The Kingston Crows had all three grades playing last Saturday and although we had a significant number of players unavailable through injury and other reasons we were still able to get a C Grade team together to sent to Bruny Island. With regard to this, thanks is extended to Gab Lefleur’s father who drove the bus to enable the lads to get there.

A grade took on Huonville at home where we batted first and looked set for a good total when we reached 1/105. Unfortunately other than our first three batsmen no one made any form of contribution and we failed to bat out our overs being dismissed in the 46^th for 218. Jamie Knott came in at No 3 and continued his excellent form making 84, the consistent Dan Elliott made 49 and his debutant opening partner Damian Pearce made 28.

Huonville started their innings in a very aggressive manner before Dale Punshon struck. Not for the first time this season he knocked over the first 4 opposition batters with accurate fast bowling. He finished his 10 over spell with the accurate figures of 4/19. The “Bulls” tried to get back into the game but would lose wickets at every stage they looked capable of mounting a charge. Robert Chapman fought back well from an initial onslaught and took 4/51 and Shannon Woolley wrapped up the innings with 2/27 as we dismissed Huonville for 172 in the 45^th over.

B grade ventured to Franklin to take on the Southern Tigers and must have thought the Tigers’ bowlers were of the real animal variety as we were dismissed for a paltry 47, even after our openers had initially added 16. It is a pretty dismissal scorecard that has Scott Dare 11 and Jason Jones 10 as the only players to reach double figures.

To their credit though the team fought back magnificently in the field and made the Tigers struggle for every run before they passed our total for the loss of 6 wickets. Youngsters Trent Pearce 3/16 and Brad Bailey 3/21, both off their allotted overs, did a fantastic job but, put simply, you are rarely going to win a match defending 47.

As mentioned C grade took on Bruny on the Island and restricted them to 163 all out in the 40^th over. Gab Lefleur was once again among the wickets with 4/42, James Holman took 3/13 while Steve Matthews, Zac Scriber and Dean Heywood all took a wicket.

The lads put in a determined effort with the bat and survived until the 39^th over before being dismissed for 107. Dean Heywood and Gab Lefleur both made 20. The lads are obviously putting a higher value on their wickets for the innings to last that long but it is still disappointing to see in the scorebook that 7 batsmen were dismissed “bowled”.

Our Under 15s finally got on to the field on Friday night and managed to score a win over Kettering when they chased down a total of in excess of 120. Thanks to Leonard and Vicki Woodhead who have take on the role of running the team following Mark Chapman’s job change that prevents him from doing that.

We ventured to Woodbridge on Tuesday 2 December for Round 4 of the Twenty20 competition where we batted first against a very enthusiastic fielding outfit. We managed to score 156 with Marc Owen again in the runs with 55; Dwain Swan made 31 and Mal Godfrey 28no.

Our bowlers then did a great job in restricting the “Wombats” to 9/105 with Dan Elliott taking 4/18 and Shannon Woolley 2/20. This enabled us to collect a valuable bonus point.