Taronga Match Report Sat 6 Dec v Northbridge at Primrose #3

A hot day on Saturday at Primrose saw us take on bottom of the table Northbridge.

We lost the toss and feared the worse that we’d be fielding in the heat, but surprisingly we were asked to bat ! A decision Northbridge would come to regret in a game when records tumbled !!!

The first record to go was the lowest ever combined age of our opening batsmen – with Dhruv & Dylan registering 37 years between them (rather than the 100+ years we normally have).   We got to a reasonable start but by the 8^th over both openers were in the shed (Dylan 11, Dhruv 5) and Yogesh joined Jess at the crease.  Despite a couple of early moments – when both batsmen were dropped by the wicket keeper in the same over – both settled quickly with Jess in particular looking in supreme form in his first game back after injury.  The pair destroyed the pretty ordinary bowling putting on 148 runs for the third wicket before Yogesh was caught for 60 (5x4, 1 x6). At 3-192, Riordo joined Jess with 12 overs to go.  Jess continued to smash the ball all over the park and brought up his 100 with a six over the mid-wicket and then moved very quickly to 150, eventually out for 179 – one of, if not the highest score ever for Taronga (?). In all Jess spent 27 overs at the crease for his 179 hitting 16 fours and 13 sixes. After he was out Riordo carried on, reaching 51 before he was brilliantly caught one-handed on the boundary. Phil (14no) then smashed a couple of boundaries and we closed on 5-348 - definitely our highest ever score in a one day match, and quite possibly in 2 day cricket as well.   Well batted Jess, Yogesh and Riordo.

With Northbridge requiring 10 an over (!!) our only issue, with thunderstorms building, was ensuring we bowled 20 overs to make it a match.   Northbridge didn’t even give it a go and focussed on getting batting practice, their opener blocking out 90% of balls he faced before he went off ‘re-tired’.  Sharpy, who with his dickie digit couldn’t play and umpired the whole game, was as sympathetic as you’d expect “why do you want to go off? It’s not as if you’ve been doing any running?” Northbridge limped along to 5-136, and to be honest it was a pretty tedious second half of the innings once we’d achieved the 20 over target.  We used 8 bowlers with Yogesh  (2-16), Sarvesh (1-18), AB (1-23) and Phil (1-23).

The winning margin was 212 runs (again probably another Taronga record).  What a difference a week makes - last week all out for 72 (not a record 😊), this week we score 348.