DAVE: Alright boys, another big week in sport but I was at a traditional darts and snooker weekend with mates that we’ve going to for 30 years. I didn’t see any cricket so I’ll be reliant on you boys for best action. I’ll start with you Marcus.
BEST ACTION
MARCUS: I spent a fair bit of time on Sunday watching guys look at centre wickets and pull covers on and off which was frustrating, but on Saturday evening I was at Arch Brown Reserve in Berwick and caught the last few overs of the day there. Hallam was bowled out for 189. Berwick had nine overs to face at the end of the first day. They made a decent start, with 11 runs off the first four, but they lost Matthew Hague at the end of the fourth. The next five overs were all maidens. The sky was darkening and you could tell the pressure was rising. Jordy Hammond and Will Whyte were just landing it on a spot, ball after ball, and then they brought on unseen spinner Chareeth Keerthisinghe to bowl the last one. To put it in context, Nicholas Shirt finished the day one off 26 balls and Jake Hancock didn’t score off his 12 to emphasise how accurate the bowling was. It’s a shame they couldn’t come back on Sunday because it was setting up for a thrilling climax.
DAVE: Good stuff. Before I go to you, Jonty, I do have a highlight. I don’t know how many beers you boys can carry but I saw a darts player carry six schooners from the bar back to his mates on Saturday.
JONTY: Big hands?
DAVE: Yeah, but I think he only had skin on four of them and wedged the other two in the middle. It’s something I’ll have to explore in more depth. (Boys laugh). What was your best action, Jonty?
JONTY: Pretty undisputed for me, Jattinder Sigh at Lynbrook. Saturday I went to four different games expecting no results so thought I would use it as an opportunity to put some names to new faces at different clubs. But I spent some time at Lynbrook and the Lakers were on the front foot early but let their ascendancy slip. On Sunday, it looked like the best they could hope for after a rain delay was a draw. Singh was out in the middle in the last 15 to 20 overs, when all the Lakers watching on were desperately hoping for a draw. But he continued to look to score, then took an over for 20 and it showed his intent. He was the only person at that ground that always thought a Lynbrook win was on the cards and he pulled it off. While he found the middle of the bat a lot, the winning runs, coming via a dropped catch, was symbolic of how Silverton let another game slip. An outstanding knock of fearlessness.
DAVE: Hey boys, a question without notice. If should have asked you boys at the start of this season, “what are you most looking forward to about the return of two-day cricket”. Reading your reviews this week Jonty, I think one thing we’ve forgotten about is lower-order resistance. What were you looking forward to the most about two-day cricket and how important are those late runs?
JONTY: I was looking forward to seeing the way the top-order batters would readjust to longer-format cricket. And you talk about lower-order resistance: five of my eight games across Turf 2 and Turf 3, that’s what allowed teams batting first to stay in it. If you asked me halfway through day one ‘how many results would you expect by stumps tonight’ I would have said a lot more than the two that we got. The really good thing from my competitions was that yes there was some resistance and just facing out overs, Fountain Gate a good example, but there was also some good talent down the order in other games which is exciting to see for the standard of the competition.
DAVE: Even Marcus, your game that you described. Two blokes bowling dot after dot…we haven’t seen that for a couple of years either.
MARCUS: No. To answer your question, the battle between batter and bowler in terms of bowlers working up that dot ball pressure and strangling the life out of the batters. In one-day cricket you still get it, but in a much more compact time period, whereas in two-day its built out in three or four overs which is what I’m excited to see.
DAVE: For blokes who love their cricket, the two-day return has brought a different element.
MARCUS: Is that a polite way of saying we’re nerds?
JONTY: Nuffies.
DAVE: Nuffies probably more than nerds the three of us…but probably both categories.
WORLD CUP UPDATES
DAVE: Where do we feel like we’re at with the world cups? I have not watched one minute of rugby. I had to Google it today to find out where I can actually watch it if I wanted to. And the cricket: I’m loving sitting down and watching it. Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Mohammed Shami. Like Marcus was saying, the new ball was having an impact in one-day cricket. My question: the rugby, are you interested in it or have you watched any of it? And the cricket world cup – what’s your take on how that’s developing. Start with Marcus.
MARCUS: Rugby’s not my game. I probably wouldn’t even know it was happening if not for the weird Eddie Jones press conference before the Wallabies took off. Cricket: I think it’s always important at these tournaments that we give respect to the lesser lights, it’s good to see Netherlands and Afghanistan get wins, particularly Afghanistan get the better of England. And it’s also good to see South Africa doing well. I think it would be ironic to see them have success given the unheralded squad. Guys like Heinrich Klaasen, Rassie Van Der Dussen, Marco Jansen, given they previously had a golden era but could never get it done. Keen to see whether South Africa can keep it going but India looks unstoppable.
JONTY: I’m going to go down a similar path to Marcus; I was thinking a similar thing. I’d love to know what the Pakenham Gazette of South Africa is saying at the moment with the success of rugby and cricket success (Boys laugh).
MARCUS: The Pretoria Gazette?
JONTY: Yeah. Or the Bloemfontein Gazette.
DAVE: That’s outstanding from you, Jonty.
JONTY: In all seriousness, I find it interesting to hear you say you’ve sat down and watched the world cup, I feel it has been off Broadway this year, the cricket. I haven’t watched it as much as I usually would. I’ve become a bit disenchanted with the 50-over game in general. From an Australian point-of-view, we’ve exceeded my expectations. I made a bet that we would get one win at this world cup and that would be over Netherlands. I thought even Afghanistan would get us on the subcontinent. I think we’ve become too vanilla; picking the same squad time after time. I still have India as favourites.
DAVE: And your expert rugby union opinion?
JONTY: I think it needs to find a way to get itself back in mainstream media. Where do you watch the sport? Stan. I think it’s a bit hidden so it’s probably concealed from discourse. I think that was a real danger of the AFL if it went down the Paramount Plus pathway, I don’t think as a society we’re quite there yet with live sport.
MARCUS: The time-zones don’t help given they’re over in Europe at the moment but it was an absolute stroke of genius to put the Matildas on Channel 7 and give everyone free access to see what they did. It will pay off in spades.
DAVE: Very good points. On rugby, my good mate, Shaun, is a mad All-Blacks supporter. I hope they get it done for him because he’s heard me talk about the Pies for the last few weeks. Hopefully he can return fire.
JONTY: Hey, off-topic but what do you reckon the New Zealand Badminton national team is called?
DAVE: Shuttlecocks?
MARCUS: Black Cocks?
JONTY: Correct, Marcus. I’ll just leave it there.
MENTALITY IN SPORT
DAVE: Boys, I’ve got a couple of players in Casey Cardinia Cricket who have really elevated themselves into important players in their teams this year: Steve Dillon and Trav Wheller. Steve made 82 last week and then takes five wickets this week and Trav made 100 last week and took 5fa on the weekend as well. My question to you boys is: what is it? Is it one innings, a big hundred, or is it a gradual progression to become one of the key players in your team? I’ll start with you Jonty.
JONTY: I’ve got six things I reckon it comes down to (Boys laugh)
DAVE: Six!
JONTY: Yes, six, I’ve put quite a bit of thought into this topic, maybe too much, but I’ll go through them each briefly. Number one is belief: players need to go out there with a simple mindset which can be clogged if you’re young. You need to have a clear understanding of your role and how that benefits the players around you, so you’re not just isolating your role as an individual, but seeing it as part of a collective. You need to have continuity in your position: from a footy position, young players are sometimes moved around because coaches want to keep them in, but different players returning from injury means they’re playing somewhere different each week. Communication with the coach, who instils confidence by focusing on what the player can do…and shifts their focus away from what they can’t. Nourishment above and beyond basic metrics: something came out in the finals series about Beau McCreery still having the mindset of needing to get early touches. Once he fully appreciates the importance of what he does without the ball, which some of the aforementioned things will help with, he will go to the next level. And triggers within a game, and a clear plan of what to do in different situations.
DAVE: That is magnificent, superb mate. You’ve put a lot of thought into that. Marcus, have you got six answers or not?
MARCUS: I think Jonty’s can be boiled down to good coaching.
JONTY: Perhaps to some degree.
MARCUS: I don’t have that level of detail but I think it’s interesting comparing footy to cricket, which can be a bit of a tricky path, and not something I want to do a lot. But at the top level, Mike Hussey was into his 30s before he got a go at test cricket. He had mountains of runs under his belt at test level. You compare that to guys who are picked prematurely like maybe Usman Khawaja who did well on debut but was in and out for the next decade before only solidifying himself in the last 24 months. Shaun Marsh also to a lesser degree. It’s interesting to see Dhanusha Gamage at Dandenong this week, he made a 100 on debut and piggybacking off what Jonty said, he really credited Tom Donnell and Brett Forsyth for giving him the confidence to go out there and play his natural game. He’s only 20-years-old but it will be interesting to see what he can do going forward.
JONTY: If I can just give three players who have had that one ‘breakout’ game: Ricky Johnson round one v East Malvern, it was a wet day and he went into the middle. Doveton were a little bit down and he was a livewire and set the scene for the rest of the season. Marnus Labuschagne’s 2019 Ashes; and Harry DeMattia for Dandenong, round one he got 14 and three and looked comfortable in his role after being shown a bit everywhere last year.
DAVE: When you start playing local cricket, if you’ve got serious talent, more often than not you’re a 15 or 16-year-old playing with blokes you’ve watched on the sidelines and admire. So I reckon it just takes a little bit of time to get that maturity to believe in yourself when playing with guys you’ve watched for so long.
MARCUS: Just before we finish up, a shout out to Eleanor Wilson, it’s her last week at the Gazette this week and she’s dying for a shout out in LTS.
DAVE: She’s been a pretty special person around the office in the last couple of years.
JONTY: She sure has.
