Monday, November 26, 2007

Anywhere but here…

In my last match report the general question I asked throughout was “where do we go from here?”

Well…It seems that “anywhere but here” would have been an appropriate answer. 

We took on Bellville on Saturday and we all knew it would be a tough game, just how tough would become evident very soon.

The visiting captain confirmed with me earlier in the week that the starting time for the game would be 13h00, instead of the regular 13h45.  I had no problem with his request as it would have taken the bad light out of the game completely with a scheduled finish at around 18h30.

So we arrive at the field and the captain (and this is where everyone reading this must excuse me) comes over with such an arrogance to discuss the pitch and the toss.  Admittedly, yes, they have been unbeaten thus far this year and yes, they do have some bragging rights as they did nail our proverbial arses to the wall last year, but I am sorry, in all my cricket playing years I have played against much better opposition that displayed a lot more humility than he did.  And you, as the reader, will understand why we all felt we achieved some moral victory on Saturday purely as that arrogance on display made it easier to crack a smile at the unfortunate circumstances that unfolded.

We won the toss and I decided to have a bat (pretty much a premeditated decision as we were waiting on a team mate, and knowing what happened last year - 170 runs in 20 overs - I was not prepared to take the risk of fielding with ten men).  So…Mr Kamfer and Bryan Fulton out to the middle and low and behold, ANOTHER shocker of a pitch!!

At this point I have to ask everyone to excuse me once again.  The fields we play on are not supplied to us free of charge.  We PAY to PLAY on those fields.  Why do we need to pay to play on an unprepared pitch?  It is sickening!  And a pitch like that could have been deadly…I am not the quickest bowler in the league, and I tell you all, if those balls I bowled at that guy, without the helmet, was bowled marginally quicker, he could have been hit in the head!!  Freaky balls that should not even have bounced half as high as it did.  Then in other places balls kept so low it nearly broke the batsmen’s ankles.

So we manage to scrape 73 runs together (and I don’t think there was one batsmen that did not wear a few balls like christmas decorations).  Our initial estimate of 140 to be a good score soon changed to 120, then 100 and then 80…we were very happy to get to 73 as we knew we were in with a big shout if we can get early wickets.

And then the arrogance once again…

I opened the bowling with the strong wind in my back and removed the opening bat the fourth ball I bowled.  I found the way he got bowled to be very odd for a top order bat and when I saw the number three and four batsmen play the same peculiar cricket it dawned on me that the captain of Bellville must have reversed his batting order around.  Without saying it out loud I felt that he handed us a huge slap in the face and also, potentially, put all the pressure back on them.

We had them under huge pressure when they were 40/7, but my overs, and that of Keulder, was drying up quickly.  I know you can always turn to Wayne when the pressure is on, but whom do you bowl into that strong wind?

In the end we managed to squeeze a draw out of the game.  And right there, in that draw, is the moral victory.

The good out of the game?

1       5 points for the draw against an unbeaten Bellville side.
2       We displayed disciplined bowling, and in all fairness to anyone bowling on the day, it was tough.
3       Our tail wagged, for the first time this year edges and hoiks seemed to go our way!
4       The “horse” is back.
5       We are a good team that can take it as good as we can give it (keep up the chirps Wray, I will organize a hitman to take out the hitman they will be sending for you)
6       George Kamfer, jou beaut!!!  What a catch at silly mid off!  There is not many guys in ANY form of cricket that would have held on to that one (I don’t care if that catch was taken purely out of self-preservation of the face).  It was a tracer bullet and you held on!

The bad?

1       We still gave away a bit too many extras.
2       A few chances went begging (admittedly Bryan’s would gave been a sharp catch and Chris’ drop cost no runs off the last wicket)
3       5 points for the draw against an unbeaten Bellville side (I would have enjoyed the bragging rights for the next year)

All in all, maybe 5 points from a game we COULD have lost, COULD have won… it’s better than nothing.
And it sets us up nicely for our next game on 9 December 2007.
Let’s take this one to Mannenberg boys!!

Posted by James at 07:48:38 | Permalink | No Comments »

Friday, November 23, 2007

Stats post Game 5

Here we go, brand new updated stats - season post game 5!

Enjoy.

PS…does not look like the image upload system works properly today, so go have a look in the albums section…

Posted by James at 08:58:32 | Permalink | No Comments »

Edgemead…found the sharp edge of the knife here…

I was seriously out of it for a few days now because of flu (or a bad cold, sometimes can’t tell the difference when it gets that bad).  So my match report of last Saturday’s game is very late in comparison to others.  The silver lining to the dark cloud though is that it gave me a proper chance to evaluate our performance on Saturday and maybe outline a few problem areas to work on without becoming too critical.

 
We fielded first on another bad pitch.  Our players tend to get too critical about our own facilities at our club when the situation out there is pretty much a lot worse.  Edgemead tried their best to accommodate us with a field and I can not believe for a second that they would have willingly chosen that field as the venue if they knew what a state that pitch was in!


 
There were craters the size of a mans fist on the end.  It was barely rolled and compacted which made this pitch a bowler’s paradise.  We fielded first and thought we did a good job restricting them to 106 all out with none of their batsmen progressing past 17 runs individually.  We had a good keeper in Justin Broker and would have loved to see him back in the fray for this week’s game, but unfortunately he can’t make it.

 
The fact that the only real extras on a bad up-and-down pitch came of the odd bye and wide when the Edgemead bowling performance had soooooo many 2’s and 3’s in extras is a good yardstick to use to compare our fielding performance to theirs.

 
Our batting though let us down.

 
We got bowled out for 92!  Wray dug in and managed a flashy 41, which included a couple of huge sixes over square leg, but not after he got pinned by a few nasty laterally moving balls in the stomach and groin area!  Then the rest of our batsmen did not take into account the nature of the pitch and tried in vein to play as normally as possible and lost their wickets in the process in a spectacular fashion, handing the opening bowler of Edgemead the distinguished figures of 4/10 in 8 overs.
 

We had some highlights in the bowling department as well.  Wayne “Horse Chestnut” Beukes finally hit his straps and managed to get figures of 2/6 in 5 overs, Wray managed 2/0 in three balls (well done big guy) and Bryan Fulton managed 2/20 in 8 overs.

 
Where do we go from here?  I sincerely do not know.  Bellville next on Saturday at Bosmansdam where we had a good 8 wicket win about a month ago.  Lets hope the field treats us as good as it did then because God knows we need some luck now…

Posted by James at 08:30:44 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Monday, November 12, 2007

Stats - post Game 4

Herewith updated stats as it stands at after game 4.  Our chances of winning this league has been dealt a critical blow, but with so many teams trying to do the same, we need to keep plugging away guys…heads up, shoulders back, and let’s raise some hell.

Players checking out the stats and reports can feel free to leave some comments as well.  Email me some match pics and I can post them on here.  This blog is as much yours as its mine.

Batting stats

Bowling stats

Posted by James at 08:09:06 | Permalink | No Comments »

Floored…would have been better if it was a clean floor…

Not good.
They say golf is a great leveler….try cricket on for size!!
Rylands won the toss and decided to bat first on a concrete slab!  They were off to a flyer and with the exception of myself and George Cilliers the rest of the bowling lineup got worked over quite horribly.
Player umpires just don’t work.  Annie, our scorer, told us after our bowling stint that the opposing players were boasting about the fact that there were plenty of decisions they were supposed to give but never did, like that edge off my bowling, various plum LBW shouts, etc.  How can you keep your head up for 40 overs when you go for 6 an over and nothing you do is good enough to get them wickets?  We can blame ourselves for some other errors though…like dropping a guy on two that went on to make 50…
Rylands 232/7 in 40 overs.
Bowling figures
G James 1/26 in 8 overs
G Cilliers 1/12 in 2 overs
F O’Niel 3/43 in 8 overs
J Van Gent 1/39 in 8 overs
Concidering that the average run rate they scored at was about 6 an over, and that G Cilliers bowled a lot better in his two overs at the death that his figures suggests, there was not a whole lot more we could have done to stop the runs from flowing, except maybe for hanging on to some sitters in the field!

We went in to bat with the belief that we could chase the total down.  We were off to a slow start in the first 4 overs, but then the machine kicked into gear and runs started comming quickly.  Brian Fulton and George Kamfer putting on 70 in 14 overs before Fulton played a straight lofted drive into long-on’s hands on the boundary.  Out for 41.  With the loss of that wicket we still had plenty of batting to come, but unfortunately the machine’s gears broke in half and we lost wickets at regular intervals. My good form did not last and I played a silly shot to get stumped for 21.  Kamfer ended on 51 (7 x 4’s)  (scoring a lot quicker and with intention we have not seen from him yet (more of the same please, Mr Boeta Dippenaar).  Wray ended with a determined 16 (had a runner) and Wayne chipped in with a last ditch effort of 27 at the end.  We ended 43 runs shy of their total at 189 all out in 38 overs.
There is a few possitives from the game, but it still hurts knowing that even though they scored 232 we lost the game rather than them winning it.
Posted by James at 07:19:33 | Permalink | No Comments »

Monday, November 5, 2007

Stats - Game 3

For those who have been notified, here is the stats for the season thus far.

Understandably the batting stats looks a bit thin, but I don’t expect my form to last for ever.  The batting stats will change big time if given another three or four games.

The best reading (statistically) comes from looking at the bowling stats with a few contenders staking an early claim for the coveted trophy at season’s end!

Enjoy!

Posted by James at 09:28:26 | Permalink | No Comments »

Sunday, November 4, 2007

A landmark or two…

This post is not just a landmark because I could not wait for Monday morning and effectively is posting this from my mobile phone in bed, but because we now have two very big wins notched up in two succesive games. We had a 9 wicket win over a side that, based on previous encounters, should have had the edge on us. St Augustines are a strong side with the best bowling we have seen in the three games we have played thus far and their batting…lets just say that he our fielding was not as good as it was on Saturday we could have chased 200 plus on a difficult pitch. No doubt our biggest success story is the unbroken 140 odd run partnership that George Kamfer and myself posted. True, we were both dropped 3 times, but you make your own luck. And the only thing you can do when you get that lucky is “make them pay dearly”! With the exception of two bowlers that understandably struggled into a very strong wind, we bowled very well to restrict them to 150 all out. Wray made it clear before the game that his ankle would not allow him to bowl on the day, but when i turned to him in the game he had no objection to take the nut and spin a few. 4 wickets later for next to no runs he was smiling from ear to ear!! So after the game the question gets asked on what our chances are to walk away as league champs in April next year…and the answer is simple. If we keep our heads right, keep the core of the side, chase the runs down as convincingly as we did thus far and keep the same level of competitiveness it should be in the bag! Last reason Wray scored a big ton to win a game for us, and it was awesome to see George and my teammates on the side guide me to my first “official” ton for the club to do the same for us on Saturday. So here is to us giving the league contenders hell this season…you guys have my vote for team of the season. Exciting times ahead no doubt!
Posted by James at 21:22:40 | Permalink | No Comments »

Friday, November 2, 2007

Great Expectations

This is not a review of a Charles Dickens novel.  Oh no-si-ree Bob!

This is the feeling we have had over the last week pondering our victory on Saturday and the manner in which it came.  Funny enough, after our first game the team would have been excused for thinking that this is just another season where we can all use cricket as an excuse to escape from our daily routines, regardless of the results. 

Quite frankly, and maybe it’s just because I have not really gotten my “captain feet” properly wet yet, I feel that we can do some pretty extraordinary things this season.  And here is the reasons why I think so!

1   In the first three seasons I have been involved in cricket at Milnerton all the sides, more often than not, had to scrounge around for players on gamedays.  This is not the case anymore as all of a sudden we have a virtual fishing trawler of players we can choose from!  It’s a good day when you sit down for selections and you have 15 guys to your disposal to make up a side.

2   Above point I made links into this one…the multitude of players to our disposal gives you the opportunity to field the strongest possible side.  So much so that you end up losing a decent batsmen because you need an extra bowler.  It makes for a pretty good side that can challenge the best out there (in our league of course).

3   Every person in the side at the moment have the potential to be a match winner!  Mike VD (almighty big hitting without moving his feet, George (ability to bat long periods of time and anchoring efficiently), myself (playing shots and scoring quickly, not afraid to take on bowlers), Wray van Schalkwyk (ominous signs when the cut over point is extracted from the cricket bag and sixes start flying there…ability to hit a ball VERY hard!), Rick Taylor (good batsman with an uncanny ability to turn a ball square on any surface), Chris Lourens (classy looking batsman that can develop into a real top order bat once the rust is gone and some extra practice was undergone), Wayne Beukes (great minimal swing bowling at medium pace that more often than not lands on the proverbial sixpence, can bat well when the mood takes him), Mike Reynders (good keeper, even better offspin bowler - in my humble opinion, good with the bat), Jayden van Gendt (can extract some frightening inswing every now and again and when HIS rust is gone can pick up plenty of sticks!), Jacques Wescott (good stroke player and very committed), Frans O’ Neill (good batter and can keep quite well too) and then Didi Breedt (not overly utilised at the moment but with some further practice will be more than usefull with the ball and not a complete mug with the bat).

4   We have a knowledgeable bunch of players in the squad and it helps when a decision can be made in the heat of the game based on 4 experienced players’ perception of the game and it won’t be questioned by those involved.

The point I am trying to make is that if this specific squad can stay around for the rest of the season I can’t see why we can’t WIN THIS DAMN LEAGUE!!  Big words I know, but if talent and commitment was the only guage to go by, we have already won it…

Posted by James at 13:48:54 | Permalink | No Comments »