FIne Weekend for MUCC

In a cricket packed weekend MUCC recorded 7 wins, including an outright victory, from 10 matches. The highlight of the round was the 2nd XI outright over North Melbourne. In the other matches completed on Saturday the 1s and 4s both recorded solid victories. On Sunday the 5th XI ended victorious, while in Round 1 Twenty/20 action against St Kilda all grades except the 1st XI won. Unfortunately the VWCA XI went down in their match against Darebin.

Round Six - Week 2

The 1st XI arrived on day 2 to find a faster outfield and so decided to bat on for 3 overs to apply some more score board pressure. Continuing on from the week before Nick Williams found the boundary too small again and finished on 81no. University all out 259.

In the field it was always going to be a battle of patience with a wicket that resembled a featherbed. Greg Kennedy (3/31) was back to his best with great lines and started the damage with the dismissal of the opener. Scott Sanders and Brendan Goonan then continued on the good disciplined bowling and the Roos were in trouble at 4/35. Prior to tea with an old ball and no pace in the wicket it looked as though the last wickets would be difficult to extract. An inspired bowling change saw Jarrod Leggett into the attack for his 2nd ever over in premier cricket. Ball one - leg break - one bounce into the fence over mid on. Ball two, wrong un - perfectly pitched, spat out of the rough and brilliantly caught behind the wicket. A debut wicket that Leggett will never forget! After the tea break Williams finished off a great game with bat and ball claiming his 3rd wicket to finish with 3 for 36. Special mention also goes to Mark Simpson who worked away through the middle period with old ball to provide a crucial breakthrough in the 4th hour of the day. The Roos bowled out for 111. A hard fought Two Day win for the First XI has it in great form to build momentum into Christmas.

The Uni Main was once again hard and fast without even a suggestion of grass and certainly a far better deck than the prior week. With this in mind the 2nd XI declared straight away in order to put the heat on the Roos.

Tim Rankin picked up where he left off and with the Kangas at 2-20 things were looking good. The inevitable partnership ensued and NMCC found themselves 2-100 after their luck-riding English opening batsman was dropped 3 times. The introduction of Michael Nalesnyik stemmed the flow of runs and we continued to rotate through the seamers and finally, with the reintroduction of Rankin began to take wickets with regularity. At 6 down a stubborn partnership formed and Nick Elsmore threw up his hand to return to the bowling ranks and produced a hostile and classy 5 overs. This produced a crucial wicket from a great catch to Nalesnyik at mid on. From here, the ball had started to reverse and Hugh Van Cuylenburg produced a superb spell of bowling to get a feather behind, an LBW and another snick through to Tim Robertson and the North resistance was crushed. Rankin was quality again but it was Van Cuylenburg who must take the honours. He was let down by poor catching early, yet responded with 3-49 at the death, on a road with a controlled brand of swing.

Future Club Legend Huw Birrell and Nick Hutton then proceeded to tick the required 43 runs in 5 overs warming up for the T20 fixture the next day. Birrell was heard to say something like he felt like he would have scored 215 if we had kept batting.

10 points for the MUCCers and a disciplined and ruthless performance in superb batting conditions. Basically 2-282 played 20-281, enough said.

Defending 199 at Arden St the 3's turned up confident that they had enough runs on a deck that was playing low and slow. Stevie Carlile proved this early on when he had the North opener plum in front, but apart from this it was a lot of effort with little reward. Their batsmen were very cautious in their approach scoring at just over one an over up until tea. Had it not been for an uncharacteristically poor Uni fielding performance which saw 6 chances and numerous misfields, it could have been a lot different.

The approach after tea was to continue restricting their batsmen but to attack their stumps and make them force the issue and it seemed as if it might work with Carlile (2 for again striking. But their batsmen continued to dig in. Bardolia showed he has plenty to offer with both bat and ball, bowling a long spell with his leg-spin and getting a few (2 for 61).

It was a day of missed chances for the 3's as their opener bought up his ton. He managed to do what no MUCC batsmen could do and go on with his start. The Roos passed our score 6 down. Our first loss of the season and far from a disaster, but a good wake-up call showing there is plenty of improvement needed if we are going to challenge this year.

In the 4th XI match at the sun-baked Crawford Oval as usual gave little for the seamers with most batsmen falling to spin. A dour approach from North Melbourne saw them playing for a draw with a dismal run rate of under two-an-over for the day.

Fours captain Mark Bhattacharyya took himself to hospital after a finger dislocation from a sharp chance at short cover 20 overs in saw Dave Gonsalvez’s more laconic style of captaincy required for most of the day.

The Roos batted conservatively with infrequent boundaries making the pressure unbearable for the young squad. Left arm spinner Dale Highton had success with his mixture of flight and pace off a two-step approach to the wicket. The sunglasses wearing Mancunian crushed the Roos’ middle order ending the day with five wickets. His final figures were 5 for 37 from 19 overs.

The last wicket proved the hardest to get with the final pair nearly staving off defeat, putting on fifty and nearly batting the day out for a draw. But the inspirational return of skipper Bhattacharyya in the 82nd saw the skipper pick up the last wicket with a courageous caught and bowled, despite a bandaged left hand. The fours now sit in second position on the ladder.

The 5th XI completed an emphatic victory on Sunday at Scammell Reserve against Emmanuel South Oakleigh. Resuming at 4 for 32 the opposition showed their intention was not to die wondering. The match was up for grabs as the score moved to 62 without further loss. Fortunately our bowlers were up to the task and Adam Pustola (3 for 50) made the critical breakthrough. From this point the bowlers collected wickets at regular intervals. Laban Ditchburn bowled a nice spell before spinners Jarryd Crisp (3 for 14) and Hamish Bull cleaned up the tail. ESO were dismissed for 102 giving MUCC a first innings lead of 57.

With more than 50 overs of cricket to play ESO thought they were a big chance of the reverse outright. The early loss of wickets did nothing to douse this desire. Fortunately Crisp and Bull (32) were able to combine for timely partnership that diminished the chance of having to bowl again. Crisp completed a fine all round match scoring 34 to go with his 44 from the first innings and 3 wickets. In the end MUCC was dismissed for 126 giving an overall lead of 183. After some lengthy discussions the captains agreed that a result was not possible in the remaining 8 overs leaving MUCC the well deserved winners.

The VWCA XI played ladder leaders Darebin on Saturday. Uni won the toss and elected to bat on their recently resurfaced synthetic wicket. The opening pair of Katie Derham and Ledene Ellis laid a solid foundation with a partnership of 44 but with two wickets falling in quick succession Uni needed to rebuild the innings. After the compulsory closure after 39 overs, Uni ended on 4/146. Captain, Katie Derham (58) again showed she is great form with the bat, finishing with Uni’s top score for the third time this season. Despite some tight bowling from opener Ellie Button and Rachelle Goldburg's second spell, the total proved to be about 100 runs short with Darebin passing the score in the 24th over.

The team is looking forward to our first home game of the season next Sunday against Clifton Hill Collingwood at McAlister Oval.

Club Championship – 4th

Twenty20 Matches