It has taken  me a few days to get around to writing this entry, mainly because it was such a depressing match. I really thought we had improved to be a lot better than this, maybe we just had an off night, but even so. I must take responsibility for changing up the batting order first off, removing Brad and myself from opening and replacing with Berge/Mike (who had been a stronger partnership so far this season) got us off to a poor start. Brad and I batted alright together, a couple of stupid run outs and a wicket off the last ball didn’t help, we probably would have made 50 on another night. Paul and Jordan batted admirably and did their job for the team and we posted a defendable total, we could/should have got more runs for the quality of bowling though.

it was in the field where the match was lost, we got off to a disastrous start with a jackpot 7 hit off the first ball. I really wanted Paul to bowl the first over, because he is just so impossible for a new batsman to pick up with his action and bounce. Having batted in the last pairing he was a little tired though so I gave the ball to Berge. Long story short, we didn’t take a wicket in the first partnership and they ended up making 56 from that pairing, and the match was gone… amazing. While the bowling was poor, we didn’t help with our fielding, dropping catches, not stopping balls and missing the stumps. Once again, I’ll take responsibility as I feel some of the field placings cost us. I should have been fielding at the back the entire game instead of watching the ball fly past me every second ball fielding at the front.

We have still had a strong start to the season, but I just get this feeling I overestimated how good we are going to go this season. I really do hope that I am proven wrong and this performance was a one off. Hopefully it will be a shock to the system and we can learn our lessons and not put in another performance like that again. One thing is for sure, I can’t wait for a re-match against that team, something tells me we are going to be up for revenge. I’m also looking forward to next week’s game against Jim’s Generics, a team that were real pricks when they beat us earlier in the year. That night, like Monday night, we put in a below par performance. Bring on next week!

Tonight’s match was a good test for the team, and I think we learned a lot from it. Overall, I was pretty happy with the way we went about things. We batted first and couldn’t really get much going. Jordan and I opened and we had a run out off the first ball (jackpot ball so -10 to start). From there we made an alright recovery, getting our score for the partnership back to 12. What we struggled with, and the whole team struggled with really was getting the ball to the back net and scoring the big run shots. Thanks to a nice 3rd partnership stand from Gozza and Paul we were able to post a semi-defendable 49.

That 49 turned into 59 when we took a wicket off the first ball in the field. That was the spark we needed and we bowled pretty well throughout. We restricted them to 62 and managed to win at least a skin for all our toil. If we had held our catches and hit the stumps on a few of our close shaves we would have won. We had clumsy fingers in the warm-up and it translated to the match.  Gordon followed up his Agent Orange record bowling figures last week with another awesome performance and Jordan has adjusted well to the Indoor environment now. It really feels like our bowling has no weak links and lots of variety at the moment.

The beginning of a new season for the Cricket team and a chance to put behind us the disappointment of our first round finals loss last season.  After some post-season analysis Brad and I had come up with what we believe to be optimal batting partnerships. We decided it would be good to have some flexibility in our batting order given match conditions. Brad and I opened the batting together, setting the target of 35 runs as our decision rule on the next batting partnership. Sure enough, we scored exactly 35; nice symmetry and the rest of the match proceeded to follow the script as well.  The next two partnerships performed well and we ended up making exactly 100, the first time we’ve reached triple figures since July.

The bowling performance was just as impressive as our batting; although I’m sure the scoreboard pressure we had on them had a hand in that. Gordon’s overs were the highlight, in his first over he had the batsmen in all sorts, he took a wicket and we ran them out twice, they were all over the shop. He followed it up with a tight one run over, giving him an Agent Orange record of -17 runs off two overs of bowling for the match. If only we’d all put in performances like Monday night two weeks earlier in the finals. A loss in the finals though, should fuel the team’s hunger to get back there and go deeper and starting the new season in such excellent fashion is a perfect building block.