Mandalong Match

Yesterday nearly everyone on the tour trekked it an hour and a half up the coast to the suburb of Mandalong where we completed a successful match on turf, officially the clubs annual "Presidents XI" vs "Captains XI".

The pitch was spongy due to overnight rain and the outfield was quite long and was obviously going to be very slow. It was a fairly easy decision for the president at the toss to bowl first, that being my team.

Early the bounce in the pitch was very inconsistent and even dangerous with the odd length ball shooting up sharply out of nowhere. This wasn't to relevant to my bowling as I tend not to hit the pitch that hard. But anyway, opening the bowling I struggled big time, I couldn't put together what I had worked on in the nets, everything felt wrong and I rarely bowled a ball I was happy with in my first spell of 4 overs.

Something I was very happy with was my fielding. I took two fairly easy catches comfortably and made no mistakes in the outfield, even my throwing was good which is unusual for me. Whatever I did, it got me ready for my final two overs. They were an unbelievable improvement on my opening spell, I was able to get nearly every ball where I wanted it, my run up and action felt 100% better and was probably unlucky not to take a wicket. I ended up with 0/20 off 6, and on that outfield that's pretty poor.

Batting was the highlight of the day for me, I was very happy with my innings. Even though the sun had been drying out the pitch all morning there was still a few gremlins. But anyway I got my innings underway was a push towards mid wicket, a shot that is definitely not a strength of mine so that was an immediate positive. Then I had to face some quality spin from Deano which I thought would spell an early end for me, considering my weakness against spin especially early in my innings. His first ball spun and mile past my bat but amazingly that was all the trouble he gave me. I played some nice shot over mid wicket which I had myself confused about, no idea why I played it but I allowed perfectly for the spin and it came off beautifully. It was all going along nicely until the pitch decided to throw me a few dooseys. Toby (pace) bowled 3 balls that really destroyed me. The first one stayed relatively low and swung in. The second one bounced in nearly the same spot and shot up and smacked me in the helmet. The third on again bounced in a similar spot but decided to stay even lower than the first ball, it rapped me on the pads and I was out LBW. I ended up with a solid 11, worth nearly double on a better outfield and was unlucky in the way I got out so was very, very happy with my innings.

Everyone put in a good performance. Dad managed to get through a game despite his continuing back problems which is a good sign. We were playing a weird form of average cricket where you had to win both on average and on total score, every batsman had to bat for at least 2 overs. Anyway the Presidents XI had the average pretty much sealed for the whole game, but just couldn't beat the Captains XI score of 141 pulling up one run short which made for a really exciting finish. So the game was a draw.

More cricket tomorrow, with training at the SCG nets.