Welcome to another edition of Tah Talk with Joel Foster. This week we take at the return of club favourite Lachie Kerr, NSW players playing M1s last round, and the success of the Junior system this year.
A big thank you to Scott MacNeill and the team at Gibson MacNeill Lawyers for their new partnership with this season. If you have any legal needs big or small, visit them at www.gibsonmacneill.com.au
Kerr purrs with hot streak
Lachie Kerr sat out last year with an ongoing knee complaint, and he was missed.
A great personality around the club, it been fantastic to have him back on the park this season.
He has been putting in some solid performances but really excelled on Saturday in 4th Grade with his first 5 wicket haul since 2015/16.
It’s very rare that 2 players take all 10 wickets, but that’s what happened. Kerr took 5/25, and he was joined by fellow premiership winner Liam Dinan who took 5/15.
Between them they skittled Sutherland for 86.
One of the wickets was actually former test opener Phil Jaques.
Jaques has a talented son who is coming through the grades, and they teamed up on Saturday. He is also the head coach at Sutherland.
From what we can find, it was Jaques first game of the season. But he didn’t last long, with Kerr sending him back to the pavilion for a duck.
Kerry was ecstatic.
In all seriousness, it is great when players of Jaques ilk come back and play grade, even if it was just 1 game. It adds to the character, romance, and quality of NSW Premier Cricket.
We even had our own returning veteran playing in the game in Cameron Merchant, who hit a composed half century.
There has also been a lot of publicity around former test cricketer Monty Panesar playing 4th Grade at Campbelltown.
It seems everyone is returning to play the main grade. We welcome all players to add depth to the competition.
Just make sure Lachie Kerr is not in the opposition.
Wests and Randwick play out thriller
Speaking of returning players, it was great to see all of the NSW batting squad returning to play Grade cricket on Saturday.
We certainly saw the impact of this ourselves with an Ollie Davies hundred.
Another to return was Josh Phillipe who turning out for Wests. He inadvertently got caught up in one of the great games.
Philippe smashed an amazing 197 of the first 256 runs to get Wests to an imposing 401 off their 50 overs.
There seemed like only one winner when Randy-Petes slumped to 3 for 60, but the merged club kept swinging.
Thanks to great innings by Riley Ayre and Alex Lee-Young , they needed 30 off the last 2 overs, and 20 off the last. But they could only conjure up 18 to lose by 1 run.
401 vs 400. What a match for the scorers, who must have been working overtime.
While Wests got the victory, it shows you that nothing is a sure thing.
Junior Reps doing local area proud
The Quarter Finals of the Junior Reps association have been run and won, with Manly Warringah’s Division 1 sides in the 4 older boys age groups (U13s, U14s, U15s and U17s) all getting through to the Semi Finals this weekend.
It is an amazing result for a hard-working bunch of boys, alongside their workaholic volunteers, officials and parents.
The U17 Watson Shield side was an especially pleasing result given they got over the top of Parramatta, a previously undefeated side and notoriously string in the junior ranks.
The big players stood up. Will Graham, Harvey Matheson, Rohit Jayaram and Darcey Horstead were all outstanding.
Our U15 Weblin Shield side had a close 32 run win in a low scoring affair, thanks mainly to 5/12 from Jacob Watts.
There was a relatively comfortable win for the U14 Moore Shield who got past Blacktown with Frederick Tyson, Justin Turner and George Hansen all performing well.
Finally for the boys, our U13 Gee Shield side had a great 5 wicket win, thanks mainly to an unbeaten 115 run partnership from Blake Cottee and Alex Claxton.
This Sunday is going to be a huge day for local junior cricket as we look for Grand Final positions in all 4 age groups.
Go Manly!
