Gotta love the Melville pitch

The A's played at Melville high school in what is traditionally a disaster of a pitch. After first glance we thought it might not be too bad because they had this stuff on it that isn't normally there, I think they call it grass... Skipper won the toss and decided to bat to see what it would do, and also because of this text received at 10am from an unknown player, 'where's Melville?'. Then 10 minutes later, 'I've got a flat tyre'... Thanks Mark Benseman.

Anyway back to the cricket, a hungover M Commins and newly formed opener Josh strolled out to the pitch with high hopes. Unfortunately they both walked back quickly and we were 8-2 early on. Myself and John Griffin put on 30 odd before I smacked a cover drive straight to cover... again. Toby then got a half tracker which he tried to pull but the ball just didn't bounce and he was out lbw. Ryan came in and looked sensational as he does for a little while then again invented a way to get out. J B didn't last long and before long we were 7 down for less than 100 with John hanging in tough. Phil and Mark then managed to crack some fine boundaries and get us over the 150 mark which was at least something to bowl at. We knew that the pitch wasn't the best so we thought if we bowled well we had a good chance of winning. Well batted John Griffin who batted for 40 overs for his 30odd and afterwards felt like a 'ruptured rat'. Good stuff mate.

So to the bowling effort. What to say... the intensity was definitely there, the fielding was great and there were some great balls bowled out there. Unfortunately once more we coughed up too many wides just when we were putting pressure on them for runs and let them off the hook. There was one period when we got it right and bowled 3 maidens in a row then managed to pick up a wicket in the next over. Unfortunately the rest of the time we were too erratic.

It didn't help that the Melville umpires were doing us no favours at all with a couple of plum lbw's and a stumping not given that were clear as day. It also seemed that one of their players had some sort of magical rabbit's foot on him because he hit the ball in the air just left or right of our fielders with what seemed like every shot he played. I guess that's cricket though.

The best of the bowlers was, well, it was me... 2-22 off 3 overs. I felt like a thief getting wickets with rubbish when everyone else was bowling some great stuff and getting no reward. Ryan and Shabir also picked up a wicket each and there was a run out. Well bowled Toby, he was absolutely unplayable when he got it right.

In summary, same old story, not enough runs and too many wides bowled.

POD Points
J Griffin 3
A Stirling 2
T Hawes 1