Not exactly a perfect performance Week 1, but there is still a decent chance we can win through, and, judging by the Bureau of Meteorology, a 30-40% chance we could go through without bowling another ball.

Sent into bat, Brendan and Trav knuckled down and made a solid start against some tight bowling, getting through the first quarter of the inning unscathed. Some mild pressure to score then started taking its toll, with Brendan and Sumit both out in the teens. In sadly typical Gladdies style, a bit of a middle order collapse followed, leaving us at 5/62 and then 7/83. Rob then joined up with the long suffering Trav to give the score a bit more respectability, combining for (by some way) the highest partnership of the innings, before Trav’s long watch was over, out for 29. Rob finished not out 24, and we only ended up mustering 127 all up.

However, Nick S nabbed a wicket with his first ball, and the Weekenders are not a batting side, so a bit of pressure and a good bowling and fielding performance next week should still have us going through.

Sadly, we weren’t able to hold the Weekenders Week 2. As they have all year, dropped catches and too few runs to defend hurt us quite a bit, and they ended up chasing it down with 4 wickets and plenty of overs in hand. On the upside, it was another excellent turnout, and finishing before 11 certainly beat the crowds in the beergarden at the Bavarian afterwards.

Scorecard

A solid but not unbeatable effort week 1 saw us post 223. Good, but we’re still going to have to bowl and field well to bring it home.

TJ got us off to a brisk start, before Trav and Winnos and then Sumit helped us build a solid platform. We needed to hit the accelerator after drinks, and we did, although we also ended up losing 7/41 along the way. 50s to Trav and Sumit were the highlights, as we batted out the overs to set a chase of more than 4 an over. Big game next week.

An extra special thank you to AJ Snr, Kunaal and Jimbo who turned up as good teammates, even though they didn’t get a bat. Sure did a lot of knocking in though.

In short, things went pretty darn well week 2. After some big early hitting we grabbed a few early wickets, before TJ absolutely tore the Raiders a new one, taking 2 wickets off consecutive balls 3 times and finishing with a truly outstanding 7/32 off 8 overs. Best bowling performance since a Bilkey by far.

Buoyed with a lead of 110, we sent them in to have a crack at outright, but after the first 11 overs went for 73 without loss, that buoyancy sank somewhat. We nabbed a few late wickets to have them 3/159 at the end of play, but needed a few more to stick to get outright. Fortunately, it seems results in the other games went our way, so I’m pretty confident that we’ll be in a semi final at Moore Park 6 this coming Saturday and the following (12th and 19th).

Scorecard

Solid performance in week one has us bang on target to register win number 3. A welcome return from D.D. Winterton had him scoring 80 at the top of the order on another jungle-dense outfield at Arncliffe. Sumit scored a very well compiled 56, and Dan, Senior and Rob all chipped in to help us get to an outstanding 226 off the 50 overs, one of our best performances all year, and plenty to defend next week.

A pretty good day for the Gladdies in week two has us well and truly back in the hunt for the finals. The Black Sheep did their absolute best Gladdies impression, turning up with 5 to begin with (and 9 by the end), and padded that out with numerous parachute drops of dismissals to hand the Gladdies their first outright win in quite some years. Sumit and Martin were the destroyers in the first innings, and despite a few dropped catches here and there, we still gave ourselves enough time to take the 8 wickets in the 2nd with 8 overs and 36 runs to spare. Soloman took 3 wickets, and Brendan was gifted 3 by the Black Sheep batting, pulling out his mysterious “reverse bouncing” ball.

Anyway, we’ll see how the maths play out, but lets hope a win in the final round is enough.

Scorecard

Probably not the best of day ones, but not the worst either. Sent in to bat with a wet outfield, we struggled to hit the boundary all that often early and a bit of bad luck here and there saw us at 4/18 pretty quickly. But Dan, Kunaal and S.Undries put us back into the game, at least to some extent. All out 130 not great, but could have been worse, with Kunaal top scoring with 41* not out.

We had a good dozen overs at them at the end of the days play, with them trying to get first innings points on day one. They actually didn’t fall too far short, racking up 88, although we did nab 4 wickets along the way. So, still a chance to hold them off, although we will have to bowl and field well.

Probably not the week 2 we were looking for either…

Predictably, only having 9 players sure did hurt us on day 2. The Tigers brought up first innings points within about half an hour, for the loss of no wickets, but we tightened up after that, taking 5/20 to have them all out just 23 runs in front. Some more shocking lbws had us off to a bad start, but Dan and Kunaal played excellent innings to take us (more or less) out of the danger zone, with enough room to declare and give them a shot at chasing 107 off 6 overs. Disturbingly, they came within 23 runs of that target. But at least we didn’t lose outright again.

Scorecard

SCORECARD

DAY 1

All out for 139 doesn’t sound super good, but hen you take into account the extremely slow outfield, my personal view is that we’re in a pretty good place going into week 2 of Round 7. We won the toss and batted, and it was immediately clear that value for shots was not something the captain had carefully taken into account. Most batsmen made solid contributions that would have been 20s and 30s on any other pitch, with the standouts being Sumit with his 36, AJ Jnrs very well made 39, including no fewer than 20 consecutive singles, when that was by far the most efficient way to make runs.

DAY 2

Told you 139 was pretty good on that pitch.

The Gladdies brought home win number 2 of the season yesterday, with a disciplined bowling and outstanding catching effort to skittle the Weekenders for 110. The Weekenders seemed to have a bus to catch early on, and struggled against the pace and guile of Barron and Kalia. With runs hard to come by, they kept going aerial, and a solid catch by Martin and amazing catches by Sumit and Jimbo had them floundering at 5/56 at drinks. At 8/68 it looked all too easy, but “somehow”, they got to 8/105 with 9 overs to go. Enter on-field captain Jimbo to knock the middle peg back, followed by Rich taking two wickets the next over (only one of which was given), and it was all over, a comfortable 29 run win. As I said, excellent catching and patient bowling was the key.

M. Johnstone