Open Boys Cricket
Open Boys Cricket Report
On Friday, 28/3, the Open Boys Cricket team had an early start, heading off to Griffith at 7:30 in the morning to take on Wade High School.
Winning the toss, captains Pez and Ross decided to field first. Wade’s batting innings ebbed and flowed the whole way through, with neither team able to gain the ascendency. Wade got off to a flying start racing to 40 from the first 6 overs before Ross took a smart catch off Judd’s bowling to dismiss their dominant opener for 32. Archer then started pitching the ball up more regularly and picked up a wicket for himself straight after. Jed controlled the middle overs with his off spinners, bowling economically and picking up 2 wickets, although he was unlucky not to finish with 4 or 5 as a couple of chances went begging off his bowling.
Ross, whilst not at his bowling best, was also able to pick up a middle order wicket, and after 20 overs, Wade were 5/120 and the game was evenly poised. I reminded our boys that once we got Wade’s tailenders out to the middle, we should be able to bowl them out quickly. This sounded great in theory but when their numbers 6 and 7 had settled in and quickly put on a 30 run partnership, a total of 200 plus appeared to be on the cards. An inspired decision from one or both of our captains to bring on Jamin for his first ever bowl in any cricket ever, honestly made me a little nervous on the sidelines, but it turned out I was very wrong. First ball, Wicket! Caught by Bryce. 4 balls later, Wicket! Caught by Ross. And both of Wade’s set were batsmen, gone!
This opened the opportunity for our opening bowlers Judd and Archer to come back into the attack and mop up Wade’s tail, as they lost their last 5 wickets for just 10 runs, setting up chase of 161 for us to win.
Unfortunately, our batting innings didn’t start quite as we would have liked. Wade’s opening bowlers were relentless with their pace and accuracy, dismissing both our openers Bryce and Pez cheaply. Extra pressure was then heaped onto our young stars Ross and Archer who were able to steady the ship momentarily and take the score to 32. However, a mix up resulted in Ross being run-out, and then Jed went the next ball. Archer was shattered at this point, knowing that we only had inexperienced batters to come, so I said to him, “Well, if you score a ton from here, you’ll get us pretty close.”
Judd was next in, and he was able to get the scoreboard moving with back to back sixes. Unfortunaly, he was dismissed the next over, and Ando and Emmett quickly followed him back to the gazebo, the score at drinks stood at 7/74, with the target of 161 looking a million miles away as WinViz would have had us at less that 1% chance of winning. After drinks, Archer and Zavier were able to put on a 25 run partnership, before our ultimate impact player, Jamin came out to join Archer, who had been quietly going about his work as carnage was happening at the other end. Despite the fact that Jamin may have played and missed 18 of his first 20 deliveries, he was able to stick around and Archer was gradually upping his strike rate. Archer passed his previous highest score of 51, and quickly, we required 35 runs to win. 13 off the 30th and 31st overs, featuring sixes from Arch and even a 4 from Jamin meant that we only needed 8 off the last 4 overs. Arch, who had done a great job of farming the strike, took a single off the second ball. And then up stepped Jamin, who smashed a clutch 6 over long on to tie the game. Next ball he hit the ball to the fielder and took off for the winning run, but a brilliant piece of fielding from the Wade player who came up with a direct hit, just ran Jamin out leaving little Ando to have to come out to the middle with scores even, 1 run for us to win, 1 wicket for them to tie.
Archer, calm as he had been all day, pushed the ball in to the cover gap and ran through for a single, bringing up an incredible win. Pandemonium ensued as the boys raced out to the middle to celebrate as Mitchy Ando was pummelled in the stampede. Fair to say, we were pretty happy with that win.
Archer ended up finishing on 99* not out, agonisingly close to his first ever hundred, but all the same playing one of the best knocks I’ve seen. Just for the real cricket nuffies out there, the way that he farmed the strike when batting with the tail, targeted the short boundary, how he came down the pitch to create lengths that he could hit for boundaries, and the way that with one run to win, he didn’t go for a big glory shot, but just punched it into the cover gap and got through for the winning run were all traits of a mature and classy batsman. So well done Archer, and I hope every time anyone asks him what his highest score is, he regales the tale with as much detail as I just have.
A big thank you to Erin for coming along and being the ultimate offsider, including scoring the whole match. Thanks to Baxter for helping to umpire the whole game, and also a massive shoutout to all of the boys who came along who behaved impeccably all day and proudly represented our school.
We now progress to the Riverina final to be played in Term 4. Once again, Narrandera High School has shown that we’re the strongest sporting school in the region.
Mr Tom Dore
Open Boys Cricket Coach