Friday saw us take on our rivals from down the road, Hoppers Crossing on a dullish night for our first home game.
This would be a good sighter for us early in the season with Hoppers having many players who have been in representative teams up, against our mix of rep players and newer players in this age group and level.
Rose won the toss and decided to have a bat first, so Rhys and Jujhar opened up for us again. Unfortunately we lost Rhys early to a “run-out”, so AJ went in next and he and Jujhar worked hard on building our innings and made a nice little partnership against some very impressive bowling and fielding. When we lost both of them in quick succession , we were 3-50 at the half way mark but with still wickets in hand. Hoppers then put the squeeze on even tighter and it was some good batting by Riaan and Fox to weather the pressure, but things were still tight even with a few nice strokes from both of them for boundaries, runs were not flowing as we would have liked. We lost Riaan in the 18th over, Fox was out as well shortly after trying to get us moving, it left the next few batters trying to hit out to get us to a bigger score but Hopper’s fielding was elite and their catching was very impressive, especially in the outfield. We finished on 7/111.
Something to bowl against but again I thought we left about 30 runs out there with our rotation of strike and running between wickets still works in progress.
Our turn to take the field, with emphasis on line and length and tight fielding.
Gavi and Roy opened the bowling but were unable to get a break through as Hoppers patiently waited for their ball and put away anything loose, quickly getting to 27 before Rhys got our first wicket with a sharp catch to Roy, but then Hoppers continued to pick off anything slightly off and ran hard, turning over the strike regularly and putting the pressure back on us. Rhys grabbed another along with Fox’s first, both from sharp catches from our keeper Kyal, but still the runs flowed. They passed us in the 15 over but we continued on, giving our bowlers the chance to compete against better batters to improve their own game and it was good to see some wickets fall regardless of the outcome. Jack, Callan and Austin all got a wicket and Ava in her first game of the season was really good in getting 2 wickets for herself. As the game crawled out into the darkness , we ended the game under lights and called it off after 21 overs. They finished on 8/165.
The team has learnt what the good teams will look like in this competition, I didn’t feel we got smashed, but Hoppers were really well drilled, so that is the standard we need to rise to.
This week we are away against another good side in Point Cook, so looking forward chance to show improvement all around
Go Spotty

Coach Crispy