JONTY: Welcome back to LTS for another episode, the week of the return of two-day cricket in the DDCA which has thrown up some intriguing action. Marcus, what was your best action of the weekend?
MARCUS: As you know, Jonty, there is a shared appreciation on the sports desk for Mark Cooper. It was a Battle of the Creek between Berwick and Beacy on Saturday and if there is a man you want in the trenches, it’s ‘Coops’. The pitch was a row of mud and there was a delayed start because the umpires didn’t deem it safe enough to begin with but you wouldn’t have known it watching ‘Coops’. He scored 62 off 80-odd. Anything bowled straight on his pads, he whipped onto the leg-side. If you pitched it short and wide, he crashed it through the offside. The highlight being a decent slog sweep in front of square for six. It scattered a few Berwick past players who tested their reflexes – so a shout out to ‘Coops’.
DAVE: We had two games in Casey-Cardinia which went down to the last wicket, with Clyde now winning two in a row after not winning a game all season. They were one run in front and Devon Meadows had one wicket in hand but there was an LBW to finish the game off. But my best action this week goes to a bloke that doesn’t get a lot of kudos around the traps, Jack Anning from Pakenham. He took three catches on the weekend. The Pakenham captain, Dale Tormey, pushed Anning back to a deep backward point and Gamini Kumara got a short, wide delivery and smacked it straight to Anning. The ball was rocketing and he took it well. He then came out and made 33 this week in a 96-run opening partnership as well after making 28 last week. That might not seem like a big deal, but Jack hasn’t made huge runs over the years and people get stuck into him. He is in his early 30s now and is still improving as a cricketer. That’s hard to do…so well done Jack.
JONTY: What was the immediacy of his catch following the field change?
DAVE: Only a few balls.
JONTY: So the same as when I…have I told you this story?
DAVE: No, but you’re starting to make a habit of this. Last week you told us about facing Devlin Webb.
JONTY: Junior cricket, as captain. You’d both be aware that occasionally you’ll have 10 fielders when there is a change of ‘keeper etc. Well I had someone come onto the field and ask me ‘where do you want me to field’ and I thought I had everywhere covered. So I told him to go to a second gully on a hunch. First ball, edge, second gully catch. He didn’t have to move.
DAVE: Did you take the credit?
JONTY: Yeah well the square leg umpire was our coach and he heard it and couldn’t believe it.
MARCUS: How do you settle on a second gully?
JONTY: I’ve got no idea.
DAVE: So Best Action has now become – Best Action/Jonty Flashback.
JONTY: My best action – Brad Hodge, you can’t go past that. He was outstanding, not just what he did but how the Titans were able to pump it up and get such a large crowd, it was a footy-like atmosphere. If I had to settle on one piece of action, he said he really wanted to hit a six. The HSD captain said after the game that he watched his highlights but one thing he wasn’t expecting was Hodge to lean on a forward defence and hit it for six. The timing was impeccable and what it did for the club was great, too.
CAMEOS
JONTY: On that note, we’ll move on to some other players who have been highly regarded and got to the pinnacle of their sport and then come back to the grassroots to make cameo appearances. We’ll start with you this time Dave.
DAVE: You boys would have noticed over the last decade, we’ve seen Barry Hall, Jason Akermanis and Dane Swan all do it a lot. The old SEFNL competition had its night in the spotlight when Brendan Fevola pulled on the guernsey for Doveton, he was at one end, and the great Marc Holt was at the other end for Cranbourne. It was on the front page of the footy liftout, we really pumped it up, but it pissed down all night which ruined it a bit. To make matters worse for Fevola, guess who he had playing on him?
JONTY: Brandon Osborne!
DAVE: Fevola was kept to no score for the evening while Holt kicked a few. It was a bit of a fizzer as a game but a great atmosphere. That’s the one that sticks out, two champion full forwards taking on each other. Stephen Milne for Hampton Park as well. From a cricket point-of-view, the only one that sticks in my mind is the Pattinson boys in the DDCA.
JONTY: You’ve taken two of mine, but that’s alright.
MARCUS: I’ve defaulted here to one of the most memorable days of my life. Very wholesome and great to see the greats support the local game – Chris Gayle, Shoaib Malik and Thilakaratne Dilshan all played for Endeavour Hills that day. It still will go down as one of the strangest things I’ve seen at local level. This breaks the rule a bit but there’s a terrific book by Garry Linnell on Gary Ablett senior’s career. What I found interesting was his reflections on being a player at Drouin before he made it to AFL level. The way that whispers would circulate about this Ablett bloke who would play at local level. Then he played at Myrtleford after he quit Hawthorn. That was before I was born but it’s an incredible book called ‘Playing God’ for anyone who wants to read it.
DAVE: There’s stories about ‘Frosty’ Miller from Garfield. He was 17 and he kicked 164 goals in one senior footy season. Then he went to Carlton and kicked 30 goals in his first six VFL matches. Didn’t get along with Barassi and never played VFL again. Then went to Dandenong and the crowds would flock from one end to the other, which ever one Frosty was playing at. Then he went to Berwick for two years and in one of them kicked 202 goals. So you talk about cameo appearances, whenever he played, everyone was star-struck by him. The facts and figures are incredible.
JONTY: The only ones I’ll add are James Pattinson from a footy perspective playing for Doveton earlier in the season and Nathan Buckley’s cameo for Nilma-Darnum – in a similar vein to Fevola. It didn’t reach great heights due to him suffering an injury 10 minutes in, but it still did wonders for the club and he helped coach.
AUS OPEN
JONTY: The Australian Open this season, I’ve been less invested than previous years and I know I’m more into tennis than you guys. One thing I think the Australian Open has done well is extending it into a three-week event with several things happening at Melbourne Park before the actual tournament kicks off. But the tournament itself has Novak Djokovic who is expected to win it again but is missing Rafa and Roger for the first time since 1999. So has the sport’s greatest flaw, in the predictable outcome with the big three, also been the greatest drawcard, in that seeing the best and almost barracking for an upset has brought in crowds? The public seems less interested this year and I would be part of it.
MARCUS: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here Jonty, my interest has waned in recent years. Not only were guys like Federer so good but they were charismatic as well. You would always have the main guys, but the carrot of the next tier was so important. I don’t know if the new guys coming through have the swagger or personality to carry the torch. I think you are correct – while it became predictable, you could set yourself knowing you would get upper echelon standard.
DAVE: I think you’ve raised a good point here as well Jonty. I went to a golf tournament once and Tiger Woods was playing and you love going there because you’re watching the best to ever play the game. You had that feeling with Djokovic, Federer, Nadal. To me, dominance breeds champions; champions breed star quality and at the moment we don’t have any. I did a bit of homework and of the top five in the men’s and women’s at the moment, only two of the 10 would turn my head if I was walking down the street: Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev. I haven’t watched one ball of the Australian Open this summer and I love sport so it has definitely lost its lustre for me.
JONTY: Thanks boys…that’s it for LTS this week.
**Jonty stops recording
DAVE: Have you forgotten something?
RED BALL CRICKET
JONTY: Moving onto the next topic, which I nearly forgot about – the return to two-day cricket has brought about some interesting soon-to-be results in Turf 2 and Turf 3. Who have been the teams that have dominated the longer format – obviously we have been interrupted by weather this season.
MARCUS: I don’t think there’s been too much of a difference between the one-day sides and two-day sides: good cricket sides know how to win. Buckley Ridges and Springvale South are the obvious two, neither having lost a game yet. Buckley had points taken off them but they have won each contest. I think that comes back to their experience and knowing each other’s games’ inside out. They have all played together for a while, Buckley Ridges in particular had a game earlier in the year it won by one wicket. Watching them as the game got close, they were as relaxed as you could see for a team that nearly lost a game they shouldn’t have dropped. They have won in different ways and have got different levels of skill which has made the return to two-day cricket pretty seamless and the same goes for Springvale South. They have won the last two flags in white ball cricket but the return to two-dayers has been more of the same.
JONTY: Anything to add, Dave?
DAVE: This is why I think Tooradin win the flag in CCCA, because it’s a two-day finals series. Kooweerup smashed them in a one-dayer two weeks ago but the Sweeney boys have been brought in to win two-dayers not one-dayers. On the weekend, Pakenham beat Kooweerup. Kooweerup made 140 and Pakenham was 0/96 but everyone was like ‘this game is still on the line’. All of a sudden it was 1/96, 2/98, 3/104 and Dale Tormey was at the crease – you felt like if he went out, Pakenham would crumble and lose by 10 or 15 runs. That’s why Pakenham won’t win unless Chris Smith and Tormey both score a hundred in both finals. Like Marcus, I think the good teams are the good teams.
JONTY: Agree with that sentiment. The one thing I wanted to raise here was Coomoora because they’re a team that’s right on the edge of the top four. They have had more ‘no results’ than any other team in the competition and they have looked a tier below their best but, after this weekend – they already have the points over Hampton Park – they will be the only team with four two-day wins. Once you get to the two-dayers, the better teams are separated because they have players which can anchor the innings where a lot of batting lineups are aggressive. The other team I want to touch on is Doveton North, which is going really well but struggle a bit more with the one-day side of things because the bowling attack is two-pronged: Sachith Jayasingha 32 wickets for the season, Gayan De Silva 30 wickets and the rest combined have 29. They need those two to bowl bulk overs which they’re fit enough to do but the restrictions of one-day cricket hurt them.
DAVE: Very good, boys, now get ready. Because next week, I’m going to ask you to review your predictions from preseason and ask you to justify them.
