The Bendigo Bank 3rd XI started the 2020/21 season with plenty of experimentation, having six new players down to the club, but reached the half way point in the season in 4th spot on the ladder, and just starting to hit their stride in the last few games before the break.
This season looked very promising with the bat after round one with back to back 80 run partnerships highlighted by Sam Mackie’s return to the club with a gritty 38 opening the batting, and a maiden century at the club (105*) for Keyur Mehta who was smashing them everywhere, which led to a healthy score of 4/224. Unfortunately too many wides, and poor fielding meant that North Balwyn were able to chase down our total in the last over of the day.
From rounds 2-4 after a few changes to the team, this completely flipped, and the bowling and fielding improved unbelievably, however runs became very hard to come by.
In round 2 we scraped together a score of 8/147 thanks to some late fireworks from Mick Lowry with 42* (off not many balls) and after some good tight bowling and excellent work in the field, we had out first win for the season holding on for a fantastic 10 run win.
Round 3 was another disappointing loss to AYC Harlequins, but it also saw the return of the exceptional all round performances we’re used to seeing from Dev Patel who hit a terrific 73 (And formed a solid partnership with Boyd Justice who hit 26) and took 4/31 off his 8 overs.
Round 4 was our most disappointing loss, but the main positive to take away from the loss against Balwyn Saints was the fearsome bowling from Andrew Sewell who was bruising bodies with his quick pace and then following up with wickets, as he ended up with 4/38 off his 6 overs giving us a fighting chance to win.
In Round 5 Keyur Mehta suggested mixing it up by bowling first (Since our batting wasn’t clicking). This turned out to be a a strike of genius as we rolled Burwood for 92, led by Kunal Janjrukia who took his first (proper) chance at a bowl this season taking 4/20 off 8 overs after training hard and very well for weeks, and this helped us win over the top team at the time.
Round 6 was the same but better! We bowled first and rolled (Again high on the ladder) Mount Waverley Catholics for 61 with a terrific 3/8 off 6 by Dev Patel and one of the tidiest bowling spells you will ever see by Chamin Marasinghe who took 2/1 off 8 overs, including 7 maidens! This led to our 3rd win of the season.
The Bendigo Bank 3rd XI have improved unbelievably over the last few rounds, with a positive sign being that we have had our 3 wins against the 3 top teams, with some minor adjustments those close losses to the bottom teams will quickly change, and I look forward to playing some finals cricket with this group.