Season 2005-06 Begins

Yesterday marked the first day of the first match of the 2005-06 Cricket season, and boy was it an interesting day. In summary North Parramatta was bowled out for 230 and Kings Langley stood at 3/12 at stumps.

The day was sunny and hot, bloody sunny and bloody hot. In fact it was so damn bright that I regretted not getting a pair of prescription sunnies. I'll need to get some soon if I want to have some eyesight by the end of the season. The field was elliptical with extremely short boundaries on the sides and there was graffiti on the synthetic pitch. The location? Our home ground - Harold Park West Reserve.

The day started off with Tony, the captain, losing the toss (that's coin toss, for you non-cricket people). Interestingly enough the opposition captain chose to field. Personally, I thought his decision was terrible but since the opposition made the terrible decision... there's no need to complain. (Decision was bad because it was very hot and only half of his team were preset at the time of the toss).

North Parra (my team) got off to a sluggish start. The run rate was excruciatingly slow and we lost a couple of quick wickets (Dinesh out for 3). Then came a massive change. In comes Ajay, a big bloke that loves to swing the bat. The first ball delivered to Ajay was unexpectedly left. From then on, the game got very interesting. Ball after ball sailed over the witches hats (the boundary) ensuring that the run rate ticked along nicely. One spinner in particular felt the wrath of Ajay - with no wicket and conceeding 44 runs in just three overs. Slaughterhouse. Unfortunately Ajay's golden run came to an end at 79, a truly amazing effort - facing something in the order of 30 to 35 balls). After Ajay left the run rate really slowed down.

At approximately 3:20 pm I made my debut at number 7. Four minutes later I was back in the pavilion. Fantastic. I made a grand contribution of 1 run. Caught and bowled is how I was dismissed. I played at the ball early and the ball hit the bat, bobbed up and it was a simple catch for the bowler. Obviously my defensive game needs some serious work. Oh well, better luck next time.

One final thing to note however is that the final wicket partnership between Atul and Edmond was pure class. Atul and Edmond put on a 60-odd run partnership to ensure that we had enough runs to work with to secure a win. The team total: 230 runs.

It was then Kings Langley's turn to bat, and it didn't look as though they were enjoying it. Their first wicket fell in the second over when Ajay trapped one of Kings' opening batsmen LBW (leg before wicket). The batsman played a defensive stroke late, allowing the ball to continue on and hit his pads. Gone! 1/0.

The second wicket to fall did not take much longer. Over number three, another Kings Langley batsman heading back to the pavilion. Bowled Atul, Caught Mark Homeming (me). An attempted drive went horribly wrong for the remaining opening batsman. There was a thick outside edge (ball hitting the bat), the ball flew into the air... ready to be caught. I ran to my right, hopped into the air, reached out with my right hand - full stretch, and caught the ball. Go me! Specialist fieldsman all the way.

A couple of overs later the luck of Kings Langley had not changed. Ajay bowled a fantastic ball. The batsman played a shot - I think it was an attempted drive - and missed clearly. The ball clipped the bail above middle and off stump - three wickets down. Not too long after this Kings Langley called for the halt of play due to bad light. As a result of this the days play ended with Kings Langley at 12 runs for the loss of 3 wickets.

An interesting day, hopefully the Aussies will be in a commanding position as well.