Intermediate Cricket

On Tuesday 3 March, Wantirna’s Intermediate cricket team finished the day with one win and one loss from a competitive round-robin tournament at Lewis Park. Our 13-person squad, made up on Year 9 and 10 students, managed to beat Rowville West convincingly in our first game, but couldn’t quite match it with Rowville’s Cricket Academy team.

After Captain Kye negotiated a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ at the coin toss with Rowville West, we put together an aggressive 87 off 11 overs. Lachy led the way with 17 not out from second drop, Zach contributed an entertaining 16, while Cooper (11no) and Kye (11) made important cameos. 

With the ball, Connor and Sashmit made life incredibly difficult for Rowville West’s openers, taking 4/13 within the first four overs. Impressively, Connor and Sashmit combined for a team hat trick, with wickets falling in the final ball of the third over and the first two balls of the fourth over. 

The third ball of the hat trick came from an incredible diving catch from Kye in the slips, who managed to track a mid-air deflection off another teammate’s fumble. Sashmit missed out on his own hat trick, but struck again one ball later, clean bowling Rowville’s number 5 to finish with ridiculous figures of 3/8 off 2 overs. Connor finished with 1/5 off 2, while Luka’s spinners (2/2 off 2) and Fergus’s medium pacers (2/6 off 1) helped us sweep through Rowville’s middle order. They finished their innings with 8/34, 53 runs short of our total.

While we didn’t have the same fortunes in our next game, we remained competitive in our matchup with Rowville East. Bowling first, our fast bowlers struggled to contain the power hitting of Rowville, although Connor (1/25) managed to nab a wicket in his first over. 

The run rate slowed down once Kye brought slower bowlers Joel (2/14) and Luka (0/6) into the attack, but Rowville East finished well to reach 134 off 12 overs. In response, our openers Mason (19) and Cooper (11) were our best performers, but we ultimately couldn’t keep up with Rowville East’s impressive run rate, finishing our allotted overs at 5/42.

Special thanks to our student coaches Giuseppe and Adam, who led the team well, finding the right balance between competitiveness, having fun, and giving everyone a go.

Squad: Kye Tasevski (captain), Luka Baron, Connor Bruhn, Cooper Charles, Sashmit Chowdhury, Lachlan Don, Fergus Gibson, Joel Gunn, Kooper Johnstone, Zach Leyland, Mason Lijnders, Riley Munro, Max Taylor

Coaches: Giuseppe Strati, Adam Veljovic

Kevin Hawkins

Intermediate Cricket Coach