Blackburn Cricket Club

Round 6 vs Glen Waverley Hawks 

Round 5 vs Yarraleen

Blackburn (8/160) def by Yarraleen (5/168)

Round 4 vs Doncaster

Round 4 saw us play against Doncaster at Boronia Grove Reserve. Having missed a fortnight of cricket with Eley Park forfeiting the match before, everyone was keen to get underway, unfortunately all the talk was about how many overs we might get in before the heavens opened..

After losing the toss we found ourselves in the field, which was not a particularly terrible position considering the amount of moisture in the air the overcast conditions. We found out straight away that the ball was moving around a fair bit however we couldn’t quite put it to advantage. Doncaster, through some particularly solid batting, made their way to 1/58 off 21 overs before the rain came.

A week later, lost the toss again (I thought tails never fails?) and found ourselves in the field again. Doncaster started off solidly enough until their first wicket fell for 22. We then nipped out another quickly to have them 2/28 and shortly 3/30 with 3 experienced batsmen back in the shed. They managed to rebuild their innings well, and we offered up too many short balls that they were quite content to put away. We then set ourselves to go back to basics and deny Doncaster easy runs, the pressure soon built thanks to the short nature of the one day game and they got themselves out going for the big hits. A nice run out was pulled off by Nisho Sadeque playing his first game for Blackburn and with a few more contributions by the bowlers we had them 8/123 at the end of the 40 overs.

                We then came out to bat with a relatively positive mindset and after getting away to a reasonable start lost our first wicket at 1/35 and then lost Chris Hainsworth shortly after to have us 2/32. Arjun Bharath then batted well and together with Harry Berry the score moved along to 61 before things started to look a bit shaky. We lost 4 wickets for 18 runs to really let Doncaster back in the game. Lachlan McGowan batted sensibly and impressed on his way to 15, but losing partners regularly didn’t help the cause and we found ourselves all out for 105 in the 37^th over.

                The bowling and fielding aspect of our game was quite good, considering the amount of experience in Doncaster’s batting line up, keeping them to a gettable 123 was pleasing. The batting, with the exceptions of Arjun Bharath who made an excellent 48 runs and Lachy McGowan, wasn’t as impressive. Many of the top order found themselves not playing straight which cost us dearly.

                Hopefully we learned from this game that bowling is pretty easy when you don’t try to do too much and just keep the ball full and just on or outside the off peg. And when batting just to keep out the good balls and be willing to wait for the bad balls, because they certainly do come.