Weekend warp for round 3 vs Melville, as well as the colts and premier T20 on Sunday.
1st Grade
Melville 9/224 (50) def Wanneroo 10/170 (44.3)
Write Up Another Saturday rolled around for the Roo boys, and this week the boys in red entertained a stacked Melville side. This weekend also marked the return of tall left arm quick Lachy ‘Chook’ Poulter, a bustling thoroughbred type bowler. From all at the club Lachy, it’s a pleasure to have you back. Into proceedings now, and Melville almost foreshadowing Sunday’s game won the toss and decided to bat. And to kick off the day, Lachy charged in for the first over. Jordan ‘Tin Man’ Slattery followed him, and it truly was a who is going to crack first battle between the Wanneroo opening pair and the Melville openers. Jordan bowling incredibly tightly, unfortunately to no reward. The breakthrough came when Matthew ‘Maff’ Carroll arrived, and in usual fashion snagged himself a pole. Joseph Kelly, gone. In a steady period of the game, Caiden turned to the Dad of the group, Jake ‘Crypto’ Fawcett to grab a wicket. And he did! The previous work from that bowling unit worked to get the prized Tom Cullen LBW. Melville now scrambling after those two wickets were met with the combination of Thomas ‘Deck Chair’ Walker and the spin twins Deon and Matthew. These tight ish overs proved costly for Melville, with O’Brien & Farrow feeling the wrath of Walker (they were the worst two balls of the day). And Drake-Brockman feeding Deon a caught and bowled after a cracking battle. Melville fought back well however, and Bryce Jackson and Conor Moors both made entertaining 30s in that mid-lower order. Entering the tail, the two stalwarts came back into the attack and expertly closed the game out with Caiden ending the day with 2-27 from his 8 overs and Lachy bowling a toe crushing yorker to remove Declan Power. The Storm ended the innings on 9-224 which most believed to be probably par for the course…
Enter Mitchell ‘Ferret’ Slattery & Braiden Hudson to face the pace attack of Nielsen, Beardman & Jackson. It was a battle for the ages, and one where Slattery & Hudson came out on top!! The Roo boys making an impressive 77 partnership at the top of the order (Hudson – 40, Slattery – 31). Hats off to the lads, it truly was a pleasure to watch. However, Melville turned to spin to remove the boys, and Declan Power (top B&F candidate) removed Mitch with a dipping off spinner down the leg side of our opening batter as he fell out of his crease. Next to go was Braiden Hudson, falling to a stumping/run out. After pulling his hamstring, Hudson left his ground after a single and got removed hastily by the now riled up Melville side. Last week’s centurion Aryan Varsani then come in, but his stellar knock from last week couldn’t be replicated as he edged to Kelly off Nielsen’s bowling. And this was a particularly good spell of bowling from Melville where they kept it very tight, and restricted Wanneroo. Deon was next to go, Lewis Martin removing his off stump. Some fight back was offered by Brad Marlborough, but Jackson proving a little too good on the day, and he was caught at mid-off. With Fawcett still in, it was the lower/middle order’s time to shine, but unfortunately Matt Carroll and Thomas Walker departed for ducks, to the spin of Declan Power. The later actually getting a golden duck (just hit it you clown). Eaton’s form with the bat continued, as he really nails down that number 9 role, with some horns coming late in the game, but as Jake departed, it was looking like a steep road back for the fellas. Jordan Slattery after some great batting with Eaton, fell after sending one up the chimney off Lewis Martin, bringing everyone’s favourite number 11 to the crease. Jackson ended the game when he bowled Caiden Eaton for a well-made 27. Lachlan Poulter ended 3*
2ND Grade
Melville 6/239 (50) def Wanneroo 10/164 (43.2)
The day started off with a long drive down to Tompkins Park. Donny won the toss and sent the storm into bat. With a green wicket, we were in high hopes of early wickets, turned out to be an absolute flatty! Melville got off to a good start, but we finally broke through in the form of Browny. Melville batted quite well to keep putting on pretty good partnerships. Curious George the standout bower to take 2/29 from 10. Storm ended their innings on 6/239, which we were pretty confident going into the run chase on this flat wicket.
Our innings started off in great fashion. With Cal the dragon and Bonner getting us off to a good start for the first 13 overs. When Dougo departed, there wasn’t too much to smile about from our point of view. Bonner battled hard for 40, and stumpy looked good for 24. We ended up falling 75 runs short in a disappointing outing for the Roo boys.
3rd Grade
Wanneroo 9/247 (45) def Melville 4/228 (45)
Round 3 kicked off with Melville losing the toss and being asked to bowl by a man sporting a homeless pornstar’s moustache.
As all Williams’ do, Sam raced away in the first over with 5 wides to kickstart things. Marbo went bang for the second time 24 hours hitting 2boundaries in the second over. The openers kicked taking the score to 62 when Sam got an absolute howler…. which the keeper caught in front of second. Kane departed soon after escorting one onto the stumps taking us to 2/70.
It didn’t matter because the innings continued like Sorrento beach in the early hours of a Sunday, Marbo kept banging 4s and a big 6 while the caterpillar smuggler did what was needed. After Marbo reached god’s number sacrificed himself, Pesh and Jaqueline kept the scoring going. I do not think much else happened after this as I was being busy scoring and not paying attention. I also had a banging chicken and salad roll from the club. PlayCricket says we were 9/247 with 12 penalty runs helping due to slow over rate from Melville.
After a steady start with the ball, McSesh got us under way with a run out in his follow through. In Pesh’s next over, Jonty Maher did well to get his hands on a hard cut shot and, whilst effectively in mid-air, got a direct hit for the second wicket. Next over the other Davey nicked a bloke off to make it 3 fa peanuts so the boys decided to go have a picnic under a tree for 20 overs.
With 10 overs to go and Melville needing 120runs, @itsyourboyjaman (Australia’s leading cricket personality – genuinely check out tiktok or the sticker on his bat) and the crippled keeper decided to put on a clinic of smoking slow length balls (apparently that is the new trend for death bowling). We got one more pole and Melville got to 228. I was pretty thirsty by now so all I remember is walking to the bar to tell everyone about my runout.
4th Grade
Melville 10/112 (43.2) def by Wanneroo 6/113 (28.4)
On October 19th, on a Gorgeous Saturday, the 4 Grade lads headed out to Tompkins ti Face a Melville Squad that was Rolled for 39 last week (LOL)
The Day started With Skip (Lemo) losing the Toss and being sent in to have a Trundle and the opening spell between Liam (Lemo) Carroll and Josh (Plugga) Rotham, having the run rate lower than 1 an over after 12 overs, Josh ended his spell with 2/11 off his 9 overs, a decent Middle period take couple wickets here and there and then Enter Brock (Lesnar) Prance, taking Not just His First ever Grade wicket but also his First ever Grade 5fa, bamboozling the Melville Batter, ending With Figures 6/24 off 7.2 overs rolling them All out for 112
The Batting innings we confident going into it that 112 won’t be a problem and we made that score 6 down but with plenty of overs to go, Kai Richards (32) and Ben Jones (23) continued their good form with the Bat with good contributions and it was too much for Melville as Frustration Boiled over for them with one of the Bowlers pursuing a Contract with Perth Glory and Right foot Booting the Middle stump to the middle of the pitch after some Horrid Fielding. Good win, now
Move onto next week
Colts
Wanneroo vs Melville @ Tompkins
Wanneroo 8-104 (20) def by Melville 0-105 (13.4)
Tompkins 1, otherwise known as “The Land of Misery” for the Roo boys this weekend. It was a dewy morning on the swan river for the first Colts T20 of the 2024/25 season. Captain Blake Holly won a presumably favourable toss and had elected to bat first, with a young and freshly faced Wanneroo side.
Xander “Pickle” Glamuzina, and Kane “Cooper” Pearce opened the account with a promising first two overs with the Roos going at 6 runs an over to kick things off. With wickets falling to a strong Melville bowling attack, the Wanneroo middle order fought hard to stay in the game. Special mention to Tyler Brown who top scored with 19 runs, which included a much-needed maximum. Partnerships were started but were unable to be capitalised on as dots continued to build, and wickets continued to fall. Some big hitting in the dying stages of the innings by the lower order set Melville 105 runs to win.
The young Roos were hyped up and eager to defend their total with the ball, a tough task for sure but nevertheless the belief was there. Cody “Subman” Billington started from the river-end with the new ball, followed by Owen Brown from the rich-house end. A worrying start from the opening bowlers had Melville 0/17 after the first two, but a sharp response followed up with two overs of much better bowling – O. Brown going for just one run in his second over. The runs started to flow for Melville with Wanneroo unable to cash-in on the chances they were given. Some mature batting from the opposition’s opening pair had them chase down the required total in just shy of 14 overs, going at a run rate of just under 8 an over for the innings.
It wasn’t without any excitement from either side though, some large Melville hitting, as well as a freakishly acrobatic boundary line save from fast-bowler Nathan De Villiers to save a six in the dying stages of the game. Upon crediting him for his effort, he replied “I’m not like other fast bowlers.”, that much might be true…
In the end, the stronger Melville team won convincingly against an inexperienced Wanneroo side. There will be a lot of lessons learned and some valuable experience for the Roo boys. We will be looking forward to our opportunity to improve next week with our heads up.
Tom “Silver Lightning” Blythman (Tom felt it necessary to sign of his work)
Premier T20
Melville 5/104 (15.2) vs Wanneroo – Match abandoned
Set to change the results from the previous day the team arrived to what seemed to be the windiest place in Perth, with the wind soon to be bringing the rain along with it.
The start was delayed to 2:30 with Wanneroo going to field first in a now reduced 16 over game for each side. At the start of the final over of the innings, the rain decided to tip it down and the umpires called it after 2 balls. Managing to reduce Melville to 104-5 off 15.2 overs. Key bowling performance from Matthew Carroll taking 2 wickets from his 3 overs for only 11 runs.
If there was a chance of getting back on the boys were confident in knocking the runs off with such a solid performance all round in the field.
After taking the covers on and off for the next 30 minutes the game was called off and points split between the teams.