  He greeted seamer Yuva Nishchay with another 6 over midwicket, missed the next two balls, then picked up a full-length ball outside off stump and somehow swept it for six.  The introduction of spin didn’t help: Pollock smashed Cameron Frendo over midwicket, too.  In all, he hit nine 6s while scoring 116 from 58 balls.  At the other end, Kurtis Patterson batted quite beautifully for a run-a-ball 70.  No one noticed.

Andrew Ritchie had a good day

Sutherland’s Andrew Ritchie is the kind of player you think of as a hard working, reliable bowler, rather than the guy who runs through a side.  On Saturday, he ran through a side.  With the very first ball of the match against Blacktown, Ritchie hit the very top of Gus Small’s off stump.  He followed that with a leg-side wide to Eknoor Singh, then nipped the next ball back in to hit the top of leg stump.  In his second over, he beat and bowled Kunj Changela, and won an appeal for lbw against Puru Gaur with his next ball.  At that point he had the absurd figures of 4-2 from 1.4 overs.  He ended with a career-best 6-23, and Sutherland walked away with a bonus-point victory.

Fairfield Fourths missed out on a record

Lower grade records are patchy and kind of a mess, so don’t quote us on this, but Five Things is not aware of any time when a grade team has been bowled out for less than 10.  12, sure.  14, often.  But less than 10?  Not so far as we know. 

Anyway, so Fairfield’s Fourth Grade side missed a unique opportunity to write a new chapter in Premier Cricket history in their match against St George.  Chasing 173, they started well enough, taking three runs from the first two overs.  They then managed to lose seven wickets while adding just three more runs.  There was a run out, then a wicket to the inevitable Steve Wark, and the William Taylor took 5-1 in the space of twenty balls.  At that stage, Fairfield was seven down for six runs, and Taylor had a hand in every wicket to fall, executing the run out and holding a catch, as well as taking his own five wickets.  Slightly disappointingly, Ethan Muller then whacked ten runs from an over from Wark, and so Fairfield (who reached 52) merely lost heavily, when the chance to do something truly historic was on offer.

Five Things We Learned from Round 9

Scott Rodgie ˃ Tym Crawford (this week anyway)

So Tym Crawford hit his third century in a row, this time 119 from 92 balls with five sixes.  And, yes, it was at Chatswood, but that is still very, very impressive.  Except, this week, not quite as impressive as Scott Rodgie, who batted through Northern District’s massive innings of 2 for 352 to hit a career-best, unbeaten 165 from 157 balls.  Rodgie shared a rapid second wicket stand of 206 with Lachlan Shaw, who needed only 78 balls for his 114 – and, in the process, Rodgie took his career tally of First Grade runs beyond 11,000.  To top it off, Rodgie played a role with the ball.  Gordon reached 2 for 193, needing 160 from 20 overs with wickets in hand, Crawford in full flight, and Chatswood’s boundaries not getting any longer.  Rodgie’s medium pacers are no longer as zippy as they once were, but even so he managed to deceive Crawford with a slower ball, who lobbed a catch back to the bowler rather in the way that a batsman in French cricket deliberately taps a catch to a very uncoordinated child.  Just now, Crawford is playing exceptionally well – but, on Saturday, not quite as well as Rodgie.

Country cricket is… different

Congratulations to Wests and Manly for a couple of interesting collaborations this season.  First, there was the Archer Gray Testimonial match, a great cause generously supported by the two clubs.  Then, Wests and Manly took their Round 9 match to the bush, for a day-night encounter at Wade Park in Orange.  It was an exciting contest, won by Wests by just 12 runs – but it was also memorable for a whole heap of reasons you wouldn’t usually expect.  Top scorer for Wests was a batsman who made his first-class debut at the age of 14, and fled Afghanistan after the Taliban killed his father.  Farhan Zakhail hit a vital 54 to boost Wests to a decent total after the middle order struggled against Joel Davies.  Manly’s Lachlan Coyte made his First Grade debut for the club – in his home town, Orange, an event that he can’t possibly have anticipated when he went to play on the peninsula.  In Manly’s innings, the first three batsmen fell to Hanno Jacobs and Muhammad Irfan without scoring and there were three first-ballers in the innings.  Chasing 244, Manly looked dead and buried at 9 for 126, but Thomas Kaye (61 not out) and Josh Seward (58) then inexplicably added 106 for the last wicket, before Josh Clarke lured Seward into one stroke too many.

Jaiveer Singh Dhanoa looks interesting

In a steady, unfussy way, Mosman has climbed back into the top six, winning matches in the way they did en route to a premiership a couple of seasons back.  They had too much experience for Fairfield, winning their encounter at Rosedale by 40 runs.  But the most interesting performance of the day came from Fairfield’s medium pacer, Jaiveer Singh Dhanoa.  Dhanoa played NSW Metropolitan Under-17s last season, and at first glance there’s not much too him.  He’ slightly built, and his run up is so gentle it looks almost apologetic.  There’s nothing very explosive about his release.  And then, just when you start to think that he looks a bit plain, he slips a ball through Nick Browne’s defence, and the middle stump goes flying.  Dhanoa ended up with four wickets – it will be interesting to see how he looks once he’s a touch older and stronger.

Parramatta looks strong again in Green Shield

That annual carnival of fresh-faced enthusiasm, the AW Green Shield, kicked off on Sunday, with Parramatta sending a powerful signal that it will once more be a force in this competition.  Parramatta crushed Gordon by the tidy margin of 241 runs, largely because of a ferocious innings from Blake Noorbergen, who cracked 145 from 114 balls.  Noorbergen, who’s in his third season of Green Shield, had a fairly decent weekend, as he whacked 100 from 103 balls in Third Grade on the Saturday.  Noorbergen looks good – his defence is well-organised, he has a good range of back-foot scoring shots, he scores lots of singles and he punishes anything loose.  Noorbergen’s previous Green Shield innings was a first-ball duck in last year’s final – which Parramatta won anyway.  Their title defence couldn’t have got away to a better start.

Metro Cup is never dull

Five Things doesn’t often go to Metropolitan Cup, but maybe we should, because while the cricket there may be variable in standard, it’s always interesting.  Take Saturday’s game between Penrith and Sutherland at Tonkin.  Sutherland sent Penrith in to bat, and inside the first eight overs, Jack Logan and Joshua Watson reduced Penrith to 5 for 12 – and all of the first five batsmen dismissed failed to score.  But they didn’t remove the number three batsman, Lachlan Hood, who counter-attacked so effectively that he reached 99.  That meant that Penrith’s first six batsmen scored 0, 0, 99, 0, 0 and 0.  There was an equally unusual game at St Andrew’s, where University of NSW failed to bat through its 50 overs, but reached 292 anyway.  Sydney University stumbled to 2 for 31, but stormed home to reach its target with more than three overs to spare.  Most of the damage was done by Tushar Sharma, whose 171 not out included a ridiculous 13 sixes.

Five Things We learned from Round 8

This may not be the best century in which to play a summer game

This was the week in which European Union scientists declared that 2023 has been the hottest year on record.  Apparently, this assessment was made after measuring atmospheric temperature readings and ocean temperature charts, and consulting with Premier Cricket umpires standing west of Parramatta.  On Saturday, two First Grade matches were abandoned when the heat reached unsafe levels, as well as several games in the lower grades.  Easts will feel a touch unlucky, having put in a good stint to limit Blacktown to 7 for 189 and reached 42 without loss in reply.  In the other abandoned game, George Bell, Bankstown’s diminutive import from Lancashire, who usually keeps wicket, had his first experience of bowling in a heatwave and nabbed two Hawkesbury wickets with his off-breaks before the heat became too intense.  Bankstown had the most frustrating round imaginable, with four of its five matches called off early.

And the long term forecast is that January will be hotter…

Tym Crawford likes batting at Chatswood

Liam Doddrell celebrated pretty hard when, in the fourth over of the game between Gordon and Penrith, Louis Bhabra aimed a pull shot at him and looped an easy catch to mid-on.  If he’d known what was coming, he might not have bothered, because then Tym Crawford came in to hit only the third double-century in the history of the First Grade Limited Overs competition.  He actually started off pretty sedately, pushing only three singles from the first six balls he faced.  Then he pulled a shortish ball from Sam Grant away for 4, and he was away.  Any time Penrith dropped short, he rocked onto the back foot to pull, he drove strongly down the ground, and showed unexpectedly deft touch to work the ball through the field.  He reached his fifty, from 47 balls, by lifting left arm spinner Luke Hodges off his pads over square leg from the last ball of the 20th over.  Chatswood, we’re happy to report, is back to being a road again, and Crawford cashed in.  It took him only 38 balls more to reach his hundred, by driving Angus Bayliss to the fence beyond mid-on.  In the 36th over of the innings, Crawford took Hodges apart.  He started with two effortless slog-sweeps for six, then dragged the ball through wide mid-on for 4, and played a neatly-timed clip off his hip for 4 more more.  It’s fair to record that there were no really bad balls in there, and that the last ball of the over beat Crawford outside off stump.  Probably Crawford’s most outrageous stroke was the slash for six over point, from fast left-armer Ryan Fletcher, that took him from 188 to 194.  After a short break while the ball was retrieved, Crawford backed away to give himself room, and smeared the next delivery over cover for another 6, to bring up his double century from 133 balls.  Crawford remained unbeaten on 205, and Gordon won comfortably, by which time most people had forgotten that Jayllen Naganayagam got the whole thing started by smashing 72 inside the first twelve overs.

St George looks ominously strong

St George swept Parramatta aside to win its seventh match from as many starts, and giving notice that they’ll be very, very hard to beat this season.  It’s the strength of their batting that has been intimidating this season – on Saturday, Blake Nikitaras and Blake Macdonald were dismissed fairly cheaply, only for Englishman Ed Pollock to belt four sixes in his unbeaten 82.  Sometimes, it seems as though the attack relies too much on the penetration supplied by Peter Francis, but on Saturday it was the less obviously threatening medium pace of Jono Craig-Dobson that did the damage.  Parramatta began well, with Ryan Hackney and Ben Abbott taking 52 runs from the first eight overs.  But Luke Bartier strangled Hackney down the leg side, and then Craig-Dobson took hold of the match.  In his first three overs, he removed Abbott and Nick Bertus, and he ended the innings with 4-18 from nine miserly overs.  He was well supported by Bartier and the rapidly improving Raf Macmillan.

We have some finalists

The last pool round of Poidevin-Gray was played on Sunday, and Western Suburbs completed its unbeaten streak, defeating Hawkesbury to top its pool.  Captain Harjas Singh, who has been a key part of Wests run, helped his side to navigate a tricky chase with a stylish 56.  While Wests has relied on its steady attack, Northern District has powered its way through the competition with an immensely strong batting lineup, and after slumping to 2 for 15 against Penrith, it recovered to 4 for 349 after Cameron Tunks (102) and Mitchell Crayn (186 not out) shared a third wicket stand of 235.  Wests now play Campbelltown-Campbell in one Thunder Conference semi-final, while Northern District plays Parramatta in the other.  In the Sixers Conference, Gordon plays North Sydney and Manly plays Randwick-Petersham. 

Shoot straight, you bastards

Probably no one much will remember the Fifth Grade match between Sydney University and Mosman at Camperdown.  It was a tight finish, exciting in its way: Sydney University sneaked home by five runs, snatching the last wicket on the fifth ball of the final over.  But that’s not important right now, because the most noteworthy feature of the match was that Mosman’s bowlers sent down no fewer than 48 wides in 45.2 overs – contributing about 22% of the University total of 221, besides donating eight extra overs to the batting side.  If this happened in the BBL, the integrity unit would be working overtime. 

While we’re in Fifths, Wests made the unorthodox move of appointing 17 year old Jack Clark as captain for the match against North Sydney.  Clark’s inexperience was obvious at times (he gave himself only five overs, in defiance of the unwritten law that Fifth Grade captains must bowl as many overs as legally possible), but he saw his side to victory with an unbeaten 47 not out from 39 balls.  Interestingly, in the same round, Wests also fielded the oldest captain in Premier Cricket, Paul Ryan in Thirds, whose age is a closely guarded secret but who is approximately forty years older than Clark.  Has there ever been a greater age gap between two captains on the same day of grade cricket?  Answers by email to Roy Formica.

Five Things We Learned from Round 7

Will Salzmann made a breakthrough

In his handful of Marsh Cup games for NSW so far, Will Salzmann has played as a bowler who can bat a bit.  That could be about to change.  In the match between Sydney University and St George, which featured five batsmen with first-class experience, he played the standout innings, doubling his previous best score in First Grade to post a highly impressive maiden century.  Salzmann went in with University deep in trouble at 2-15, chasing 307, to face Peter Francis with his tail up.  He got off the mark with an uppish cover drive for 2, then middled the next ball to the cover fence.  He welcomed Luke Bartier into the attack with two successive boundaries, and a couple of overs later cracked the same bowler high over wide mid off for a ridiculously effortless 6.  His driving was a feature of his innings, but he showed deft touch in glancing Francis for two fours in succession, and launched leg-spinner Joshua Moors for a massive 6 over long-on.  While Salzmann was batting with Tim Cummins, University looked on track to reach its target, but the stand was broken by a run out, after which the consistently excellent Francis settled the issue.  The hard-fought win gave St George its sixth victory from as many games, and they remain on top of the competition table.

Alex Lee-Young has started well

Mosman has had a patchy season so far, but was too strong for University of NSW last weekend and will take great encouragement from the form of 16 year-old debutant, Alex Lee-Young.  Picked to keep wicket, Lee-Young found himself going into bat earlier than expected after a spectacular collapse.  Openers Nick Browne and Stirling McEvoy had added 52 runs when Sanjit Selverajoo knocked back Browne’s off stump, and then everything fell to pieces.  Hayden McLean bowled Tom Colgan with the last ball before lunch; then, in the first over after the break, Shehan Sinnetamby played a ball to square leg, both batsmen ran, both batsmen stopped, and Peter Forrest was run out without facing a ball.  5 for 68.  But Lee-Young drove the third ball he faced down the ground for 4 and settled in to play a highly mature innings, reaching 64 from 160 balls.  A harsh critic might complain that, at the moment, his game is a bit block-or-four, but he has plenty of time to figure out how to nurdle the ball around for ones and twos.  He certainly dealt impressively with anything loose, finding the boundary ten times.  To cap off a memorable debut, he snared four victims behind the stumps as the Whales recovered to win comfortably.

They still bowl leg spin in England, a bit

Here's something you don’t see every day – a low-scoring game at Benson Lane, decided by an English leg-spinner.  Easts batted first and struggled to reach 166 after Will Simpson worked hard for his 50.  Hawkesbury was easing towards victory at 1 for 41 when Cameron Steel, an all-rounder from Surrey, came on.  Jarod Brett offered no stroke to Steel’s first delivery, apparently expecting it to turn, and that was a mistake.  Jack James tried to pull a short ball away, and mistimed an easy catch to Daniel Hughes.  Steel had 3-5 shortly afterwards, when he removed Connor Mizzi, and Hawkesbury never really recovered.  Steel hurries to the crease, usually pushes the ball through quickly, and doesn’t seem to generate a lot of sidespin, but he was immensely accurate and, every now and then, allowed the ball a little more air.  It was that slower ball that accounted for Ryan Mizzi, who aimed a wild swipe in the direction of midwicket and only succeeded in skying it to cover.  Steel ended up with 5-28, and Easts ran out winners by 35 runs. 

Every run counts

Some days you get sent in to bat on a lively pitch at Cook Park, and things don’t go your way.  But do you give up?  No.  Because even if you just scrape together a few more runs, it could make a difference.  Usually, actually, it doesn't.  But on Saturday, Penrith Third Grade was 9 for 71 in the 21st over when Cooper McLean joined Lachlan Cash, and the two of them dragged out the innings for another 14 overs – and 47 runs.  Cash finished not out on 52, while Cooper nudged his way to 12.  Still, 118 wasn’t much of a total, and Campbelltown looked well placed at 5 for 80, only for William Hicks (6-21) to bowl his side to victory by 11 runs.  So the lesson is, don’t give up.  But maybe the lesson is, don’t throw runs away.  The two sides managed 225 runs between them in two innings, but there were no fewer than 47 sundries in there, including a truly absurd 32 wides.  Either side could have won the game easily just by refusing to donate unearned runs to the other. 

Sydney University Women had a breakthrough

It’s been a frustrating few weeks for the Sydney University Women’s Firsts, who are playing their first season in Women’s Premier Cricket (although many of the players turned out for the defunct Universities club).  They pushed St George-Sutherland down to the wire, only to lose by one wicket after a last-wicket partnership knocked off the last 12 runs.  Then they lost to Bankstown, who passed their target on the last possible ball of a T20 game.  After those near misses, they finally notched their first win of the season, against Parramatta – and by the comfortable margin of 60 runs.  The highly consistent Jess Davidson hit 54 in rapid time, Carly Leeson played brightly for 40, and there were handy contributions form Sarah Brine and Chaye Hartwell.  Vaishnavi Deobhankar, Sarah Brine and Frankie Nicklin (celebrating her selection in the NSW Metropolitan Under 19s) finished the job with the ball.  Perhaps the match of the round, though, was the clash between Manly and Sydney – batting first, Manly reached 5-238, but Sydney fell just ten runs short, with Jodie Hicks hitting an excellent 98.

Five Things We Learned from Round 6

First day points are gold

In a cricket competition, rain distorts everything, because there are no points for moral victories or commanding positions.  Half of the First Grade matches in Round Six ended in draws, and not all that many of them were evenly balanced.  A side that’s good enough to earn points on day one, when day two is impacted by rain, earns itself a massive advantage.  The lively Michael Sullivan gave Parramatta exactly that advantage after Nick Bertus invited UTS North Sydney to bat first at Old Kings Oval.  Sullivan grabbed an early breakthrough when he removed Tim Reynolds, who somehow managed to edge a shoulder-high delivery he was trying to leave.  Evan Pitt lured the dangerous Justin Avendano into a loose waft outside off stump, and then Sullivan cut through the middle order, sparking a collapse in which four wickets fell for four runs.  Sullivan finished with 6-33, the Bears made only 75, and Parramatta cruised past that total with only three wickets down.  Actually, first innings scoresheets look remarkably lopsided, because in Parramatta’s innings, only Andrew Calvert passed nine – but he made up for the rest with an unbeaten 103.  Parramatta might have been able to chase outright points – but you already know what happened on day two.

Charlie Anderson looks useful

Northern District’s opening bowler, Charlie Anderson, has been on the radar for a while now, having been in the representative pathways for some years (and holding a Basil Sellers scholarship).  But he has never made quite the impact on First Grade that he did in Round 6, slicing through Western Suburbs to give Northern District full points at Pratten Park.  Watching NDs bowl at Pratten was like a throwback to the 1970s and 1980s, when the pitch favoured seam bowlers to an almost ridiculous extent.  In between rain delays, Anderson, who’s nippy rather than fast, exploited the conditions perfectly, bowling an excellent line on or outside off, and moving the ball off the seam.  He jagged a ball back in to Josh Clarke to win an lbw decision, and deceived Finn Gray with a slower ball which was patted to David Lowery at cover.  James Psarakis nicked one through to the keeper, Farhan Zakhail fended a lifting ball to short leg and, with Wests reeling at 5 for 19, Anderson had all five wickets for ten runs.  Lachlan Fisher spoiled the sequence by taking the next two wickets, but Anderson finished a memorable day with 7-33.  He’s the latest fast-bowler to emerge from Knox Grammar, which has also produced Richard Stobo, Matt Nicholson and Harry Conway.

The Students got all wet for nothing

Sydney University can probably count itself the unluckiest side in Round 6, having thoroughly outplayed Eastern Suburbs, only to leave Waverley Oval empty-handed.  The Students ran up 8 for 345 on the first day, then reduced the powerful Easts batting lineup to 3 for 19, and then watched the rain fall.  A win would have vaulted the Students into the top six; the draw leaves them outside looking in.  Highlights were Jack Attenborough’s return to his best form, after a rocky start to the season, another fine innings from the very consistent Tim Cummins, and a polished effort from Ryan McElduff.  McElduff remains the batsman in Sydney most likely to score an impressive fifty without reaching a hundred: he has a well-organised defence and strokes all round the wicket, and has often contributed attractive runs at important times, but is still waiting for his first hundred in the top grade.  Partly this is because he’s now batting in the middle order, which gives him limited time, and partly it’s because he plays unselfishly – he played beautifully for 76 against Easts, before falling when trying to force the pace against Marcus Atallah’s off spin.

Blake Smith bowls straight

All-rounder Blake Smith has hit a rich vein of form for Campbelltown-Camden.  In Round 5, he hit 80 against Mosman and followed that with 5-42; in Round 6, he cut through Sydney with 5-30 and then hit 60.  Smith bowls off-breaks from an extremely short approach (too short to be called a run), and they don’t turn or dip all that sharply, but they are certainly accurate.  He earned his rewards for attacking the stumps against Sydney, winning four lbw decisions.  His runs are usually scored in a hurry – his 60 against Sydney came from only 59 balls.  His progress this season will be interesting to watch.

Stephen Wark got slogged

So Stephen Wark opened the bowling for St George Fourths against Manly, and his bowling was flogged.  Jack Melchiore hit him for two fours in an over; his four overs cost 22 runs.  Fourth Grade batsmen don’t often treat him with that level of disrespect.

Unfortunately for Manly, that was the second innings.  In the first innings, Wark bowled 17.2 overs, unchanged, and took 8-17.  Manly were 24 without loss when Wark took the ball: they managed a total of just 87, to which Melchiore contributed exactly 50.  Wark is not your average 53-year old cricketer: his inswinging mediums still befuddle most lower grade batsmen and, while his pace may have dropped over the years, his control hasn’t.  So far this season, he has collected his 850th wicket for St George (behind only Ross Longbottom) and his 300th wicket in Fourth Grade.  On this form, there are plenty more to come.

Five Things We Learned from Round 5

Hunar Verma is settling in

It’s not unfair to say that Hunar Verma made a slowish start to the season with his new club, Sydney University – the combination of a heap of T20 games and some unresponsive pitches didn’t help, and he snared only six wickets in his first eight matches.  That seems like a long time ago now – in his last two games, he’s followed a career-best effort with the bat (53 against Fairfield) with a match-winning, career best 5-34 against Wests.  It was a good day for seamers all over Sydney and Verma, bowling a slightly fuller length than usual, took expert advantage of the conditions after Damien Mortimer invited Wests to bat first.  Arnav Raina offered no shot at a ball that jagged back enough to clip off stump; the Afghan batsman, Farhan Zakhail, slapped a drive to Ryan McElduff at cover; Tom Brooks was bowled all over the place, Jack Bermingham sliced a drive to Kieran Tate and Jordan Gauci, at slip, held a juggling catch above his head to remove debutant Mitchell Fleming.  It was a fair reward for Verma’s intelligent use of the conditions and it set University a relatively straightforward chase on the second day.

Batting was far easier on the second day, when Hayden Kerr (68) steered University to a comfortable win.  The puzzle on the second day was whether Tom Brooks had a good day, or not.  Wests’ burly leg-spinner bowled unchanged for nearly 30 overs and captured a career-best eight wickets.  He collected the big scalps of Nick Larkin (drawn into a forward defensive push and held by Josh Clarke at slip), Jack Attenborough (who played around a full, high-flighted delivery) and Kerr (who cracked Brooks high over mid-wicket for six, but then edged his next attempt at that stroke to slip).  So… pretty good?  Except that Brooks also leaked almost five runs an over, conceding 144 in all.  He has good variety and gives the ball a rip, but at the moment his wicket-taking balls are punctuated by too many short balls outside off stump.  Still, he’s an obvious talent and, with a few more runs to play with, should win his side a few games before the season ends.

It could do a bit early

With heavy skies and greener pitches, day one of Round 5 was a good one for the quicker bowlers all over Sydney, but nowhere more dramatically than Chatswood Oval.  Yes, Chatswood Oval, the place where (we insisted last week), partially-sighted elderly batsmen usually have no trouble scoring runs.  This week the pitch was damp and two-paced, and Gordon sent University of NSW in after winning the toss.  Play began sedately enough, until Nick Toohey’s fifth delivery reared from a length, and William Wolter could only glove it to Joey Gillard at fourth slip.  Ethan Jamieson wafted a boundary to third man, then missed a full, straight ball from Toohey that rattled his off stump.  Callum Bladen got in on the act in his fourth over, finding Tom Scoble’s outside edge with his first delivery, and then removing Annay Chauhan first ball, with Jamie Bekis holding another catch.  The pitch really didn’t do much that was alarming – it just tended not to do the same thing for two balls in succession, with a bit of sideways movement, and the pace and bounce a little unpredictable.  Usually in this situation, someone eventually hangs around and makes a few runs, but not this time.  Suffan Hassan and Tyler Grainger-Balding each made 9, but the Bees were bundled out for 38 in the 19th over, Bladen taking 5-14 and Mitchell Lole chipping in with 3-5.  Gordon limped over the line to claim first innings points on day one, ending up at 5 for 44.  The second day was something of an anticlimax, as the Bees warded off outright defeat without doing so quite fast enough to set up an interesting fourth innings.

Sydney produced the upset of the round

It has been a rough season so far for the Tigers, who have been forced to rebuild their First Grade side from scratch after a wholesale exodus of players in the off-season.  So it was a major boost for a team of unknowns to upset Bankstown at Drummoyne last weekend.  Sydney had the worst of the conditions, too, battling to a first innings total of 242 mostly through the efforts of young Murrumbidgee wicket-keeper Hayden Forner (59) and seam bowler Charlie Howard (40), who have a mere handful of First Grade matches between them.  But the critical blow was struck by opening bowler Cian Egerton.  Egerton has something of a laboured run-up – he looks a bit like a man wading through wet cement on his way to the crease – but his first ball to Daniel Solway bounced from a good length, took the shoulder of the bat and was comfortably held by Nathan Doyle at second slip.  Off-spinner Kain Anderson picked up four wickets, and Sydney took a morale-boosting win by the surprisingly large margin of 105 runs.

The British are coming

For most grade cricketers, the longest journey you’re asked to undertake in order to do nothing in a game of cricket is the trek out to Hawkesbury.  Ed Pollock has just travelled 17,000 kilometres for a taste of that quintessential grade cricket experience.  It’s that time of year again, when pale-faced northerners descend from the skies and take up their places in Sydney’s Premier Cricket sides.  Pollock, a dynamic left-handed batsman from Worcestershire, had a perfect initiation to the vagaries of grade cricket, as he fielded through North Sydney’s innings on day one, and then spent the second day of his debut watching Blake Nikitaras, the inevitable Blake Macdonald, and Kurtis Patterson knock off the required runs.  Five Things is still awaiting reports on Pollock’s cordial-mixing skills.  George Bell, a Lancashire wicket-keeper/batsman who also bowls off-breaks, has joined Bankstown, and at least got a bat, playing crisply for 35 against Sydney.  Bell wouldn’t look out of place in a Green Shield team, and has played England Under-19s, but is actually now 21.  Cameron Steel, a Surrey all-rounder, made a quiet start for Easts against Parramatta, scoring 23 and taking a single expensive wicket with his leg-breaks.  And Sydney University has a keeper-batsman from Hampshire, who hasn’t yet played first-class cricket, but makes up for it with an absolutely first-class name – Wilf la Fontaine-Jackson.

Forget the spelling, it's pronounced “Keeva”

It was a weekend of landmarks in the Brewer Shield (Women’s Under-18s), with new ground being broken by both Sydney University and Greater Hunter Coast.  Sydney University, after a difficult start to its first season in the competition, broke through for its first victory, comprehensively outplaying Blacktown.  University produced a remarkable bowling performance, using eleven bowlers in dismissing Blacktown for only 87.  Blacktown actually reached 1 for 45 before flighty spinner Tanisha Shanmuganathan (2-7) and accurate medium-pacers Ruby Carter (3-7) and Marie Lagane (2-3) cut through the middle order.  University reached its target with few alarms.  A much tougher chase was set by Gordon, who must have felt pretty comfortable after posting 4 for 190 from their 50 overs at Cahill Oval.  But Greater Hunter Coast stormed home with 15 overs to spare, mostly through Caoimhe Bray, who hammered an unbeaten 106 from only 111 balls – the first century ever recorded for her club in the competition.  Bray averages 65 in Brewer Shield this season, hits plenty of boundaries, and scores her runs very quickly.  She has already played for NSW Country at Under-19 level, and has a very bright future in the game – unless she decides to concentrate on soccer, since she’s also in the Newcastle Jets system as a goalkeeper, which gives her an Ellyse Perry-shaped problem in a few years’ time.

Five Things We Learned from Round 4

Tim Cummins is seeing it OK

Tim Cummins isn’t keeping wicket for Sydney University just now, while he recovers from recent eye surgery.  He’s still seeing the ball well enough, though, as he’s made his best start to the season with the bat for a few years.  University lost two very early wickets against Fairfield, but a bright stand between Damien Mortimer and Ryan McElduff had steadied the innings.  Cummins went to the crease when Mortimer, who made a fluent 49, nicked the first ball of the second session.  Cummins was quickly in stride, driving Jaydyn Simmons past cover for 4, then using his feet well to attack left-arm spinner Cameron Frendo.  Frendo, an Australian Under-19 representative, is certainly a promising talent, but at the moment his length is a touch mechanical, and Cummins went deep into his crease to cut and pull deliveries that were barely fractionally short.  Then he turned his attention to Yuva Nishchay, punching a full toss past point and steering the next ball, an even higher full toss, to third man for successive boundaries.  He needed only 54 balls to reach fifty, cracking Frendo square to the off side fence.  His progress was slower in the final session, but he moved to 99 by pulling a long hop from Yuvraj Sharma for 6, before reaching his fifth First grade hundred by tapping the same bowler past mid-on for a single.  University’s tail wagged, Hunar Verma reaching a maiden fifty, and those extra runs proved vital as Fairfield reached 9 for 310 by the end of the second day, just 31 short.  There was a colossal appeal for a catch behind from Verma’s bowling in the 95th over of the second day, but the decision went Fairfield’s way and the game ended in a draw.

And then there were two…

Sunday’s two semi-finals in the Kingsgrove Sports T20 competition produced one predictable outcome and one slight upset.  It’s no disrespect to Fairfield to say that Randwick-Petersham were strong favourites to win at home, and they stomped home by 54 runs.  It might have been closer: Liam Hartcher and Josh Baraba actually took three wickets in the first four overs, but by that time the score was already 49, Jack Wood having whacked 34 from only 12 balls.  He hit the first ball he faced over mid-on for 4, then climbed into Connor McKerr, thumping his first two deliveries down the ground for 4 and 6 before launching another 6 over cover and swiping the last ball of the over through wide mid-on for 4 more.  Actually, Fairfield fought back well to reduce the home side to 6 for 103 in the 13th over before this year’s Irishman, Jake Egan, took control of the back of the innings.  82 runs came from the last six overs, with Egan carving 61 from 28, with five 6s.  Egan took 13 balls to reach 16, but the 38 runs he plundered from the last two overs, with some remarkably clean striking and some meaty pulls against Hartcher, put the game beyond Fairfield’s reach.  Fairfield’s one chance of victory was a flying start from Jaydyn Simmons and Nick Carruthers, but Riley Ayre ended that prospect with a suffocating early spell.

At Howell, Gordon’s 4 for 140 was no better than par against opponents like Ryan Gibson and Tyran Liddiard, but highly disciplined bowling, especially from orthodox left-armer Matthew Wright and Nick Toohey, restricted Penrith to just 8 for 104 to win by an unexpectedly comfortable margin.  So it’s Gordon and Randwick-Petersham in next week’s grand final.

Runs and more runs at Batswood Oval

If you’re a batsman and you play for Gordon, what’s a par season?  Somewhere around 1500 runs?  Half your games are at Chatswood Oval, which typically presents you with a very flat pitch and at least one tiny boundary: it’s an ugly place to bowl.  Manly scored 7 for 398 on the first day, and didn’t win.  On the second day, Louis Bhabra, Joe Gillard and Trystan Kennedy – three batsmen with very limited First Grade experience – guided Gordon to 1 for 152, and if Axel Cahlin had managed to get going, the home side might have run down Manly’s score.  As it was, they reached 8 for 347 before the game was drawn.  Honours went to Kennedy, who played very well for his first hundred in the top grade, which he carried on to 132.  Best for Manly was the veteran Ahillen Beadle who, despite being 63 years old (approximately) scored a stylish 60 opening the batting before winkling out three batsmen with his artful left-arm spin.

Harrison KING finds it easier in First Grade

Having taken three wickets in his first three Second Grade games of the season, Parramatta’s Harrison King (or, as PlayHQ calls him, Harrison KING) hadn’t stated an obvious case for promotion to Firsts.  But he was elevated for the game against Blacktown and made a good impression, bustling in and attacking the stumps.  Only two runs came from his first four overs, and he struck for the first time in his fifth, beating Puru Gaur for pace and winning an lbw decision.  An energetic right-arm fast-medium, KING (sorry, King) ended the game with 4-27 and 1-5, and he looks like a useful addition to the highly efficient Parramatta attack.

If we’re talking about you, you might be in trouble

Over the years, Five Things has gained a reputation (among its intensely devoted readership base of eighteen cricket nerds) as being, sometimes, a touch on the snarky side.  We’ve had complaints that we’ve implied that some players are a touch above their ideal playing weight, that certain batsmen are good at getting to twenty but not much further, and that we’ve picked on certain clubs more than others.  Some people even found our use of the term “pie-chucker” to be unnecessarily mean-spirited.  So this season, we’ve tried to be relentlessly positive and upbeat, but it hasn’t turned out very well.  In the last round, we lavished praise on Jordan Gauci, who promptly turned around and made 0 the next game.  We said nice things about Elijah Eales, who then went wicketless and missed out with the bat in his next outing.  We said that Randwick-Petersham was playing well, and that side spent the whole of the next Saturday leaking runs to Wests.  We welcomed the arrival of Gordon’s Mitchell Lole, who was then caned for 68 runs from 12 overs by Manly.  So… yeah.  The lesson is, don’t be too concerned if occasionally we sound harsh: the time to be really worried is when we say something nice about you.