Page 58 - West Pennant Hills Cherrybrook Cricket Club Yearbook 2017-18

TAMWORTH 2018 TOUR
It was a great honour to be invited to coach a group of 12 West Penno players who had been selected from across the Under 13 and Under 14 boys teams and the girls section. I had heard so much about the Tours that the Clubs go on and the whole week did not disappoint.
We had a couple of training sessions before heading north for the Carnival which were very much getting to know each other sessions.
When we arrived in Tamworth it was 42 °C and forecast to be around that each day. Six teams contested the Carnival with Rep teams from Tamworth, Armidale, Nambucca and Manly as well as a Barbarians team made up of fringe Reps players and WPHCCC. Only 3 of our squad had ever played on turf before and the same 3 had any Reps experience. The week was going to be a great challenge but one that all the team would learn from and benefit from greatly.
At our Sunday night BBQ the team all set their own goals and that created a bonding that was to get stronger every day through the week.
First up was a match against the eventual winners, Manly. We got off to a decent start and at one point had Manly 6 for 123 before the team started to feel the effects of the heat and we let them get away to an imposing 7 for 293. Best of the bowlers was Dani who showed her experience on turf to take 2 for 16 off 5 overs and James with 1 for 11 off 3. With the bat we struggled and were rolled too easily and that was to become a bit of the story of the week with runs hard to get as the team adjusted to turf wickets and strong oppositions.
Next up was a T20 against Armidale where we again just let them score too many runs and despite handy knocks from Luchith, Jack and Ratul we came up short. The second T20 was against the Barbarians and we set a useful score of 99 with good contributions from Hiresh and Ryan. We opened the bowling with our two girls in the squad but the real star of the show was Luchith with a terrific 5 wickets for 11 off his 4 overs so the team picked up their first win of the week.
Wednesday saw early rain and a match moved to astro against Nambucca. We thought with our experience on astroturf that would suit us better but despite a gritty 26 from Aryan we were rolled cheaply struggling with the balance between attack and defence and with only 67 to defend the match was over by lunchtime.
Back to turf on the Thursday against the strong Tamworth team who clearly expected to be home by mid- morning. They had steamrollered all apart from Manly and with our lack of runs it was a brave decision
to bat first by us. The plan backfired early as we were reduced to 4 for 14 but then a truly outstanding partnership of just over 100 developed between Amar and James who saw us safely to drinks, they kept batting sensibly until the next drinks break and Tamworth were clearly rattled that they could not break through. In the final session we did eventually lose Amar for a brilliant 52 and James for a fantastic 31. Despite the odd question of when we were going to throw the bat we kept Tamworth out in the field for the full 50 overs and only ended up 7 down, while we would have loved another 100 this was unlikely bearing in mind our struggles with the bat but a massive effort which must have demoralised Tamworth. Amar then got a wicket with his first ball and a second followed soon after but we could make no more inroads as Tamworth cruised home but a tremendous effort that will be long remembered.
Our final play-off match with the Barbarians was back on astro with an outfield so slow that I think there were only two or three fours all game. We batted first and managed 7 for 132 off our 40 overs with good contributions from Hiresh with 30, Luchith with 25 and a rapid 21 from Amar at the end. We bowled tightly early and 2 wickets for Jack and 3 from Hiresh reduced the Barbarians to 6 for 29. A tight struggle followed but we eventually managed a 3 run victory so two wins from 6 games on tour. The real highlight of the match was however Ashwin who stood in for the final game as we were short....he had done an amazing job spraying cooling water at all the players in every break but was called into action and a huge roar went up every time he touched the ball ALL through the game.
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