DAVE: Alright boys, the old recorder has got fresh batteries in and is ready to fire up. It’s been another huge week in sport, Marcus; let’s start with you mate and your best action from the weekend.
MARCUS: I’m giving a shout out to Narre South quick Jawed Hussaini. Late in St Mary’s second innings, Navoda Hettiarachchi slogged Jeevan Mendis to the deep mid-wicket boundary and Hussaini was waiting for it. There was a two week period in 2014 when Jake Carlisle took about 30 overhead marks and kicked 12 goals. Well, Hussaini rose up like Carlisle did that fortnight and plucked one out of the sky. Two hands, a nice little tumble afterwards, a brilliant outfield catch. Jawed gets my best action for the week.
DAVE: Very sneaky Marcus, getting an Essendon reference in during cricket season.
JONTY: One of my best actions was driving to the ground and looking up and seeing blue skies, considering the amount of rain we’ve had.
MARCUS: That’s not a good reflection on the cricket, if blue sky is the highlight.
JONTY: No, no, I saw plenty of good cricket played as well, starting with Fountain Gate and Silverton. But my best action comes from the ending of the Parkfield and Lyndale game and the dismissal of Nithiyananthan Mahendrakumar, the Lyndale number-10, who was just teeing off against the pace bowlers. Parkfield brought on the spinners but Steve Cannon had to go back to the pace bowlers, they were threatening but getting hit for a lot of runs. Second ball back, Hansika Kodikara skittles Mahendrakumar and basically wins the game for Parkfield. It was an all or nothing move from the captain, and it paid off.
DAVE: I get the feeling I’m getting stitched up here with the length of these names. (Boys laugh). But I’m going to balance things up because my best action goes to a player with 10 letters combined…Chris Smith from Pakenham. His teammates call him Smudge, the same nickname as Steve Smith, and when you watch him bat you can see why. He’s a magnificent player to watch and he turned it on against Devon Meadows on Australia Day. I can’t single it down to one piece of action, but Pakenham made 62 off the last five overs and Smith made 49 of those…that says it all. Once he gets going he’s impossible to stop and there’s no more elegant player in the CCCA than Chris Smith. He’s been threatening a big one for a while now and it all fell into place on Friday.
JONTY: You said a couple of weeks’ back that he would need to make a century in both the semi-final and grand final for Pakenham to win it this year.
DAVE: If he does, they’ll probably win it. He and Dale Tormey are a dangerous combination.
EMERGING TALENTS
DAVE: Boys, some really young talent took the sporting world by storm on the weekend. We had a 19-year-old, Rosita Reijnhout; win the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, we had 22 year-old Jannik Sinner win the Australian Open, and Shamar Joseph is 24 and basically ripped the heart out of the Australia mid-to-lower order. All three were amazing to watch; give me a brief comment on any of those you saw and then tell me what young talent is emerging from the cricket leagues that you cover.
JONTY: I didn’t see all of Shamar, but saw from the Mitch Starc dismissal onwards. It was unbelievable, the pace that he bowled with and the bravery that he showed. Jannik Sinner, everyone associates him with composure, and that’s what he showed even when two sets down, that’s a great strength of his. As for young talent from my league, there’s a few of them. From Fountain Gate, and I’ve spoken about him a bit this season, Nadim Nazif, he’d be the youngest regular first XI player in the DDCA…he’s only 13.
MARCUS: 13!
JONTY: Yes 13. He doesn’t have the pace just yet, but just puts the ball on a length and is very hard to get away due to the lack of pace and the accuracy that he bowls with.
DAVE: Sounds like Steve O’Keefe.
JONTY: No, he’s a medium pacer with a really nice action who’ll get quicker as he gets stronger. He tears it up in juniors as well and has a growing reputation around the league. Harry Lees is another one from Fountain Gate; he doesn’t have heaps of runs on the board this season but I think he will turn into a pretty special talent for them. And a Parkmore player, Dilum Sasantha, is a left-arm bowler who has worked his way up from the twos. He’s starting to have an impact in the ones as Parkmore mounts an unlikely quest to make the top four.
DAVE: Marcus, your thoughts?
MARCUS: I didn’t watch a lot of the tennis yesterday, but when Sinner was wiping the floor with Djokovic in the semi-final, that certainly caught my attention. He’s a tall man and it’s rare to see Novak on the back foot, struggling with the power that Sinner could generate. Novak has made Rod Laver his own in recent years, so to see someone make him defend like that was pretty extraordinary. And Shamar, well, it’s going to be one of those performances that we remember for a long time. Young talent in Turf 1; well I don’t have a 13-year-old for starters. Jarryd Wills, he’s only 20 or 21, an opening bat, and Berwick is really excited to have him back this year, after having a crack at Premier. He got 110 not out against Beaconsfield on Saturday and scores at a decent clip. Cal Nicholls is a young batter from Narre South who has been mentioned a few times in LTS. He makes a lot of runs against quality opposition, and I think the step up to Turf 1 will help Tyler Clark from Beaconsfield in coming years.
JONTY: Tyler Clark is not that young…he’d be mid-twenties!
MARCUS: I don’t have a lot of very young talent in Turf 1.
DAVE: Boys, Will Halton is probably the eye-catching youngster in CCCA cricket at the moment. He’s 18, opens the batting for Devon Meadows and has been selected for the Country Week team that will play in a couple of weeks’ time. He’s a classy right-hander with huge potential and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him take his cricket further. Tyler Evans from Tooradin, he’s already a senior premiership player and it feels like he’s been around a while. But he’s still only 19-years-old and is starting to get more of a go with both bat and ball in a very strong side. Jacobus Hynes from Cardinia has just turned 21 and has made a few good scores this year, and Pakenham has three young bowlers coming through that all show something. James Close and Marcus Martini are both good medium-pacers at the age of 20, and Jordan Seers is only 21 and showing plenty of promise with his leg-spin. I’m sure I’ve missed some…but that’s a pretty handy list right there. The CCCA is good shape with those players as the future.
GET THE WALLETS OUT
DAVE: Boys, back to Chris Smith for a second, I’d actually pay to go and watch him bat, because of his elegance. My hero growing up was Mark Waugh; he didn’t have the numbers of his brother Steve but, in my opinion, was a much better batter to watch. Going back even further there was David Gower from England…
MARCUS: Here we go…
DAVE: Yes, a bit before your time. Marcus, who are the players that you would pay to watch in your competitions this year.
MARCUS: I’m starting with a bowler, is that controversial when we’re talking about elegance?
DAVE: Go on, and we’ll be the judge.
MARCUS: When a guy has taken 29 wickets, averaging eight, I think he deserves a bit of recognition. I’m talking about Springvale South spinner Jarryd Straker. He’s taken no less than two wickets in every innings he has bowled this season, and on Saturday he got the big wicket of Jawid Khan in his first over. He’s left-arm orthodox and is comfortable bowling in any situation. He can tie up an end or bowl really attacking; he’s just a sensational cricketer and has probably been as big a key to their back-to-back success as anyone. I’ll throw his teammate Jordy Wyatt in there as well, he’s an entertainer and can really shift gears with the bat. Jordy Hammond is in that bracket as well; as an all-rounder who’s got every skill you could ask for…he’s an imposing figure who won a Wookey Medal at a young age is probably the best player in the comp. And his teammate Mahela Udawatte, he’s a former Sri Lankan test player and elegance personified.
JONTY: Players I’d pay to watch. Nick Suppree from Coomoora, he’s the one I watch in Turf 3 and think is the most technically correct batter, and he’s also very entertaining, scoring his runs at a good clip. If you bowl a bad ball to him you know it’s going the journey, and he even leaves the ball with authority on the front foot. There’s a middle order batter from Parkmore who has been in sensational form this season, and performed when they were struggling, Jaime Brohier, he targets the square boundaries and is entertaining to watch. And two more quick ones; Hasindu Waduge from Fountain Gate, you’d pay to watch him with either bat or ball, and it’s hard to leave out Jacko Marie, who is on target for 850-plus runs this season if he continues in his current form.
DAVE: That’s huge.
JONTY: I think he’s 682 at the moment and he’s got at least three more hits, possibly four, if Berwick Springs make finals. He could go close to 1000.
DAVE: It wasn’t lost on me on Friday that I was at Glover Reserve watching Chris Smith make his ton, because almost 11 years ago I witnessed a similar knock from Tom Hussey in the 2012/13 grand final against Merinda Park on the same ground. I think he made 146 for Tooradin that day…the best innings I’ve witnessed live in all my time at the Gazette. Chris Smith now, and Tom Hussey in his prime…they’re the two I’d dig deepest for to go and watch play cricket. Dwayne Doig from Cardinia was also mesmerising with the ball; and I’d love to be at the ground when Brad Butler really hits his straps and cleans up an opposition one day. I reckon he’ll do a Shamar Joseph one day…and just blitz the opposition batters with his pace. And you can’t leave out Dale Tormey, he was on the Renegades reserves list when he first came to Pakenham and plays shots that no-one else can play. He has lightning quick feet and hits the ball to places it shouldn’t be hit.
TRAITORS?
DAVE: A quick one to test your allegiances boys; Jonty, who were you barracking for when Shamar Joseph was ripping the heart out of the Aussies?
JONTY: I was barracking for a tie; I didn’t want his heroics to be lost if the Windies fell just short, but I wasn’t ready to not back the Aussies in a Test Match.
DAVE: Does the loss hurt Australia at all? I’m talking about qualifying for the World Test Championship.
JONTY: Pat Cummins said at the start of the summer that it was a not-negotiable that we had to win all five Tests against Pakistan and the Windies. I don’t think there’s much wriggle room now.
MARCUS: You’re testing our allegiances Dave but, as a sports journo, I was barracking for the story.
DAVE: Exactly my thoughts…I wanted Shamar to get eight wickets when he had the chance.
MARCUS: You had the West Indies pulling off the unwinnable win, but a Steve Smith century also would have been a fantastic storyline. There were storylines everywhere, but the best storyline for cricket was the West Indies getting up.
DAVE: I felt like a traitor yesterday, I really wanted Shamar’s efforts not to go to waste, and I found myself hoping that England would beat India as well. Good call Jonty…a tie would have been perfect. I need to go home tonight, put my thongs, shorts and singlet on, have a Vegemite sandwich, crank up the barbecue and wash it all down with a cold can of Carlton Draught after I finish mowing the lawns. It’s un-Australian to barrack for England!
Great chat boys…we’ll do it all again next week.
