Merry Christmas everyone! The teams at MACC would like to wish you and your families a fun and relaxing festive season. Below are the match reports from Round 6, with guest writing appearances from Colin Orchard and Ross Blair-Holt. Also, a big thanks to Surrey Hills CC for the screenshots from their live stream. You can also find a link to the full Dunstan Match HERE.
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First XI
From your Local Correspondent
(sitting on the gentle hills of Surrey Park)
The MACC 1sts ventured to Surrey Park to play the winless Surrey Hill Parkers in round 6 of 14 – much closer than Heathmont, with a dilapidated 2 story pavilion in desperate need of a makeover front and centre, unlike Heathmont and MACC Pavilions!
Captain Jos won the toss and batted. He was later heard to say that it was by far the best wicket they had played on this season. Whilst I don’t think McNally would agree, Jos and Woods (back into the team and sobered up after schoolies!) put on an entertaining 2nd wicket partnership of 98 to set up a respectable score. Woods excellent 65 had 8 4’s and a 6 as he went aerial often. After the captain departed for a well-made 52, the middle order all got starts and into double figures but couldn’t bat big (seen this before!). Special mention should be made of Adge (Rahane!) who absolutely torched Tim Wright with a Yes Yes Definitely Yes No Sorry, and ran out Tim by half a pitch. Enter Padders who made a quick fire 35 not out but unfortunately he tweaked his hammy again, and was clearly hamstrung at the end (get it – hamstrung!). Couldn’t run so he just hit 4’s.
MACC final score of 8/234 was the highest Dunstan score for the day, and MACC’s 1sts highest this year.
Captain Jos earned his drinks this week manipulating the bowlers. With Sam Taylor and Brett Watkins on Xmas duties, and Padders sitting in the player’s area phoning physios, we were a bowler short. Surrey Hills meandered to 3/135 but hopelessly behind the required run rate. At this juncture, Jos threw the ball to The Torch, Timmy Wright, who immediately bowled their best batsman for 41 with one of his trade mark dibbly dobbly seaming cutters, and ended with 2/21 off 6 overs. Game over as McNally cleaned up the tail for 4/24 with Surrey losing 7 for 47, and being all out for 182. Special mention to Rahane, sorry, Adge for a brilliant stumping and also a nice runout later in the innings. Thanks to L Smit for subbing early, followed by Reg Cooper, who 2nd ball on the field took a terrific running catch over his shoulder.
So MACC nicely placed in 2nd position at the Xmas break. Cricket resumes on Sat 9 Jan (covid permitting), and we play Marcellin, Heathmont, Surrey Hills, Canterbury, and East Doncaster – 5 games in a row all at home. A significant spike in bar takings is predicted!
Merry Xmas and Happy New Year to all
Second XI
As described by Orch
Mont Albert’s second eleven welcomed Bosnia CC to Mont Albert Reserve for our second home game in as many weeks. Our fearless leader lost the toss, but with a little bit of green on the surface, we had planned to bowl first anyway and exploit whatever the wicket had to offer early.
Boronia are a quality outfit and their top order has hurt us in the past. We knew that early wickets and intensity in the field were our only chance of keeping them under 170, even on the vast expanses of Garnie Park.
Smutman (7 overs 1/40) struck first in the third over, getting one to rise at their opener as he tried something a bit ambitious off the back foot. Dogga at first slip had the best view in the house as Hotel Minotaur dived across in front of him and took one for the livestream (had it been operational…)
When the Rostrevor Rocket (8 overs 5/26) found the front pad in the 6th over, we had a genuine sniff and our pressure was up. The run rate had fallen to 3 now and with both openers watching from the pavilion, Stoffy (6 overs 1/13) and Boof (7 overs 2/28), who we gleefully welcomed back, kept the heat on from both ends.
After drinks, we were unable to make that important breakthrough and Boronia put on 97 for the fourth wicket. To our credit, the bowling hadn’t dropped off much and when the wickets finally came, they came in a hurry and we were able to restrict what could have been a 170-180 score to a very chaseable 9/158. It shouldn’t go unmentioned that Jacko bowled with sensational discipline to finish with a bag of 5, and to my memory, only gave the ump a spray once.
With our target of 40 after 10 in mind, Loz (28) and Reg opened up and got us away to another flyer. Loz was finding the boundary off the front and back foot while Reg was dropping quick singles to get him back on strike. With four an over required, we were ahead of the rate when Reg got his bat caught in his pad and was trapped LBW. We’d spoken about consolidating after a wicket and Boof looked at ease very quickly, as they fed his cut shot.
When Laurence departed at 3/54 there was a touch of deja vu about the situation and our fears were further reinforced when Dogga, who looked comfortable, was adjudged LBW to first slip in a decision more baffling than a Donald Trump press conference. From here, there were patches of resistance; Hotel got a start, the skipper got 18 and the bowlers tried their best to slap it around towards the end, but without a set batter our required rate got further and further out of reach.
We finished 19 runs short of victory at 9/140. Stoff articulated it perfectly when he said that “we’d probably won 45 of the 80 overs today”, but we need to each find another 10% if we’re going to turn these honourable losses into wins.
Third XI
Round 6 saw the 3rd XI host Heathmont at Elgar, with Heathmont winning the toss and electing to bat.
Heathmont’s openers started well and it wasn’t until a brilliant direct hit from Ash Tonn that got our first wicket having them 1/26. The other opener took a liking to Tim Noble in his first over taking 22 off his first four balls before skying one straight up in the air. Smitta chipped in with a wicket not long after that having Heathmont 3/63 and the game evenly poised. With another run out and Dan Bonnett taking two wickets we had Heathmont 6/133 and after looking like they were going to make well over 200 we fielded and bowled really well in the last 10 overs to bowl Heathmont out for 182 and very gettable target.
Lachie Power was promoted to opener and he didn’t disappoint. Timing the ball beautifully he smashed his way to a brilliant 56 to help set up us chasing down the runs. Unfortunately he didn’t get a lot of help as the rest of the top order got starts but couldn’t go on with it. At 7/120 we looked no hope of winning this match until Ash Tonn started going beserk. He started to smash the bowling to all parts making an incredible 42, unfortunately losing his wicket with just 5 runs to get. It all came down to the last over needing 3 to win off the last over with one wicket in hand. Single off the first ball before Tye was bowled and we were all out for 181 losing by one run!
Tough to lose in such a close game but plenty of positives and a really good effort to get back in the game and give ourselves a chance to win the match. Hopefully a few wins after Christmas! Go Monts!
Fourth XI
The 4s were away again this week, this time facing the top of the table East Malvern Tooronga. We won another toss and decided to bat first on a good looking track. East Malvern bowled tight lines from the get go and made scoring very tough for us. We were never able to get any momentum going with the bat and finished up 9/123 off the 40 overs. The only highlights with the bat coming from Michael Massey (54) and David Laird (23). 123 was probably a below par score for the ground.
East Malvern came out to bat and we were hoping a few early wickets might make the chase a bit more difficult. We bowled well but the wickets weren’t coming. After drinks, Nathan Woods (on senior debut) and Quentin McLean, bowled the house down and we started to choke up their scoring. Nathan got the breakthrough for us and the chase started to get a bit tight. Luke Pelchen came on and also snared a wicket and continued the tight bowling. Unfortunately, a couple of lucky boundaries got through and East Malvern were able to chase the runs down with 4 overs to spare. The game became a lot tighter than they would of liked, which is a testament to how well we bowled. Not enough runs on the board in the end, but another brave effort.
Fifth XI
In round 6 we were up against Melbourne Strikers. Things started off as normal with the skipper losing the toss, but this time there was a twist and we were asked to bat. We started slow and steady and were only 1 down at drinks. However, after drinks we ran into problems. We tried to accelerate our scoring and Tanvir Khan was doing an excellent job until he was dismissed on 19. Wickets them started to tumble and the opposition managed to get a hattrick. In the end it was up to James Nash (15 no) and Luke Pich were held their nerve and saw us through to the end of our 35 overs. We finished our innings 9/103. In it was a disappointing performance with the bat, (4 ducks on the score card) but this time we managed to bat out our overs.
We started well with Ronak Sen striking in his first over. We worked hard and wickets tumbled at regular intervals. However we did not make enough runs with the bat but I think we gave them a scare. Melbourne Strikers got the runs six down after 26 overs, with Luke Pich picking up 2/11 of 6 overs and James Nash taking 2/36 off his 7. We fielded well, with a particular highlight being Trevor Roddam’s 2 sharp catches in the gulley.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish ever one a Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year.