Week 17 Wrap vs Hawkesbury, Bankstown, St George Sutherland, Gordon

1st Grade Round 12: UTS North Sydney vs Hawksbury at Owen Earle Oval

No play due to rain

2nd Grade Round 12: UTS North Sydney vs Hawkesbury at North Sydney Oval

UTS North Sydney 149 (A Cavenor 33, L Stewart 31) vs Hawkesbury 2/37 (F May 2/19)

North Sydney Oval, how good is this!

2s had the privilege of playing at the home of cricket this week, albeit in humid and wet conditions. Despite the significant amount of rain, no.1 delivered once again to see only a brief delay to play before the Bears were sent in on a green top.

The openers toiled away through the early stages as they endeavored to wear down the new ball, before Finn Nixon-Tomko was dismissed by a ball that did almost everything before claiming his off stump. Adam ‘Cav’ Cavenor and Jordy Vilensky continued the struggle to get the score to 1/40, showing brilliant patience and discipline, valuing their wickets and putting the bad balls away. This would set the tone for much of the innings as runs were hard to come by due to a slower outfield paired with accurate bowling. Jordy and Cav did extremely well considering play was stopped for a significant amount of time and an early lunch taken due to dangerous conditions around the bowling crease.

When Jordy eventually fell, he was replaced by Max ‘Pap’ Papworth who was positive, hitting a boundary to get going. This would be his downfall as he was dismissed trying to move the game forward and build the team’s total. Ray Alexander then came to the crease and showed similar ticker and discipline for his 20, complimenting Cav to form a strong partnership. Both batsmen battled away with only a handful of runs being scored in the middle session. Wickets fell consistently for the remainder of the innings despite plenty of resistance from the Bears batsmen, leaving the score at 149 with notable contributions from Cav, who showed concentration and ticker beyond his years, Jordy, Ray and Lachlan Stewart (who made a fluent 31 in only his second 2s game).

With the umpires determined to fit a full day’s play in despite the weather, the Bears geared up to bowl for the remainder of the day. After an initial burst from Frazer ‘Fraz’ Noack and Fletcher ‘Fletch’ May not yielding much success, patience and control proved the order of the day with Fletch picking up two very important wickets in the ensuing overs, attacking from one end, complimented by Sam ‘Samos’ Alexander tying up and creating chances at the other. Hawkesbury remain 2/37 overnight with the game well and truly in the balance.

All in all, 149 may prove to be a more difficult chase than it appears with a challenging batting surface and weather forecast for the coming week. If the Bears bowlers can show the same level of control and we can catch well, anything could happen.

3rd Grade Round 12: UTS North Sydney vs Hawkesbury at Bensons Lane 2

No play due to rain

4th Grade Round 12: UTS North Sydney vs Hawkesbury at Bon Andrews

UTS North Sydney 7/171 (C New 95*, M Lloyd 25) vs Hawkesbury

Considering the rain late in the week, Bon Andrews presented once again in excellent order, for 4s’ home fixture vs Hawkesbury. Indeed 4s were one of only 19 fixtures to get on, on Saturday - a credit to the groundsmen who do a stirling job for us week in, week out.

Nevertheless, with the weather about, the pitch favoured the bowlers and unfortunately the toss was lost again. Predictably, the Bears were sent into bat. Hamish Reynolds and Jake Holmes were tasked to see off the new ball and unfortunately we lost both openers and #4 Dhruva Thorat to be on shaky ground at 3/23. Michael Lloyd (25) joined Cam New and put on a responsible 55 run stand, to steady the ship.

New and Kumar (21) put on a further 52 for the 5th wicket to lead the Bears to safer ground at 4/130, before Kumar was adjudged LBW.

The Bears eventually ground their way to 7/171 by the close of play off 65 overs, which is a respectable total considering the conditions.

Cam New (95*) was undoubtedly the star of the show. Cam showed patience, maturity and multiple gears in his lengthy stay at the crease, compiling his highest score for the club. Conditions were particularly humid in the afternoon and Cam’s concentration and determination were a critical factor in the Bears finishing the day in a pleasing position.

4s can look to next weekend with optimism as we aim to build on our total and then take 10 wickets for the 6 points. A better bowling effort than the Round 11 performance will be required, and a response from the 4s attack is expected.

5th Grade Round 12: UTS North Sydney vs Hawkesbury at Bensons Lane 3

No play due to rain

Poidevin-Gray Shield Conference Semi-final: UTS North Sydney vs Gordon at Chatswood Oval

Play abandoned due to ground conditions (ground unfit for play)

There was no play in the PGs semi-final and as a result UTS North Sydney have been eliminated from the competition. The team won 4 and lost 2 of their round matches to finish fourth on the ladder.

Over the season Tim Reynolds with 277 runs @ 92 led the way with the bat and was ably supported by Jack James (177 runs), Aiden Bariol (138 runs), and Kobe Allison 124 runs. Jack James (7/128 @ 18) shared the bowling honours with Mac Jenkins (7/165 @ 23). Fletcher May finished with 6/165 including best figures of 4/37 against Mosman.

The fielding statistics belonged to keeper Aiden Bariol with 5 catches, 3 stumpings, and 3 run-outs. James Leary also took 3 catches, while Jack James took 2 catches and 4 run-outs.

It was the final year in the competition for Kobe Allison, Aiden Bariol, Jake Hardy, Jack James, Fletcher May and Nuwan Whyte. A frustrating way to go out but a fine effort all the same by the above group and their team mates to reach consecutive finals over the past two seasons.

Women’s 3rd Grade Limited Overs Round 3: UTS North Sydney v Bankstown at Grahame Thomas Oval

No play due to rain

Brewer Shield Round 13: UTS North Sydney v St George Sutherland at Harold Fraser Reserve

St George Sutherland 153 (G Keating 2/11, T Jayakody 2/23, L Warren 2/25, MR Oxenham 2/27) def UTS North Sydney 64 (C Thomas 27)

It was no wonder we had rain all weekend and probably into this next week with us winning our first toss after losing ten in a row. With the odd sprinkle due and a wicket that looked pretty sticky, we chose to bowl, hoping by the time we got to bat it would have flattened out and would be to our advantage.

The bowling attack started out with vigour and the tough pitch with some good opening bowling kept the home team pegged back. Tuvini Jayakody bowled the opener in the 4th over with the total on 1/9. This season we have struggled with two things – 1. the toss and 2. early wickets - so it appeared early on that the cricket gods may be shining on us this week.

The bowlers kept up the tight bowling and in the 10th and 11th overs we had the dangerous Lucy Finn out caught nicely behind by Bianca Lozell, and Caity Thomas taking a good catch off Mabel Oxenham’s bowling to have the home team 3/28. Our fielding was much improved this week and the deck was an absolute carpet so the team did well and chased down shots keeping things tight and the pressure on. In overs 18, 21 and 26 came the next wickets - falling to some good pressure in the field and the bowlers keeping it pretty tight with the spoils going to Lucy Warren and Grace Keating bowling out the batters and Anjali Uthappa getting the opposition captain LBW. We had St George Sutherland 6/71 in the 26th.

The opposition then had a few batters who accelerated their innings and the next wicket only came in the 33rd over by Tuvini which resulted in their top scorer off to the sheds.

We toiled hard, but some good running between the wickets by the opposition kept the scoreboard ticking over. Our bowlers made scoring quite hard - with both our spin and pace bowlers working well in tandem.

We struck again in the 35th over with Lucy taking a neat catch off Mabel’s bowling - with the opponents on 8/131 we felt we had a good chance of getting our first all out of the season having come close on a few occasions.

We stuck to the task and Zoey caught the batter doing all the damage off some good change up bowling from Grace. With the Slayers now 9/141, we knew bowling them out wasn’t far off. Tuvini then rattled the pads of the tail ender and that was the end of the innings and our best day in the field so far. The bowling spoils were shared this week with Tuvini 2/23, Mabel, 2/27, Lucy 2/25, Grace 2/11, Anjali 1/12.

We were feeling pretty pumped after our bowling and fielding effort and were looking forward to the chase. Unfortunately, we had a really rocky start off the back of some pretty impressive bowling. They came at us hard, fast and full. In fact, in 25 overs they did not bowl one half tracker.

We were a bit rattled being 2/4 and our girls a bit shell shocked. Enter stage right Caity Thomas who batted exeptionally well. She made the pitch look easy and probably wondered why every other batter from the going so tough. Olivia Aylward and Caity stemmed the flow for a while whilst the barrage of full fast bowling with a tight field made scoring difficult.

The persistence paid off for St George Sutherland with the Bears losing a few wickets with some batters trying to push things along, others battled with the pace and sticky wicket and not being able to sneak singles to the tight bowling and attacking field. Their spinner seemed to bamboozle the majority of our batters nabbing 6 wickets for 12 runs - with some girls looking quite confident against the pace they couldn't seem to get the spinner worked out.

Caity really was the stand out for most of the innings, proving a solid base, and looked back to her usual grinding innings from earlier in the season. She managed to get to 27 before she also succumbed to the spinner. Talia Kapo and Charlotte Moss tried hard to wag the tail and keep some runs ticking over but we were rattled out for 64.

There were some good takeaways from the game despite the batting collapse: we bowled a top side out, our bowling was much tighter and fielding looked good. We finally won a toss, and that did give us some confidence for the coming games. We know we have some good batters and we look forward to our batting firing again next week and our team spirit, even in adversity, still remains strong.

Media courtesy of Tony Johnson, David James, Sarah Berman, Brent Ridgway, and team captains.