Page 32 - West Pennant Hills Cherrybrook Cricket Club Yearbook 2016-17

Girls’ Report
Girls Cricket
Another exciting year for the Girls section of the Club this season. We managed to consolidate our numbers this year and coped with some changes across the entire section with relative ease. Strong numbers of players returned in our Sixers teams which was good to see and we attracted lots of new girls to our T20 Blast after a disappointing wash out of our School demo days for girls.
Our T20 was forced to move from Edward Bennett Oval at relatively short notice and we relocated to James Henty Oval on Friday nights. In many ways this turned out to be a great move as the oval was quieter and allowed us to occupy most of the ground for our sessions. This season I was delighted to negotiate for Andy Meikle to run our T20 Blast as part of his placement with Cricket NSW. Andy did an outstanding job each week and proved a big hit with the girls. The girls all enjoyed the visit of Lauren Smith from the Sydney Sixers to one of our sessions
The weather certainly messed with all our cricket and we lost a few Friday nights to heat, rain and flooding. However, the sessions were great fun and all the girls certainly had a good time playing.
We managed to field 4 teams again in the Sixers Girls Cricket League again this year and had a total of 41 girls play at least part of the season. We had a number of girls who had to move up to the older age group this season so reversed last seasons entries with 3 Under 17 teams and one Under 13 team. Our numbers were messed up by a late change to the rules meaning that games became 9 a side rather than the 8 of the previous season which meant that a couple of the teams played short at times. While we did not manage to win any of the ladders this season the girls had a lot of fun and all improved their games.
The Spring competition generally enjoyed fine weather but the Summer competition was affected by pretty much all the weather variations except snow!! One week we were rained on, the next all games were cancelled because of heat, then we had hail followed by more flooding rain so very little cricket was sadly played. As a consequence the season fizzled to a soggy close and we can only hope that 2017/18 is kinder to us. We were lucky to have a visit from Emily Leys from the Sydney Sixers to one of our training sessions.
Under 13 Green Team
This season we fielded an almost new Under 13 team with only a couple of the girls having experience
of playing “proper” cricket before. They were grouped with teams that had played for the last year or two and consequently found stronger opposition just a little too experienced for them. The one week we had high hopes of success happened to be a weather cancelled round but the girls made great strides. For the first half of the season Muditha coached the girls and the improvement was tremendous with him teaching the girls the basics of the game. Sadly Muditha’s daughter stopped playing at Christmas and so I had the pleasure of taking over the coaching sessions........the girls came back week after week and showed great enthusiasm even though they took some losses and also probably suffered more than any other with the crazy weather. Typical of the enthusiasm was when Zoey arrived for her first try at cricket, immediately her hand was up wanting to bat and then at the end of training she managed to persuade her Dad to bowl to her in the nets again!! Hopefully all the girls enjoyed the cricket they played and that they will be back for another season next year. They are a young team with only one having to move to the older age group next season and will benefit greatly for the experience they have gained. I had a great time coaching them.
Graham Chivers (stand in Coach) Under 17 Blue team
The 2016/2017 season for our Division 1 Blue team will not be remembered for where we finished on the points table but more for how much fun the girls had and how much they enjoyed each other’s company.
This season we welcomed a new player to the team, Abigail. Abi had played in the Under 13 team last season and was a bit nervous stepping up to Division 1 Under 17’s this season. Her nervousness was very much unfounded as she fitted right into the team and even took out the team bowling award at the end of the season.
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