Bears,
Our C-grade season wrapped up with a trip out to Kaleen in
what seemed like 45 degree heat. Both teams had players running late given the
confusion between Kaleen 1 and Kaleen 3 and when a toss was finally done,
Spooner (taking the reins to allow Gribbs to focus on his batting) won the toss
and sent the opposition in. The Nooks thought this was Spooner being nice and
allowing them to bat first as they weren’t going to have a full team til about
1.30. It was the opposite, Spooner wanted them to suffer in the field when it
got to 50 degrees later in the day.
It also allowed the Bears to get their first look at
debutant Lachy. Before he’d bowled a ball, Lachy had a nickname courtesy of the
opposition – Daddo. Begs the question, is Lachy Daddo really the most famous
Lachy?
Daddo had them on the back foot early which allowed Sha’neo
and Reppo to cash in from the other end and claim wickets. DB also chipped in
with an early wicket. Spooner quickly adopted an Azz-like captaincy approach
and was giving bowlers the ultimatum – take a wicket this over or you’re out
of the attack. Spooner enforced that rule on himself and it seemed to work as
he nabbed 3 himself before drinks.
Post drinks, Spooner lost the plot and his final two overs
were terrible, Dave chipped in with three of his own. There was then a quick rotation
of Magneto & Marty before Spooner followed a suggestion from Gribbs – Lachy
from one end and Armface from the other. It worked!!!! Armface claiming a
wicket with the second bounce yorker.
On the topic of Armface, what about that throw!!!! After
chasing one to long on, Armface turned and fired the ball back, the ball
followed a similar trajectory to a shot you’d usually see over cow corner and
Gribbs who was fielding in the covers, somehow managed to prevent any overthrows.
In the end we wrapped them up for 119.
With the bat, it wasn’t a great start with DB and Armface
finding themselves on kit-packing duties. Magneto was looking good until DB
opened his trap on the sidelines and commented on the importance of Magneto,
the next ball Magneto was gone.
JJ was the star though, not only scoring his first runs for
the club, (which brought on wild celebrations from the sidelines) but going on to
make 17 and top-scoring!!!! Congrats JJ!!!!
Gribbs and Spooner offered some late order resistance with
14 a-piece and when Reppo walked out to bat at #11, the opposition asked if he
could bat, Spooner’s response of ‘I hope so, we reversed the order today’ was
met with silence as the Nooks tried to process if the response was serious.
Unfortunately, the game ended the next ball when Spooner lived up to his name
and holed out to mid-off with the Bears still 25 short.
Thanks to Dave for filling in at the last moment, to JJ for
not only scoring his first runs but a solid debut keeping performance, to Kyle
for dropping by and providing support and to Gribbs, who found form with the
bat and is now happy to resume captaincy duties next week in the semi-final.
Hope to see as many of you as possible out at Nichols this
weekend!!!!
Spooner