Tag: Caoimhe Bray

Brilliant Bray Bosses Sydney Smash

A look back at today’s ‘Sydney Smash’ – Thunder v Sixers – in the WBBL, including a historic performance from Caoimhe Bray and a photo gallery featuring pictures taken with three cameras.

Today in the Women’s Big Bash League saw the Sydney Smash – Thunder hosting Sixers at Drummoyne, just west of Sydney. This post looks back at a bizarre game that ended up being dominated by the youngest player involved.

SIXERS SLUMP AFTER STRONG START

Sydney Thunder skipper Phoebe Litchfield won the toss and chose to bowl first, a decision that her cross-city counterpart Ashleigh Gardner would also have made had she been the one to win the toss. Each side had a youngster in the ranks, Thunder giving a debut to 18 year old all rounder Lucy Finn, while Sixers had 16 year old bowling all rounder Caiomhe Bray (that given name is pronounced like ‘Keeva’ just for the record).

Ellyse Perry was out fairly early, pinned LBW by Georgia Voll with just 16 on the board. Thereafter, with Sophia Dunkley in prime form, and Alyssa Healy taking full toll of a few loose balls things initially looked bright for the Sixers. Their innings took a dramatic turn when Healy tried to go after one from Shabnim Ismail and succeeded only in picking out Samantha Bates who made no mistake with the catch. That was 76-2, and off the last ball of the tenth over Dunkley fell for 43, pinned LBW by Sri Lankan veteran Chamari Athapaththu to make it 80-3 at the halfway stage of the innings. In the second half of the Sixers innings wickets tumbled regularly, with the shining exception of English spin bowling all rounder Mady Villiers who emerged as third top scorer of the innings, with an unbeaten 24. A final total of 142-9 looked on the meagre side, especially from that high water mark of 76-1 after 8.4 overs…

THUNDER TUMBLE

…Sixers needed to start well, and veteran seamer Lauren Cheatle struck with the fourth ball of the Thunder innings, having Voll caught by Villiers to make it 2-1. Then the other new ball bowler, Maitlan Brown, struck twice more, first accepting a soft return chance to dismiss the other opener Tahlia Wilson for 7, and then having the vastly experienced Heather Knight feather one through to Healy for 6 to make it 19-3 in the fourth over. Neither Phoebe Litchfield nor Anika Learoyd played fluently, but they held the fort together until the last ball of the seventh over, bowled by the youngster Bray. Litchfield, who had reached 8 from 14 balls tried to attack against Bray and succeeded in being caught by Gardner to make it 33-4. The next over yielded nine runs, before it was back to Bray, and the biggest events of the night. The first ball of the ninth over did for Learoyd, bowling her for 11 to make it 42-5. That brought the explosive Laura Harris to the crease. Harris tried to do her thing off her first ball and was brilliantly caught by a diving Erin Burns for 0 to give the 16 year old Bray a hat trick comprising three front line batters, some 175 years after All-England skipper Heathfield Harman Stephenson caused the term to be coined by dismissing three batters with successive balls in a match in Sheffield, which led to the crowd, impressed by the performance, to pass round a hat for a collection and present both hat and contents to Stephenson. Incidentally, though this match was flawless in this regard this edition of the WBBL had not overall been notable for catches being held. That was 42-6, and Lucy Finn came to the crease. Four balls into the second half of the innings Athapaththu holed out to Gardner to give Bray her fourth scalp of the innings and make it 49-3, the Sri Lankan managing only 3 (6). Bray had two balls of her allocation left to make it a five-for, but was not able to do so. However, her final 4-0-15-4 including the hat trick had settled who would be named Player of the Match. Thunder’s own youngster, Finn, now took centre stage, as she, with good support from tail enders Taneale Peschel and Shabnim Ismail (number 11 Samantha Bates not being required in the end) proceeded to produce an innings that exposed just how badly her supposed betters had handled their duties. She just missed on reaching 50, but her 49 not out, in the course of which she never looked in any trouble was the highest score of the match on either side – quite something for a debutant who came into the match considered more of a bowler than a batter (and though, like all else, it was overshadowed by Bray’s performance 3-0-27-1 on professional T20 debut is no one’s idea of a failure). Thunder with this late revival reached 118-8, beaten by 24 runs.

PHOTOGRAPHS

This gallery features images taken with three cameras – the Nikon Coolpix B500 that was my first choice camera until it died on Tuesday morning, the Canon EOS 4000D that is my reserve camera, and the Panasonic DC-FZ82D which I ordered on Wednesday and arrived yesterday and is now my new first choice camera…

This gallery consists of the last pictures with the Nikon.
The pictures in this gallery were taken with the Canon…
…and starting with this one, the Panasonic.
I used this Canadian train coin to test the Panasonic’s ability to handle detail.
The Red Mount Chapel.

WBBL10 Under Way

A look at the two WBBL10 games on which there were radio commentaries today, and a large photo gallery.

The 10th edition of the Women’s Big Bash League is underway. I got most of two commentaries today, first Melbourne Renegades against Sydney Sixers, which was happening on neutral territory, at Adelaide, and then Perth Scorchers against Melbourne Stars which took place at the historic WACA stadium in Perth.

RENEGADES v SIXERS – A BATTLE WITHIN A BATTLE

This match, a battle between representatives of Australia’s two biggest cities was dominated by titanic individual performances from two of Australian cricket’s biggest stars.

Renegades batted well, with the highlight a spectacular 61 (31) from Georgia Wareham. For the Sixers skipper Ellyse Perry was easily the best of the bowlers, recording 4-0-25-2. Caoimhe Bray (that first name is apparently pronounced ‘Keeva’), all of 15 years and 34 days old, meaning that Perry is quite genuinely old enough to be her mother, was given a single over of right arm medium fast. She conceded 15 runs, but ended the over by extracting an ample measure of vengeance, rearranging Deandra Dottin’s stumps.

Perry launched a spectacular onslaught at the start of the Sixers reply. Yorkshire batting all rounder Hollie Armitage opened the innings with Perry and provided splendid support, contributing 30 (23) to an opening stand of 79 in 7.2 overs. Ashleigh Gardner fell cheaply, but Scottish batter/ keeper Sarah Bryce provided Perry further support. It took an excellent catch by Linsey Smith off Wareham to end Perry’s innings, for 81 off 38 balls. Wareham, backed by fellow spinners Smith and Capsey now seemed to have swung the match in her and the Renegades’ favour, with Courtney Sippel’s dismissal making the score 147-7. At that point the youngster, Bray, joined Bryce, and Bryce finally found her best form. It was Bray, on her debut in professional cricket, who made the winning hit, a four off the final ball of the 19th over that took her score to 12* (5), while Bryce had 36* (25). Wareham had 3-0-26-3. With the Sixers winning Perry was named Player of the Match – had Renegades won it would almost certainly have been given to Wareham. Scorecard here.

SCORCHERS v STARS – BOWLERS DOMINANT

Scorchers batted first, and run getting was never easy, though Mooney (skipper and keeper as well as opening batter) and Amy Jones (playing as specialist batter) each reached 30, and Chloe Piparo managed 23. A total of 122-8 looked modest. Left arm spinner Sophie Day had 3-21 from her four overs.

Ines McKeon, a 17 year old batter/keeper, and Meg Lanning opened the batting for the Stars. McKeon was impressive right from the start, but Lanning never got going. The first turning point of the innings was a sensational over from Chloe Ainsworth, a 19 year old fast bowling all rounder, the first ball of which cleaned up Lanning, and the fifth did the same to Annabel Sutherland. McKeon was playing a gem of an innings, all the more extraordinary given how young she is, but could find no one to stay with her. Marizanne Kapp briefly looked like doing so, but was run out when leg spinner Alana King deflected a fiercely struck drive from McKeon into the bowler’s end stumps with the South African out of her ground. Thereafter it became a procession, and when Sophie Reid was sixth out only 78 were on the board. Kim Garth finally provided McKeon with some support, and the youngster brought up a superb 50 off 43 balls. The next delivery was a wide, off which Beth Mooney executed a smart stumping. That was 95-7, and it was down to Garth and numbers 9,10 and 11 to conjure 28 runs between them. Bizarrely cricinfo’s Win Predictor still had the Stars as favourites at that point, a reminder that AI is far from all powerful – to anyone who knew anything whatsoever about cricket the Stars after McKeon’s dismissal were rank outsiders. Five runs later Carly Leeson, whose first over had been disfigured by a number of wides, but whose second was a lot better, took a wonderful return catch to account for Garth, and now even Win Predictor recognized the writing on the wall for the Stars. The last two wickets scraped a further nine runs, the majority extras. Ninth out was Sasha Moloney, bowled by Lilly Mills for 1. Number 11 Maisy Gibson survived one ball, but off her second the Mooney/ King combo were in business for the second time of the innings, and the match was over with Scorchers winning by 13 runs. Although King with 3-20 had the best figures of the innings it was quite correctly Ainsworth, who had broken things open for the Scorchers with those two monster scalps of Lanning and Sutherland who was named Player of the Match. Scorecard here.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…