Karori Cricket Club :: Senior 2a Results

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Match Report – KCC 2A vs North City 2A November 3 2007

The KCC skipper won his third toss in a row this week and elected to send the North City team into bat.

The pitch and conditions were conducive to getting a lot of movement through the air and initially the opening bowlers struggled with line and were a little expensive.

After a slow start, quick wickets saw the KCC bowling attack into the middle order however gritty batting on the part of the North City Skipper and dropped catches on our part saw the North city boys put together a useful lower order partnership that got them through to 230 after 45 overs. Stand out performers would have to be Rob Newson, who picked up 3/18 and Sam Donaldson who bowled well to take 1/28 off his nine overs.

Overall our bowling was okay, but the openers failed to penetrate far into the North City batting line up and as such we were unable to take all ten wickets before the opposition 45 was up.

Regrettably, lack of any decent batting time in the middle showed as the North city attack took wickets on a regular basis. Without begrudging the opposition of their credit, our lack of batting fortitude was more our own undoing than the quality of the opposition bowling.

KCC 2A was all out for 140 odd and well short of being a competitive batting side despite a late rally from Colin Kennedy who batted well, being both defensive when needed, and picking up the run scoring pace.

KCC 2A need to show more grit and determination to score runs if we’re to stay in touch with first place and be in contention come the last part of the season.

V Collegians November 25 December 1

 

Karori 2A remain undefeated so far this season with a solid win against Collegians in a hard fought two day match at MacAllister Park.

Winning the toss in the first day gave us the opportunity to bat first and post a good score for our bowlers to attack the opposition batsmen with. I felt 200 - 220 would be competitive on this ground, as while the boundaries were short, the grass was very long as the council failed to cut it at all over both days of cricket.

Unfortunately, our batting effort again was not up to scratch and several batsmen got starts but lost thier wickets to loose shots. We ended up scratching together a total of 116 all out in our first innings.

Luckily enough however, our bowling effort was such that the opposition also struggled to score and ended up posting a total of 125.

Overall we left the field feeling as if we had been let off the hook to some degree - we certainly felt like we should have played a lot better and deserved to be in the box seat at the end of day one, but to Collegians credit, it was very evenly poised going into day two.

Batting first up on a moist and spongey pitch was always going to be difficult, but I was relatively happy with the way we batted as we went out determined to be positive and relaxed. Unfortunately, again no-one went on with thier starts and the total we posted was a little smaller than I had hoped, but certainly better than last weeks efforts. In the end we gave Collegians 138 to win off 38 overs - easily an acheivable total, but given the long grass in the outfield and the movement in the pitch I felt that early wickets would make this a more difficult total to chase than it might first appear to be.

We had a slight scare to begin our bowling attack - Colin Kennedy, our opening bowler, turned his ankle in the first over and after two overs of bowling, had to have a rest, which gave Blair Watkins a chance to have a go at thier batsmen with the new ball.

He immediately struck, with the ball being sharply caught by Scott Henshilwood under the helmet at silly mid on.

Damien Le Breton followed up with a quick wicket to remove the other opener and all of a sudden we had both momentum and confidence going in our favour.

Wickets fell regularly with none of thier top six making double figures. However, a late rally was started with the opposition skipper and thier number seven batsman finding the middle of the bat a couple of times in an effort to raise the run rate.

At this stage it still looked like Collegians were in the hunt for a victory and the signs were ominous as the lower order rally started to look more and more like a threat.

However, a risky move (the batsmen were looking to swing at everything at this stage) in bringing on Chris Oldham to bowl legspin paid off straight after drinks as he clean bowled thier skipper and with only 10 batsmen, Collegians shut up shop and looked to play out a draw.

It did get rather close at the end, with only four or five overs left to go before the close of play and us needing one wicket to win. However, one the last ball of his eighth over Colin Kennedy took out middle stump and victory for Karori. Phew!

After our lacklustre start to the first day, we were well pleased by the efforts of day two - a better (but still needing much improvement) batting effort and a faultless fielding and bowling effort with not a single catch being put down and three superb individual efforts being made by Scott Henshilwood, Mita Dunne and Andy French to take some f the best catches seen so far this season.
Personally, quite a pleasing effort on day two by all the boys and a much more positive approach to cricket.

Stats from Day One:

Jarrod Lovell: 37

Colin Kennedy: 21

Colin Kennedy: 1/30 off 13

Damien Le Breton: 2/18 off 10

Kyle Young: 2/9 off 6

Scott Henshilwood: 2/20 off 7
 
Stats from Day Two:

Jarrod Lovell: 32

Colin Kennedy: 27

Colin Kennedy: 1/18 off 8

Damien Le Breton: 6/32 off 13

Blair Watkins: 1/11 off 7

V Easts Naturals 11 November



Karori 2A has made it two from two with a 28 run victory 
 
After being shifted from our original venue at Grenada, we found ourselves playing on possibly the worst cricket ground in Wellington - Ian Galloway Park.

The pitch was best described as "lumpy, squishy and mushy" - with the southern boundary merely spitting distance from the crease! This meant that not only would batting become very much a lottery, but even a mis-timed drive which might ordinarily be caught, could potentially go for six!!!

My original intention was to bowl first if we won the toss, however, I managed to lose the toss and the Easts skipper must have had the same thought I did as he sent us in to bat.

I don't think we did too badly with our batting effort, even though we didn't make the target we set for ourselves of 200/220 runs for our innings.

One of our openers, Jarrod Lovell, got out to a ball that kept low and unfortunately for him, it really was just one of those bad peices of luck that would characterise the entire match and claim many wickets yet to come.

Hayden Warren, our other opener, made the most of the conditions and worked his way through to a solid 77, which was a good batting effort given the inconsistent bounce - his innings was cut short via a direct hit from mid on as he called through a quick single.

Our next best batting effort was from Chris Oldham, returning from Otago and not having picked up a bat the entire off season, he scored 17 and showed some deft touches mixed with a solid six before being caught out.

All up, we scored 157 all out in the 38th over.

Our bowling again went very well and as we did against North City, we managed to skittle the top order quite cheaply before a lower order partnership steadied the Easts boat.

The breakthrough wicket came courtesy of Blair Watkins who managed to get an edge down the leg side which was taken very sharply by the keeper..

However, the result was a close one nonetheless, and for a while it looked like Easts might overhaul our total. The final wicket came from Dan Murray, easily the quickest bowler of both sides and he skittled the batsmans castle to secure a wicket maiden and victory for Karori.

Again, there are still things for us to improve on - while certainly a better batting performance than last week, there are still one or two wickets going down to poor shot selection and while our bowling attack is easily one of the best in our grade, we still need to work on keeping up the intensity and applying pressure to stop those middle/lower order rallys. However, this is only game two and I'm really looking forward to when it all comes together and we play the complete cricket match to our full potential.

 
Stats of note:

 
Hayden Warren: 77
Damien Le Breton: 4/13 off 9
Daniel Murray: 3/25 off 8


V North City  4 November



Our first full game of the season ended in a win for the 2A side.
 
This season is promising to be a much more successful season than our debut last year,
and we're looking to turn some heads and roll some of the teams that took advantage of
our debutant status last year.
 
This week we played North City - a team we had a loss and then win against last year.
Playing out at Ngatitoa, the track had plenty of cracks an already looked to be crumbling in areas.
However, we lost the toss and the question of what we were going to do was taken out
of our handsas North City opted to bat first.
 
The plan on this pitch was to make sure we bowled our lines, played our kind of cricket and to
ensure our bowler were not the first to crack. The thinking was that the pitch was always going
to be bowler friendly and it would be difficult to score on.
 
Our bowling effort got off to a great start with Le Breton opening into the strong northerly bowled
four straight maidens to tie down their top order and picking up a wicket along the way.
 
Kennedy picked up momentum and a wicket opening with the wind and we very quickly had their
top order bundled out quite cheaply.
 
The North City middle order staged a rally, but again, the pressure built as we stuck to our game
plan and some tidy bowling to clean up the lower order by Grosvenor saw us clean up
NorthCity for 98 all out.
 
The wickets were shared around, one a piece to the bowlers (2 for Grosvenor) and a couple of
run outs to finish the innings off.
 
When it came to bat we didn't hold the same resolve as we did for our bowling and soft
dismissals in the upper order meant we were making the run chase a lot harder on ourselves than
we had to.
 
However, a steady and determined innings from Grosvenor (56no) and some supporting play from
Kennedy saw us overhaul their total comfortably in the end - although there certainly is room for
improvement going forward.
 
So a win for our first game of the season and generally a pretty pleasing performance.
 
Le Breton: 1/3 off 5 ,Grosvenor: 2/5 off 3 and 56no
2005-06 Season review
 
2a entered the grade having not played together as a team before and with it's skipper in his first year of being a captain. We struggled early on the season as we sought to obtain cohesion and experience. Our short term goal was simply to avoid relegation this season, with our longer term goal being to win the grade and advance to Senior 3 over the next two years.


After losing every game in the first half, we kicked off the second half of the season with a solid win which sparked a greater sense of competition and hunger. Due to our poor start to the season, we were always going to be fighting against relegation and our 200 run win against 3rd on the table in the last game meant that we achieved our goal of staying in 2a and actually finished ahead of both Easts and Collegians.


An important part of our season was the support of both Tony Delorenzo and Graeme Rooney in allowing some of their players to make the move to 2a (both permenantly and as fill ins), as well as Nick Hearn, Rob Ellis and Dave Hooley for their support also. Many thanks to the boys of 2a for guttsing it out through a very hard season of cricket and for the support of the senior players in the team - Frenchy, Tony A, Colin and all the rest of the boys who put their hand up.
 

Damien Le Breton

Team Manager

  
  
  
  
  
  

 

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