Men's 3rd Grade
Will Graham & Izaak Merlehan
Round 5 – St George
Through the lens of a Third Grader – I awoke on my couch to the sunlight peering through the gap left between curtain and sill, needling into my bloodshot eyes. Three questions presented themselves to me in the following moments as I stumbled into consciousness: Why isn't it raining? How am I getting to the ground? Is there someone in my bed? Quickly determining the two former questions required immediate attention, and the latter would hopefully work itself out. I corralled myself into an Uber and began the journey down to Harold Fraser Oval for the first day of our clash against St George. Upon arrival, I was greeted by our fearless skipper, Liam Whitaker. He unveils his trademark smile and asks me the simple question, "How you holding up big fella?". I've seen this man in action; he can read the intent of a batsman simply by the tightness of his grip, but on this occasion, the deduction was trivial and a realisation materialised: this was a toss neither of us could afford to lose.
We commence our typical touch footy warmup, and young Harry Gardner's horrendous ball handling and composure under pressure thankfully masked my physical condition. However, neither of us likely had our full attention on the game as we kept one eye on the coin whilst it rotated in the air and rattled down onto the pitch. Everything stopped. The captains peered ever so slightly closer to the coin, and then, in a moment of pure ecstasy, Liam gave us one of the most animated double-armed fist bumps and declared, "We'll bat thanks". The cricketing gods are looking after us.
Our opening pair of Harry (Ollie) Sykes and Finn Nixon-Tomko navigated us through the new ball period before a short deluge halted play for the moment. An error in the covers meant the side wicket has transformed into a bog, and the umpires shortly confirm we are back next week for 120 overs.
I arrived to the ground for the second week of our contest, with the world spinning far less rapidly. I open the door to our sheds, and to my astonishment, I'm met with the sight of an opposition player in the centre of the room in nothing but a towel, engaged in a chat with our two resident poms. "Mate, what are you doing in here?" I inquire, bewildered by the audacity of this bloke. He shoots me a bemused look before exiting the sheds with his tail between his legs. The boys are up.
That altercation fuelled the lads into the touch footy warmup. As the high ball spiralled in the air off the enormous boot of Max Clark, Harry Gardner, the man who dropped every pass last week, was in the firing line. He gets under it, sets himself, and you better believe he swallows it. The boys are on.
The opening pair resume their unfaltering stay at the crease, with Sykes, in particular, punishing anything short of the seam bowling and dancing down the track to dispatch the spin with a foray of one bounce fours without the strength for a maximum, almost as if someone had come to his home uninvited and eaten half his steak. The stand is finally broken with Finn being run out at the striker’s end off the hand of the bowler, and a few overs later, Sykes' aggression would be his downfall, skying a ball to the infield for 72, and just like that, the game is back in the balance.
St George then wrestled back control of the game, employing spin from both ends on a slow and turning wicket, cycling quickly through our middle to lower order. With the dismissal of the skipper, I was sent out to the crease to join Nihal Desai, with the score 9/160. The instructions from the sheds were clear, and it played right into my wheelhouse; just block the thing. As I built a wall up my end, Nihal played one of the great fightback innings, latching onto anything short and sending it into the pickets. By our declaration, we had amassed 228 runs, with Nihal bringing up 50 red, firmly putting us right where we wanted to be.
Our plan was straightforward after witnessing our batting innings and analysing the conditions before us. After a promising start from Fergus, son of Fergus (Fergus Fergusson), blowing off a front pad in his first over, we quickly turned to our spin duo of Liam Whitaker and Harry Gardner. Both sides met the challenge well, with neither taking a decisive stride ahead of the other. A wicket was claimed in short order whenever a flurry of boundaries came. Both spinners put in some serious overs, ending with 3 wickets apiece, bringing the score to 7/140. At this point, Liam turned to me with the ball in hand and ushered, "You're up now, big dog". This was my moment; this is what I was put on this planet to do: to take lower-order wickets and boost my average. After bagging a few cheap ones at the end, the task fell to the saviour of our batting innings, Nihal Desai, with his mercurial leg-spin bowling to scalp the last pole in the few remaining overs. With a cleverly disguised wrong-un to the hapless number 11, the off stump tumbled, and the boys were up and about. Beach Road Hotel.
Round 6 – Parramatta
Through the lens of a bloke still in Third Grade – Whilst receiving a lift from the older and wiser Graham of North Sydney, affectionately known as 'Yak' out to Merrylands for our clash against Parramatta, one thing immediately stood out to me; it was not cold. Another thing stood out upon arrival to the ground: this deck was flat. With the omission of our typical leader, Liam Whitaker, for rumoured involvement in a Bexley riot, Max Clark took the reins for the top-of-the-table side, and his first decision as captain would be enormous: heads or tails. Knowing the importance of this toss, the team vigorously debated the merits of heads against tails, with a divide emerging with camps for 'always go heads' and 'tails never fails'. One unnamed member began dissecting the weight of the surface of the head and the likely trajectory of the flip against the breeze before being asked when the last time he had spoken to a woman had been.
Ultimately, it would come down to the cricketing gods, and as the Paramatta captain flipped the coin, I anxiously wondered whether we had used up all our credits on the last round toss. The coin landed, the captains shook, and we would be having a bowl.
Any standard 3rd grade side might be forgiven for being dejected at this result and starting the day off sluggish, or as the heat swelters throughout the day tail off in the back end, but if there's one thing that's certain about these boys after 5 rounds, it's that these lads can bowl. All the bowlers put in a phenomenal shift, toiling away admirably, notching big overs under their belts. The stand-out performance was from Fergus, father of the same name, whose hostile and fiery bowling on a lifeless deck snared 4-40 off 20. All the bowlers were well supported by the brilliant efforts of the boys in the field, with a special shoutout to the 2 Dils, Dylan and Dilraj, operating in the offside region with complete command of their zones.
After a brutal day in the dirt, finishing the day on 8/230 felt like a win and the boys were pumped to come back next week on the same deck and chase these runs down.
However, a lot can change in a week, and as confident as I was that it was hot last week, I was sure the rain would play a factor this week, presenting a completely different set of obstacles for the boys to handle. Immediately, the mountain to climb felt higher as the ball began seaming and darting off the wicket in a manner seemingly incomprehensible a week prior. A valiant effort from Son Fergus Fergus and Dylan Johnson in the middle order, posting 40 and 50 respectively, was unfortunately not enough to put us in striking distance of the total and with time running down, I joined the man who had given me a lift to the ground with the exact instructions as the previous round; more wheelhouse stuff.
With 4 overs to go after soaking up an hour of Parramatta's best efforts, the ostensibly impregnable defence of Yak was conquered by a new and unique form of dismissal. With that heartbreaking ending, the Bears received their first loss of the season.
Dejected and bemused, I filed into Yak's car after the game and momentarily sat silently in the front seat. The silence lingered tensely, broken by the words "Hey, Google, directions to surfers’ paradise".
Round 7 – Gordon
An unrecognisable third grade team made their way to Tunks International after the club was struck with some early and late unavailabilities.
Another poor effort at the toss by skipper Liam Whitaker was his first and only mistake of the day. Gordon chose to bat on a dewy morning, and North Sydney couldn't have been happier. However, a start of 0/46 showed just how good Bernie is, as the new ball came onto the bat delightfully for the Gordon openers. A genius bit of captaincy changed the game's momentum when Harry Davis kept up to the stumps to lightning-quick seam bowler Travis McKenna, completely rattling the opener, who had so far walked at every delivery. This saw his off-stump cartwheel to the rock face, and the Bears had a sniff. Captain Whits then, thanks to a well-thought-out misfield from Vrushab Kumar, took three wickets in an over, dismissing the opener, numbers 4 and 5, all caught in front of the wicket, which can only be described as some of the worst shot selections in history of the sport.
Gordon crawled to 103, all out, thanks to Whits' 5/18. Nuwan Whyte and McKenna shared 2 each, and Baran Kumar took 1. During the break, Liam stated we weren't necessarily chasing the bonus point, then contrarily appointed Baran to open the batting. Baz played on a different pitch to everyone else, finishing the game in 21 overs, amassing 72 runs (red ink), including a spectacular pull shot for six straight down the ground. Even though the Bears were "under strength", not a single player didn't deserve to be there. 7 points, thank you very much.