Advertisement
by Krytenia » Fri Jun 05, 2020 4:20 am
by New Lunenburg » Fri Jun 05, 2020 9:29 am
Folenisa Cricket Ground. Folenisa, Liventia
Ko-oren 331/5 (50 overs)
New Lunenburg 333/7 (49 overs)
New Lunenburg win by three wickets with 6 balls remaining
NEW LUNENBURG CRICKET BOARD
XI FOR ODI WORLD TROPHY VS. LIVENTIA
by The Plough Islands » Fri Jun 05, 2020 10:30 am
on the 5th June 2020, the Plough Islands Gazette wrote:WORLD TROPHY: FANTASTIC FOXES OVERCOME TEUSLAND
by Denis Wormwood, Sporting Correspondent, in Orean
The adventure continues; the Plough Islands, entering considerably uncharted waters with their first appearance in a Global Cricket Federation limited overs tournament knockout stage, held their nerve and were able to rein in the aggressive instincts of an extremely good Teusland side in order to win by 43 runs in Orean. There had been much trepidation among the team and those following them ahead of the match, with the Plough Islanders very much the smallest of the teams contesting the quarter finals, but an excellent collective batting display and good bowling tactics from Kevin Laing ensured his team could set and defend a comfortable total, and the question of how much further they can go in the World Trophy remains very much an open one.
The Foxes, save for the absence of Colin McCarthy with his hamstring injury and Tim Bleasdale as a precaution after the Swift wicketkeeper had complained of cramp in training, were otherwise at full strength, and Graeme Holt and Audrey Leggett began the match at full sail; on a dry day, the Park Central Oval would offer little to the bowlers whoever went first, and captain Laing was relieved at winning the toss with Konrad von Sauerland and being able to choose to bat. As they had often done before in the tournament, Holt and Leggett played with freedom and confidence against the Teusland attack and set an early benchmark, taking just twenty-five minutes to reach sixty runs before Holt edged Ben Trenker behind.
Shauna Weaver came in - for only the second time since suffering a concussion in the first match against Lisander at Schimpol - and, unlike her first match back, settled quickly, and was shortly joining Leggett on one of her rapid accelerations of scoring that have come to characterise her approach to the competition. By now Leggett was well past her half century, and the pair added another quick sixty, turning into a century partnership, to the score as they judged the bowlers well; despite a brief interruption when Weaver eventually skied an Elias Lehner delivery that wicketkeeper Martin Kaplan cycled backwards to take almost in the deep, the scoreboard continued to tick over.
Leggett was on one of her wild-eyed rolls; occasionally not even taking guard, she would just stand and tempt von Sauerland into sending down a tricksy delivery that the Bradfordian would dispatch into the stands far quicker than it had come to her. She hit twenty off one of the captain's overs, von Sauerland looking slightly perplexed in the face of the onslaught, but Leggett's energy would prove her undoing; Josef Meusberger sent down a slower delivery that the right hander shaped to hit out of the ground, but overbalanced badly, and in the resulting mess of limbs and equipment her off stump was nearly broken in half. Leggett departed, slightly shaken, for 82, and fortunately suffered no lasting injuries except to her pride.
Though the rest of the Foxes' innings was less spectacular than Leggett's cameo had been, it followed a similar template in that the Teusland bowling attack - which had so often been clinically effective when they had a target to defend - seemed to have few solutions to what was an inexorable accumulation of runs. Though wickets did come, with Lehner and Trenker picking up two apiece, and Meusberger had particular success in keeping to a line and length it was difficult to score from, they were often as much due to lapses of concentration on the part of the Plough Islanders as they were due to skill. And they came expensively, with Leggett's 82, Weaver's 58, and Rory Aliyev also blazing a half-century before Trenker pegged back his (replacement) off stump, and by the time captain Laing came in to bat he virtually had the freedom to set his own total and bat at his preferred pace.
The only Plough Islander wicket that fell in any way cheaply was the unfortunate Leanne Martin, who top edged Lehner to Kaplan after just four balls, but that was the last relief the Edelweiss had during the Foxes' innings; Laing and Andrew Fairfield, who was noticably operating under orders to have fun and not worry too much given the match situation, were batting confidently and the runs, and boundaries, kept coming for the Plough Islands as the overs ticked by. Fairfield diverted Meusberger around the wicketkeeper for four to bring up the 300 with two overs remaining, and some late, slightly agricultural shots from the New Dalmatian helped to set a target of 317.
Teusland openers Marc Breuer and von Sauerland were left in no doubt about the magnitude of the task they faced with over six runs an over needed from the start, but took it on with the determination and aggression that has characterised their cricket throughout the World Trophy. The Orean pitch had not been particularly exploitable when it was new, and despite fifty overs of predominantly pace bowling from the Edelweiss, was if anything even less helpful to Andrew Baxter's line and length, and it was this that Breuer and von Sauerland predominantly scored from; Laing was ultimately forced to switch to spin from both ends early on as the Teusland openers comfortably got ahead of the required rate, and then rotate the bowling more as neither of them showed signs of slowing as the fielding restrictions wore on.
Despite his early struggles, it was Baxter that ultimately made the breakthrough; brought back into the attack after Laing decided against bowling himself, he took the wicket of the Teusland captain through luck as much as skill; gearing up to drive Baxter back down the ground, von Sauerland hesitated for just a fraction too long as the ball came in and fired it straight back at the Sutton & Avalon paceman. It would have been generous to say he took the catch so much as he endured it as the ball thudded into his stomach, but winded though he was, he held on to the ball and von Sauerland departed eight runs short of a half century. The loss of Breuer the next over in more conventional circumstances - his middle stump uprooted when Sarah Ashe found the gap between bat and pad with a delivery that went straight on - left two new batsmen at the crease, and it was here that the Teuslanders began to unravel.
While August Tausche, a familiar figure to the Foxes' bowlers as the batting hero of the Edelweiss' debut Test at December Park, was quick off the mark and looked to keep the momentum of the openers going at every turn, young batsman Michael Kolleck was a different picture; while he never looked wholly uncomfortable at the crease, he appeared nervous and edgy at times and it took the right-hander a number of overs to get off the mark, at one point being very lucky to not be dismissed as, out of desperation, he swiped at a Baxter delivery that Ilya Lebed was slightly too far back from the stumps to gather cleanly. Though the Teusland chase did not exactly stall, the rate was considerably slower than it had been before, and the new partnership became increasingly lopsided with most of the runs coming from Tausche - who several times was observed trying to give his partner a mid-pitch pep talk between overs. As Tausche completed a rapid, fluent half century, raising his bat to acknowledge the Orean crowd, Kolleck began to look a little lost, and after finally bringing up his first boundary with a cut over midwicket, his scoring actually decreased as the Foxes closed in and began to target him.
Tausche eventually edged behind to Lebed, having scored 70 runs and contributed over 80% of his partnership with Kolleck, leaving the 22-year-old with another young partner, the Teus Wunderkind batsman Silvester Basch; unfortunately, having received a rapturous reception from the white and gold elements of the crowd, he was out almost as soon as he was in, having chopped Andrew Baxter straight onto his own bails. It fell to Simon Riedl to try and revive the flagging Teusland hopes, and he took no time to get comfortable and exert some measure of dominance over the Foxes' spin attack, but the issue for Teusland remained at the opposite end of the pitch. To his credit, Kolleck did try and show a lot more urgency with the bat than his strike rate suggested, but the frequency with which he swung and missed, particularly to left-arm spinners Fairfield and Naomi Salisbury, contributed to a rising sense of frustration from the Edelweiss, and Laing was by now exploiting this to the Foxes' advantage; setting close fields for Baxter or Weaver to prevent Riedl from grabbing singles to remain on strike, and changing bowlers frequently to get as much time as possible at the increasingly lonely Kolleck. Eventually, having faced 92 deliveries, the right-hander lunged down the wicket only to completely miss the ball and was caught on the back pad, and after a long period of thought Burnadette Taylor raised the claw; Kolleck was gone for 26.
The Teuslanders were still in the chase, although the required run rate was now north of 20, thanks largely due to Riedl; the all-rounder having taken advantage of the close fields to flick numerous boundaries over towards midwicket and cow corner, and although considerable damage had been done regardless, if anyone could salvage the quarter final, it was the Edelweiss vice-captain and some lower-order slogging. The Plough Islands turned the screw, though, and new man Linus Schell lasted two balls before falling in a very similar way to how Kolleck had gone - going for a sweep and adjudged lbw on the trailing leg - and wicketkeeper Kaplan fell at the start of the 48th over when a Fairfield delivery flighted in and took a thick edge on to the bails. Riedl continued to scoop and slash where he could, having surged past his half-century with a monstrous six that disappeared into the Orean evening traffic, and Elias Lehner flicked a four over fine leg off his first delivery, but Fairfield and Salisbury's deliveries were accurate and well chosen, and while Teusland's mathematical victory chances slipped away quietly with the third delivery of the 49th over when Lehner could only smash Salisbury harmlessly into the dirt, they had been over in spirit several balls earlier, and the fatal wound inflicted earlier still.
Laing, Salisbury, and Lebed were quick to console the Edelweiss after the last ball was bowled, and Laing paid tribute to the Foxes' opponents later; "It always hurts that there has to be a winner and a loser, especially where there are two teams that have played such good cricket - Konrad and his team have been exceptional today, and throughout the competition...we did not take this lightly and they really made us work to defend the target", adding that "I have been in club sides and representative sides and national sides that have needed an August Tausche, he was excellent for them today". It was a sentiment echoed by Salisbury - "I think we got extremely lucky that we batted first, we knew how lethal they were defending a target at the death" - who was similarly cautious when asked about the prospect of how much further the Foxes could go. "It is...I mean, we can do all we can, we will do all we can, myself and the rest of the comrades, but it hinges on little things, like winning the toss today and whether you can get your flight and length right, holding on to catches, that kind of thing. Anything quite genuinely can happen now".
However, there was little question of what Salisbury, or anyone else, wanted. "To see how far we can go" is a polite way of phrasing the question, with only the four teams now remaining in the competition, and as much as Laing and his team will be taking one game and one day at a time, it is impossible not to think, in daydreams and in the subconscious parts of the brain where we all keep our secrets, about what the consequences are of the "adventure", as Laing has described it, continuing for two more victories. Krytenia now await at City Centre for the Plough Islands, and the Stars are a dangerous team who have been aggressive and assured in their path through the tournament, and they will be an extremely tough foe. And it is important to remind ourselves of the scale of the Plough Islands' achievement in reaching this stage of the competition, in competing alongside these teams.
But the same things were, justifiably, said of Teusland, and about the honour in reaching that stage of the competition. And all any Plough Islander, whether they are opening the batting or following from home, wants, is to see how far our small country can go.
on the 5th June 2020, the Plough Islands Gazette wrote:WORLD TROPHY: IN DEMAND FOXES CAN MAKE OUR COUNTRY PROUD
by Ian Goswell, Chief Cricket Correspondent for Plough Radio, in City Centre
Working for Plough Radio on cricketing tours can, at times, be a baffling task; outside of the occasional Ko-orenite publication or Apoxian radio station, almost all of our output is for the benefit of Plough Islanders and Plough Islanders only, giving as accurate and immersive a report of the match as we can and sharing our assessments of team selection or tactical choices for a domestic audience, even when we are far away. We have rarely before had to consider the implications of broadcasting for a multiversal audience - we have, from time to time, recieved and replied to correspondence from further afield, but by and large the Foxes and everyone associated with them are anonymous when we travel outside the islands. (Indeed, early in the first limited overs tournament I attended, a member of the foreign press corps saw my badge and, despite me coming up to this gentleman's thighs in my wheelchair, asked if I had played in the previous day's loss to Mattijana.)
The tournament has been different. The achievements of the team have brought a new level of attention to our small country; our comrades at the Ministry of Defence and Foreign Affairs of the Plough Islands and at Plough Radio have been working tirelessly to provide information to those members of the press requesting it, and I am told visa applications and bookings on PITA have exceeded almost all previous levels, although whether the Constabulary will appreciate the influx is a different matter. It has become clear to even the casual observer that the Plough Islander voice carries much further in cricket than anyone, within or without the islands, had previously thought to be the case; even my friend Andrew Kulayev has been asked by the Krytenian Broadcasting Service to appear briefly on their television coverage of the match today, a request which I am sure will in no way confuse or baffle our new Atlantian Oceanian friends with his Chechen accent.
As the Plough Islands have had an impact on the world, it has been Kevin Laing and Lourens Hendricks' role to try and minimise the reverse effect; though the players have largely been shielded from the foreign media, it has been impossible for them to be unaware of what is happening. Laing described it to me as being like "a fox in the rabbit hutch", adding that "I think everyone feels a little bit more pressure to perform with the eyes of the world on us..." Batsman - and Socialist cadre - Arthur Donovan saw it differently; "You can get carried away with the significance, but...it honestly feels like a trail for socialism has been blazed, when you consider the endeavour and the collective spirit of an amateur team, one of farmers and unionists and teachers and dockers, putting to shame so many others with infinite resources and wealth compared to our own. It shows the world what can be achieved through the bonds of socialism, even for such a small country as ours." The political significance has not gone unnoticed elsewhere, with Cde Premier Dale Piper being among those to have sent personal messages of support to the players ahead of the Teusland match, and again following the result.
Regardless of what prism the Foxes' results have been viewed through, the achievement is no less remarkable. Liventia, the hosts, have in excess of three hundred and twenty million citizens, and we have borne witness to new suburban developments in a relatively provincial context that could house all Plough Islanders with room to spare. When Kulayev appears on Krytenian television, he will potentially be speaking to over a hundred and fifty million people. Even the diverse and fiercely competitive New Lunenburg team represent a country with a population more than thirty five times our own - almost incomprehensible numbers when thinking of them as people, but ones that place the journey the Foxes have been on since their first Global Cricket Federation Test in a perspective we can all take pride in.
And it is a journey that nobody is particularly in any hurry to end. As the Plough Islands take the field at the National Centre of Excellence Oval, they will have an unimaginable amount of eyes and ears hanging on their every move, but no voice will be heard as loudly as that of a hundred and forty thousand of their comrades, from near and far beyond the boundary, willing them on with unconditional support. Win or lose, the semi final represents a wonderful achievement for all Plough Islanders, but who can say it will end today?
After all, if we never listen, who keeps telling us that we're winning?
PLOUGH ISLANDS CRICKET ASSOCIATION
XI FOR WORLD TROPHY VS. KRYTENIA
PLAYER BAT BOW
#10 G Holt LHB
#12 AC Leggett RHB RLB
#16 SLC Weaver RHB RLB
#2 RP Aliyev RHB
#1 KCT Laing (c) RHB RMD
#13 LA Martin LHB
#7 AG Fairfield LHB SLC
#5 TM Bleasdale (w) RHB
#3 S Ashe RHB ROB
#4 A Baxter RHB RFS
#15 NA Salisbury LHB SLA
by Liventia » Fri Jun 05, 2020 2:34 pm
by Sylestone » Fri Jun 05, 2020 8:50 pm
by New Lunenburg » Sat Jun 06, 2020 9:20 am
Folenisa Cricket Ground. Folenisa, Liventia
New Lunenburg 285/3 (50 overs)
Liventia 202/6 (50 overs)
New Lunenburg win by 83 runs
by The Plough Islands » Sat Jun 06, 2020 10:23 am
by Krytenia » Sat Jun 06, 2020 1:58 pm
PLOUGH ISLANDS INNINGS - 344/7
G Holt b Saxon 28
AC Leggett st Grafton b Obermann 0
SLC Weaver not out 153
RP Aliyev b Saxon 35
KCT Laing b Monciestri 71
LA Martin c Grafton b Monciestri 6
AG Fairfield c Schneller b Saxon 19
TM Bleasdale c Grafton b Udall 44
S Ashe not out 0
EXTRAS 11
BOWLING O R W Econ
SA Obermann 10 94 1 9.40
LR Saxon 10 60 3 6.00
GM Udall 10 81 1 8.10
GDJ Monciestri 10 46 2 4.60
BY Hill 10 63 2 4.40
KRYTENIA INNINGS - 346/6
BATTING
SV Schneller c Aliyev b Weaver 95
HM Tatton c Bleasdale b Salisbury 10
VC Fulmer b Salisbury 1
RJ Watling run out 69
EL Fenn not out 109
GM Udall lbw Baxter 0
BH Grafton c Bleasdale b Fairfield 38
LR Saxon not out 9
EXTRAS 15
BOWLING O R W Econ
NA Salisbury 10 44 2 4.40
SLC Weaver 7 53 1 7.57
AG Fairfield 9.5 66 1 6.71
A Baxter 10 60 1 6.00
KCT Laing 1 12 0 12.00
AC Leggett 4 30 0 7.50
S Ashe 8 78 0 9.75
KRYTENIA win by four wickets.
by New Lunenburg » Sun Jun 07, 2020 8:00 am
NEW LUNENBURG CRICKET BOARD
XI FOR ODI WORLD TROPHY FINAL VS. KRYTENIA
by Liventia » Sun Jun 07, 2020 3:08 pm
1 New Lunenburg 25.417
2 Krytenia 20.250
3 The Plough Islands 19.083
4 Liventia 16.250
5 Martune 15.667
6 Ko-oren 14.167
7 Eastfield Lodge 12.917
8 The Grearish Union 12.833
9 Darmen 12.750
10 Jeckland 11.833
= Teusland 11.833
12 Sylestone 11.750
= Samrakstivu 11.750
= The Sarian 11.750
15 Barunia 11.250
16 Mattijana 10.833
17 Serriel 10.083
18 Lisander 9.583
19 Ethane 9.417
20 Damukuni 7.667
21 Sajnur 6.583
22 Elejamie 5.417
23 Baggieland 4.583
= Northwest Kalactin 4.583
25 Kohnhead 4.500
26 Kriegiersien 4.333
27 Drew Durrnil 3.417
28 Holy Land of Burtander 3.167
= Bolgano 3.167
= Anserisa 3.167
= Notum Ahom 3.167
= New Maxwellia 3.167
= Waisnor 3.167
= The Jovannic 3.167
= Ricardos7qm 3.167
36 The Booter 2.000
= Subramani 2.000
= Virtual Nerdania 2.000
by New Lunenburg » Mon Jun 08, 2020 4:59 am
Park Central Oval. Orean, Liventia
KRYTENIA 271/6 (50 overs)
Watling 80 (68) Atkinson 2-49
Schneller 62 (82) Schneider 2-55
NEW LUNENBURG 274/7 (48.1 overs)
Fuller 90* (76) Hill 3-58
Hansen 58 (40) Saxon 2-53
New Lunenburg win by three wickets
Advertisement
Users browsing this forum: Al-Accol, Crpostran, Eshialand, Sarzonia, Srednjaci, Tero al Disco
Advertisement