played in a t20 tourney over christmas. i put in a team of mostly players from my saturday team, with a couple of guys from higher grades who couldnt get a gig to make up the numbers. we play in lower grades on syntho and are either old and unfit or some of the guys have never played higher grades of cricket. so this tourney was for 20k prizemoney and as such there were some fairly handy cricketers playing, the best of them probably andrew robinson,
had a great time playing on turf in pyjamas in front of some small crowds. we came close on the first day, against our first opponent we conceded a few too many runs on a slow deck, but batted admirably without ever looking like getting there, but then had to back up 2 hours later and play another game. old bodies do not like this. bowled that team out under par, but with the deck getting even slower, couldn't find the boundary enough and fell about 15 runs short 9 down. both of those 2 teams made the semis.
then we had to back up again the next day for another game. this game was on a postage stamp on a good wicket for t20, not much bounce, fairly quick and nothing sideways. long story short both of their openers got 90 odd and we were put to the sword. one of the guys dropped one of them too. a real shame as their bowling attack was poo, if we'd taken a couple of early wickets could have had a chance.
after those 3 games we were dropping like flies, groin injuries, hammies, broken fingers and blokes who couldnt tell you where they were sore because everything was. got pumped in the last game too, but for a bunch of old fat lower grade cricketers we did alright. playing against shield and country rep players, we had blokes going out with no helmets playing with heaps of balls against stuff 120-130k's, batsman with no respect coming down the pitch and being stumped by about 3 metres. couldnt explain just how hard it is to back up playing multiple t20s with no rest days especially as we dont train or really exercise at all. cant wait to go back to z grade lol.
