Meteors Blog

18 January 2010

What another exciting weekend we had just four days later. A flight at a very reasonable hour, a slight flight delay, playing two games at the glorious MCG and the buzz around Melbourne of the Australian Open Tennis starting a few days later.

Not long into our trip we started spotting tennis stars staying at the same accommodation, Bernard Tomic was lucky enough to get in the lift with us, or was it the other way around?

With not much time between arriving and needing to get to the ground we all found ourselves in the team bus with Martin our coach, driving the 1km to the ground. Normally this would be a quiet experience, yet after a few loud yells we found ourselves having a small bingle in the car park. Yes we were stuck with a huge dent at the front of our bus in the MCG underground car park.

Not to let this small incident get in the way we sorted ourselves out and went out to field. This being a curtain raiser to the men's KFC Big Bash there was plenty of talk around Melbourne a big crowd was to be in attendance. After a brilliant fielding and bowling effort, some amazing catches and plenty of interesting calls from the crowd we restricted Victoria to a low total of 8/117, Charlotte was the best of the bowlers with 1/8 with Sally also picking up 2 wickets. Not letting us be overawed by the crowd of 43,500 people, Asha Smith led the chase with a quick fire 40, helped mainly by Laura Wright (30). We obtained the runs in the last over with two balls to spare topping off a fantastic Twenty20 season with a big win over the Vics.

Saturday saw us play our first one-day match at Junction Oval. After winning the toss and batting first in quite humid conditions we posted 177 on what was quite a big, slow outfield. Laura was the only batter to pass 50 scoring 63 in a fantastic innings before being run-out. The rest of the Meteor's made starts yet no one else went on with it and we were subsequently bowled out in the 49th over.

Victoria made hard work of the chase with no one scoring big runs but everyone chipping in and during the 48th over they passed our total. Kate Owen was the pick of the bowlers with 4/27. One of the major positives that came out of this game was the fight and belief in ourselves that we could still win, showed by everyone right to the end.

Later that evening saw us enjoy our last team dinner of the season, with the theme being 'bad shirt' night. Mohsin Sheikh had asked me to get him his bad shirt. A nice pink frilly dress was what I came up with, but he spat the dummy and refused to wear it. In came our physio David Kennard, who proudly wore that pink dress like he had done so many times before, much to the amusement of the players and especially the rest of the support staff! The girls all came down in some interesting numbers but I do think that the boys took the cake so to speak. We had Martin Garoni in what looked like a normal 'bad' shirt from his wardrobe; Mohsin Sheikh in a half decent button number with earrings to compliment; Andrew Dawson in the world's smallest top and huge mullet to go with; and good old David Kennard, well what do we say about this, it was pink, there was plenty of hair and it is oh so lucky he is married and we were in a good area of Melbourne!

Back to the MCG and a significantly smaller crowd saw us take the field on what looked like a good batting deck. Some very tight bowling from the opening pair of Charlotte and Aimee saw the Vic's in a bit of trouble early on, but as so many class teams do they fought hard through the middle of the order. Some big hitting from Jess Cameron (52) and Rachel Haynes (85) who almost batted through the innings saw them to the decent total of 229. Kate Owen again picked up some valuable wickets and finished with 3/46.

After losing Charlotte to a foot injury and subsequently off to hospital to have x-rays, the Meteor's got off to a fantastic start, again Laura led from the top with 39 and we were well in the chase throughout the first half of the match. We fell behind during the second session and with most people getting starts we just never pulled it back and fell just 10 runs short on 7/219. Kate Owen again top scored with 57*. It was a disappointing way to finish the season, but what better way than to have all our support staff, including our wonderful CEO Mark Vergano, and pretty much every players parents join us in the change rooms for a few nice words and a few quiet drinks.

Looking quickly back at our season it has certainly been an amazing ride. The first season in the WNCL and Twenty20 competition and finishing third in both is something all the girls should be very proud of. We have had unbelievable support from all the staff at ACT Cricket and without them and the dedication and passion from all our squad members we couldn't have performed so well. I can't wait until pre-season starts again so we can come together as a team and start training for next season. With a year of experience under our belts, I am sure big things will happen next season and we might even go one or two spots higher. We definitely have the passion, support, determination and friendship to make that happen.

Till next time

Char

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11 January 2010: View/Download PDF

4 January 2010: View/Download PDF