Kingston Crows Cricket Club

November 12th and 13th

With the traditional break in the A and B grade rosters for the Huon Show it was decided this year that a round of Twenty20 matches be played subject to agreement by participating teams. As the games were scheduled for a 10 o'clock start and would be concluded by 12.30 it enabled people to still attend the show if they wished. We again had difficulties getting two teams on the park for our clashes with Snug.

In Division 1 we played at home and batting first got off to a bit of a flyer racing to 38 in the 4th over before losing 2 wickets on that score. Garry Smith 33 scored the bulk of those runs and upon his dismissal Trent Rollins 38 kept the score ticking over with small contributions from most of his partners. Dave Leamey came in down the order and score a fine 36 before being stumped off the final ball of the 20th over. This enabled us to post a competitive total of 9/156.

The Snug innings started dramatically with Morgan McGuire dropped off the first ball of their innings. Fortunately we picked up the wicket of their skipper in the same over bit this only brought the McGuire brothers together and they smashed our bowling to all parts of the ground with a number of shots clearing the fence. They had reached 1/58 after 6 overs when Leg Spinner Trent Rollins was introduced. His first delivery appeared to again be heading over the fence until Ash Woodhead took an absolutely freakish catch at Long On. Our slow bowlers then got us back into the game and supported by some brilliant fielding we started to make inroads into their batting line up. After 17 overs it seemed we had the game in the bag but the 18th over saw 18 runs scored and the asking rate was 23 runs off 2 overs with 2 wickets in hand. Stuart Conway was then introduced into the attack and he was equal to the task snaring both batmen to give us a 17 run victory. Stuart finished with 2/5, Trent Rollins 2/26 and Dale Punshon 2/30. With the exception of the first ball of the innings our fielding could only be described as outstanding.

The Division 2 game was played a Snug where we batted first and found it hard to hit the boundary on the big ground. Nevertheless we developed some good partnerships and looked well set when 3/101 after 15 overs. We then lost our way and only scored a further 24 runs while losing 6 wickets in the remaining 5 overs. Damian Pearce made 33, Richie McInnes 21 and Levi Treptow 21 and our total of 9/125 would require a big effort from our bowlers and fielders to defend.

Chris Tomlin made an early breakthrough but had to watch in horror as their skipper was put down in the first over. With a couple of other catches slipping through the fingers Snug were able to overtake our score in the 19th over for the loss of only 1 wicket.

The C Grade competition continued as normal on Sunday although for technical reasons the round was listed as No.12. Longley batted first on their home ground after a delayed start due to rain. The Bunyips batted steadily but when we took our 4th wicket with 83 runs on the board we were certainly in the game. The next partnership added 80 runs and with useful contributions from most of their batsmen they reached a very competitive C grade total of 215 when dismissed in the 50th over. Gab Lefleur took 3/30, Chase McConnon 2/22 with singles to Jonathan Cashion, Zac Scriber, Jayden Woodhead (his first wicket in grade cricket) and Dave Leamey. Our fielding was very patchy and again we conceded too many wides and no balls; 34 in fact.

Dwain Swan 38 and Dave Leamey 22 opened our innings and both looked very comfortable adding 48 for the 1st wicket before Leamey was needlessly run out. Swan and Chase McConnon 38 then took the score to 73 but Swan's dismissal start the rot and no one else could support McConnon as we folded for 154. A disappointing loss but hopefully we will get some of our tourists back for next week's games and strengthen all 3 teams.