The SNCC Youth Academy Bears Its Fruit

This Saturday saw us play at another new and unfamiliar ground at Centennial Park against an Addington team we beat on the last ball in the first round. With numbers looking a bit tight after a late, season ending injury to Matt Gower the Neuf needed to replenish the stocks from the Youth Academy. Which saw the call-up of a young 17 year old by the name of Daniel Messervy.

Having seen quite a bit of rain the day before looking at the pitch you could tell that it was a crucial toss to win since some parts of the pitch were actually a bog. We won the toss and sent them in to bat confident of nabbing a few early wickets and not having many runs to chase. Addington shut up shop straight away and the pitch did not seem to play too badly considering. Going into drinks they were on a respectable 76/2.

After drinks saw the young man come in to the attack. A nervous start saw him take a bit of tap in the first over and the selectors wondered if it had been a good idea bringing him in to the side this early. He soon composed himself and bowled a good spell of 8 overs, 4 wickets, for 32 runs, returning the faith the selectors had in him.

Set 163 to win, it was probably a few more runs than we wanted to chase since we had lost our usual opening pairing of Richard and Reid. So a makeshift pair of Scarf and Kelvin were asked for some grit up the top in order for us to get home. Sadly only two overs were enough to break the partnership, and another wicket followed shortly after that. Hopes were still high as the Neuf's Premier All Rounder strode to the wicket with Scarf. But, after hitting a glorious 6 down the ground he to was marching back to the pavilion. The middle order put up little or no resistance and once the gritty innings from Scarfy ended the tail was exposed.

With plenty of overs left and around 100 runs to get, the stand-in skipper Matt Mace and the young Daniel set about resurrecting the innings. Whilst the skip wanted to just try and swing at everything to get the game over with the cool young head convinced him that it was not out of our reach and played a supporting role as Dan started putting them to all parts of the boundary.
Unfortunately it was all in vain as Dan departed for a handy 33 we were bundled out for 117

So another loss goes down in the book but the future is looking bright for future seasons.

I would also like to thank Richard and Bevan for their help in bringing together the vision I had for the SNCC stumps. They looked awesome out there on the field, especially when Tom sent the middle stump flying out of the ground.

M. Mace