On the back of a stunning display of batting from young captain Jack Woods, the U16As will take a significant advantage into day two of their round three clash with Canterbury.
Jack carried his bat to a maiden century for MACC, as the As finished day one at 1/175 at Elgar Park on Friday night.
Terry Smit was in attendance and was glowing of performances from Jack and his partner-in-crime, Julian Marshall, who continued his fine start to the season with 50 of his own. Read on to enjoy Terry’s match update from what was a special 45 overs of cricket.
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The U16A team & parents were privileged to witness a truly memorable innings from captain Jack Woods on Friday night.
After winning the toss and electing to bat, Jack opened the batting with Nick Kann and the two settled in against some spirited bowling from the Canterbury side.
It was fascinating to watch a couple of rising stars going at it, with young Will Mayhood – who recently debuted in Canterbury’s firsts – in opposition with the ball against MACC’s own young tyro in Jack.
The first seven runs of the innings came in extras, as our openers struggled to get the tight bowling away. After opening his account on the 16th ball he faced, Nick was dismissed by the very next delivery he faced, caught behind for one.
This brought Julian Marshall to the crease, and a wonderful display of disciplined batting ensued, with the Canterbury bowlers having no further joy for the remainder of the evening.
While Jack was the more dominant batsman in terms of scoring, Julian provided the perfect foil, showing terrific concentration & patience in the early part of his innings before finding the boundary for the first time on the 57th ball he faced.
Jack, on the other hand, found the boundary with relative ease & kept the scoreboard ticking along. While when joined by Julian, Jack’s score was only on two, he raced ahead & throughout most of his innings was comfortably more than double Julian’s score.
There was a lot of pacing going on around the sidelines as Jack entered the nervous nineties, with coach Dan Bonnett stopping by the scorer’s table what seemed like every other delivery to check on his progress.
In the 43rd over, with a nudged single, Jack brought up a well-deserved century and retired unbeaten after lots of handshakes from the Canterbury team.
His century featured 17 boundaries and only a single, very difficult chance when he chased a wide call and got a toe end through to the keeper who was unable to hold on to the chance.
All that was left in the final couple of overs was for Julian Marshall to get across the line for a half-century and he managed this on the very final ball of the innings. Julian’s was an excellent and very well-paced knock that shouldn’t be overshadowed by Jack’s ton.
The innings closed with the score on 1/175, which the lads will be extremely keen to defend next week against one of the competition’s favourites.