Unley Cricket Club

Unley C Grade - The Season So Far

We started off season 06/07 with a win against Modbury in Round 1, but it was the only time we tasted victory before Christmas. There were 5 more games scheduled - eventually, by the proactive ATCA team, who amazingly let their programmer go on holidays to London a couple of weeks before the start of the season!, but only 4 got away.

Modbury won the toss and elected to bat first at Unley High - a daring but as it turns out disastrous move by Watto, their captain. Little did he know we had a couple of ring-ins from the upper echelons of Unley playing for the C grade that day (mind you, he should have guessed something was on, because we only had 10 players).

Gray-Gray demolished the hapless Modbury batsmen taking 4/24 and Gino bamboozled them within tremendous flight, drift and turn (only joking) but he did take 4/13 to keep them down to a modest total of 134.

Stinky opened the batting and made a quick fire 40. After cruising along to 80 we decided to make a game of it and lose a few quick wickets to give Modbury the sniff of victory and bring the crowds back to C grade, ending up at 5 for 85 at stumps on day one.

It was left to Mars to bring home the bacon, which he did with an unbeaten 53 in our total of 9 for 202. Modbury had another bat, but it was pretty boring stuff. They made a hundred and we took 4 and half wickets as one of their batsmen pulled a hammy trying to take a quick single on the Whale's arm - go figure!

Round 2 saw us up against PAOC at Park 15. We batted first, but only 3 players made it into double figures on a highway - Murf 65, Gino 48 and Jimmy Lang 10. We did manage to bat out 64 of our 72 allocation and they naturally decided not to take the 6 overs on offer that night.

I guessed 160 wasn’t going to be enough when they were 1 for 120 at tea on day two! They passed our score easily and surprisingly didn't declare until they were 3 for 269 with two of their batsmen making tons. That only left them with 15 overs at us to achieve an unlikely outright, but we were able to negotiate these quite comfortably and finished on 2/45.

Needless to say there were no stand-out bowlers or batters for Unley this game. The only thing that happened of note was Maxie pulling a hamstring attempting to chase down the first ball of the PAOC innings. Fortunately, we were able to utilise the services of Harry's son - thanks Zack.

Round 3 saw Murf take over the reins in last season's GF replay as I was called up to keep in the B grade. Things didn't really go his way looking at the scorebook. We batted first at Unley High and were bundled out for 79 with Benny top scoring on 20.

SPOC got the runs, but only just, and were all out for 100 with the ever-reliable Jonesy taking 6 for 29 in what turned out to be his last game for the Club.

We batted again and made a better fist of it the second time making 2 for 117 with the skipper leading from the front with 84 no. This left SPOC with 20 overs to get 97 for outright victory, which they apparently didn't try to do finishing on 4/59.

Round 4 was an "outright loss near miss" for us. I lost the toss and Gaza decided to bat first. They were cruising at 3 for 180 at tea, but due to some inspired bowling and fielding we kept them down to 215. Josh and Lards were the main destroyers taking 4/52 and 3/35 respectively.

We were going along quite nicely at 3 for 122 when the wheels fell off and we lost 7 for 5 to be all out for 127. Once again it was Josh and Lards who were the mainstays, both registering in the 30s. The only other player to get into double figures was Odds who made 24.

I tried to make a game of it by opening up their second innings with Gino, Beetle and Ric - hoping that the opposition captain would set us a target and at the same give himself time to bowl us out for an outright, but I don’t think he quite understood the plan - maybe I should have drawn him a picture. He ended up declaring 200 in front which left him only 20 overs to get us out - which of course didn't happen. We managed to hang on and were 5/50 at stumps.

Round 5 was cancelled due to the wonderful ATCA heat policy.

Round 6 was the next of our "outright loss near misses". Once again I was up in the B grade tasting victory in the last game before Christmas and this time it was Gino's turn to take over as captain. This game turned out to be the Jeff Zweck show. (Zwecky for all of you out there who don't know is an ex Unley A grade cricketer, who is now playing C grade for Concordia).

I'm guessing Concordia won the toss and elected to bat, because they amassed 5/386 off their 72 overs with the Whale and the skipper both taking two wickets a piece.

While that's a pretty daunting target our boys made a good fist of it making 173 off 48 overs with the skipper leading from the front with 59. Concordia enforced the follow-on and at stumps we survived to be 6/46.

Just for the record Zwecky's stats for the game were 35 runs off the bat and a total of 9/61 with the ball - you can't beat these A graders playing down the lower grades can you.

That leaves us 1 and 4 at Christmas with some work to do in 2007.

Party Pete - sometime captain of the Cs.

Late breaking news - Round 7 has been run and won by the mighty C grade! We’re now 2 and 4 with 4 to go.

Chasing down Pooraka's 172 off their 40 overs (Lards 4/24 and Gino 3/31), Unley cruised to victory in the 39th over with only 4 wickets down. Harry's 51 was well backed up by Chad 37 and Gino 41. Murf hit the winning run in a great team effort.

PS: Mark Marshall (another ex Unley boy and one of Mancini's mates) made 41 no playing for Pooraka.

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