MORTON PARK, CENTRAL ROAD, BLACKBURN

Captain: Jay Taylor

Season Review

7 WINS & 4 LOSSES

The Seconds finished the year 5th after an up and down season. There were many highlights and some lowlights which mainly surrounded our batting. We only managed to pass 200 on two occasions. The first time against East Box Hill was made even better after Scott Hayes came back to bat for the last 5 overs after being hit in the head and receiving 4 stitches. The second time was against Park Orchards in the last game of the year. We chased down their total of 206 in very trying conditions, it didn't stop drizzling all day which made hitting boundaries very tough. I think from memory there were only 9 or 10 hit for the whole day.

At times our batting let us down, but more often than not our bowlers were able to get us out of trouble. We won games only making 142, 150. Our bowlers were the reason we won those games. When we defended 142 against Mitcham at the tea break they were 3 down and only needing another 35 runs for victory. The umpire came into our rooms and told us "that after they passed us they wanted to keep batting". This spurred us on and we took the last 7 wickets for 15 runs to get a remarkable victory. That was very pleasing from my point of view that we still believed we could win at tea needing 7 wickets for not many runs. That is something we need to do next season too, we must believe that we can win from any situation.

James Horsey took out the bowling award, he was by far our best bowler through the whole year, so very well deserved. Vic Fallen won the most serviceable a good effort considering he also coached the clubs U16B side.
It was good to see the likes of Pat Walter and James Cran continue their rise into seconds cricket. That is the most enjoyable part about doing the job as skipper, seeing the younger players improve and hoping that they will get the chance to move on and play 1st XI for the Club.

I would like to again thank the Club and committee for giving me the opportunity to captain the side. I thoroughly enjoyed the job. Also thanks to Brad for his help throughout the year. The other captains also helped me a lot this year and Sweens and Judge who looked after some of our selection issues.

Jay Taylor

NOTABLE PERFORMANCES