This report marks Glenunga Cricket Clubs 45th season, 2021/22 and is a report of its highlights and progress.
This season kicked off with a lot of fresh faces to Glenunga Cricket Club! First, we started with our new club President Alex Mathewson (that’s me!) filling the shoes of James Orchard who had been on the committee for several years. We also saw David Prosser finish up as the Junior Coordinator (and take home the Club Person of the Year Award) and taken over by Jeremy Glaros. Nick Smith stepped in as Secretary for Rebecca Lawson-Cooke, and Karim Goel took over the Sponsorship role to being in those vital funds for the club. Staying with us are Graeme White as Treasurer, David Penley as Grounds & Facilities Manager, and Sampath Wijesinghe has the Senior Coordinator. Alex is still hands on with the Communications role as well.
We also welcomed a new Club Coach, Sam Turner. With a wealth of experience from his playing days in Adelaide’s premier clubs, as well as coaching them!
Adam Leaker, Sanjeev Virdi and Michael Stone stepped in as General Committee members this year as well.
A lot of fresh new faces and plenty of drive to push the club through what would be one of the most challenging seasons yet. With COVID-19 still doing the rounds, a lot were worried a season may be missed or cut short by more lock downs. A new curator in the form of TK Turf taking over the squares at the hub, during one of the wettest summers we’ve seen in a while. It’s certainly been a tricky one.
But I’m happy to say we made it to the end of the season relatively unscathed and also with a grand finals appearance by our B3 ATCA side. Once again, Glenunga is proving to be a popular destination for Junior Cricketers in the Eastern suburbs and reaching full capacity in terms of teams for juniors, and also senior teams!
Again, we fielded a two-day team, as well as three One-Day senior teams in the ATCA competition. While all sides looked strong at the beginning of the year, wet weekends proved to be our first problem with several sides unable to get a full game in for many weeks. This proved tricky for TK Turf, with most preparation on the squares low and slow come game day. Add to this the frustration of water coming from the outfield sprinklers when the pitches looked their best! Once the weather cleared up, we saw pitches playing true to bounce, green on top for the bowlers and plenty in it for the batsman as well.
Results were mixed from the senior teams, with the A grade making the grand finals, B grade struggling throughout the year, C and D grade holding steady and consistent throughout the season but not able to make finals this year.
On Field Performances
Seniors
The B3 team (A Grade) had some great performances. All trophies at Senior presentation night, including the ATCA B3 Batting trophy (656 runs), were cleaned up by James Munting. With 568 Runs, 30+ wickets, high scores of 145 and 108*, and 3 x 5 wicket hauls. Not far off his toes was Jack Walsh with 3 x 5 wicket hauls, including a 10 wicket match haul, and narrowly missed out on a second.
We also saw Sampath make his first tonne for Glenunga, and Matt Prior hit a milestone of 250 games. We saw some of the up and coming young guns like Jack O’Sullivan play some gutsy innings with the bat, including a game saving 50 off 225 balls in the Semi Final do go with his 78 and 80 during the season, as well as Cameron Niblett frustrating a lot of bowlers proving solid at the batting crease. Its great to see those younger players develop more skills and grow as a squad, keep your eye on them as I think we’ll have some great cricket players for Glenunga in years to come.
There may be some debate over who has the safest hands in the A Grade but the stats don’t lie with Jason Dal Corobbo holding onto 9 catches in the slips, we’ll skip how many he dropped though. We can’t skip Jasons contribution with the bat either throughout the season.
To top off James Muntings haul, he also took out the Presidents Trophy as well. I’ve got a bit of a sore back from lugging that box of hardware for delivery.
The A Grade made it to the grand final, and for a team with a lot of young blood they should hold their heads high in making it there and getting to experience what it was like. Fingers crossed they are hungry to chase it down this season in the B2 competition in the coming season and bring home a premiership.
Our B Grade (LO2) were a mixed bag this year, unable to get a win and unable to keep some regular players, some commitment from players in the lower grades to come and test their skills level, along with the glue to the B Grade in club legend Tony Gagliardi saw some great fights against the other sides. With Tony getting in the runs enough, he managed to rack up another milestone in 11,000 runs and the highest runscorer for Glenunga. Tony took out the batting trophy, along with Illham Jaufer taking out the bowling with 19 wickets. Both Tony and Illham took home the same trophies last season, both showing that age is no barrier! Michael Stone (Uri) who stepped up from LO7 also took 7 wickets in a few games, and topped the bowling figures with 4/57 in a very tough game at West Beach.
The C Grade (LO5) saw some great performances throughout the season, Sachira Muthukumarana hitting some big innings in the One Day formats with 92* and 87*, piling 386 during the season. Who was also backed up well by Vimal Natarajan with 258 and Aruna Warnakulasuriyas 236 as well. Vimal had reason to celebrate, with 100 games for Glenunga along with a couple of half centuries and a 5 wicket haul (yours truly holding the catch for the fifth wicket), and 11 catches for the season. Nice work Vimal! Aruna also got a few half centuries and wickets to his name throughout the season. Raj, again, took out the bowling trophy and in the process entered the 100 wickets club. I’m sure he’ll be back for more next season.
The D Grade (LO7) have got some bragging rights, being the side to bat out their 40 overs the most. A formidable batting line up with Wal redding, Ronnie Arboit, Nick “The Wall” Tallarida making sure nothing got through. Ronnie took home the batting trophy this year with 223 runs. Everyone got under the wickets, showing teams win games and catches win matches, with Talla holding onto 7. One of those, being the vital 400th wicket for Corey Zaltron. Congratulations on taking 400 wickets for Glenunga, and glad I was there to snap a photo of the moment! Corey took home the trophy for best bowling, with Mahesh taking the only 5 wicket haul and some how, some one, let Michael Grund into the D Grade. David Evans also celebrated his 50th game with Glenunga during the season.
Juniors
Our juniors were outstanding again this season, fielding 6 U10, 7 U12, 4 U14, 1 U16 and 1 U17 teams. As well as Glenunga taking part in the SACA 150th Anniversary 150 Cup.
U17s
There is no doubt in my mind that the Juniors need to kick off with acknowledging the carnage that Jack Matchett afflicted on bowling attacks this season. In the first round of the summer season, Jack hit the second highest score in the country with 187, he went on to add scores of 53, 101, 165, 56 and 87, totalling 740, and that’s just at Glenunga! Jack also snagged himself a premiership with the Kensington Cricket Club B Grade, another 700 runs in Kensington, and there’s no doubt he’s on the radar of state cricket for the near future.
Sam Neave topped the bowling in the U17s with 14 wickets, proving to be consistent for the side. With Noah Latimer taking home the Coaches Award. Ultimately, all the boys had stand out performances in each game, and the handful I saw with some great performances. I’m hoping to see some of them in Seniors sides in the coming season. The Under 17s did make it to the semi-finals, but bowed out to Port Districts.
The U14 Reds team made the grand final but unfortunately lost, and one of the U12 teams made it to the semi-finals.
After much of a soggy summer, the sunshine was put on for a sensational Junior Presentation Day at the hub. Plenty of trophies were given out, Grill’d Norwood provided burgers and chips for the juniors on the day, and I’ll certainly verify the burgers were good and hope they are back again next presentation day!
Participation Rates
Through the 2021-22 season we fielded four senior teams, two T20 teams, a SACA U18s 150 Cup Squad, and 19 junior teams for a total of 26. That’s a lot of cricket!
We’ll be looking at similar numbers with changes to the seniors with 2 Two-Day teams, and 2 One-Day teams, more T20 cricket and juniors again coming to join Glenunga.
Finances & Sponsorship
The club is looking in a solid position financially after last season with new major sponsor Livability Care Australia donning the front of our playing shirts. Those leaving us as sponsors for the season were Trenchless Pipelaying Contractors, The Roy Kidman Wine Co, Unley Physiotherapy, P&R Electrical and Hire a Hubby Glenunga. We thank for their contribution over the years and hope they keep us in mind to come back to again later!
TK Turf were with us for a full season, and once the rain kept away for long enough. Feedback from the senior players were that pitches were playing true, and had enough in it for both batsman and bowlers. We’d like to thank Justin and Isaac at TK Turf for working with us this season on putting out some quality pitches and look forward to working with them again.
Fees unfortunately will be going up for the 2022/23 season, after several years of keeping the fees on hold before and during the pandemic, costs for the club have also risen significantly. There’s also been a review on how to make sure those expenses in the club are looked out for, and there are no sudden losses for the club, impacting any future plans.
Committee
The committee for the coming season is mostly the same as last year, with some minor shuffling of roles, consisting of:-
President – Alex Mathewson
Secretary – Nick Smith
Treasurer – Graeme White
Junior Coordinator – Jeremy Glaros
Senior Coordinator – Sampath Wijesinghe
Grounds & Facilities Manager – David Penley
Child Safety Officer – Adam Leaker
Sponsorship – Karim Goel
General Committee – Michael Stone & Sanjeev Virdi
Clubs Strategic plan for the future
In November 2021 I attended a conference held by the ORSR on Club Development and took away a lot of valuable information to assist in putting down long term, viable and sustainable paths for the cricket club. To give it the opportunity to thrive, and continue to entice more cricketers into the Junior and Senior Ranks. That information has shared amongst the committee members so that the committee can continue to serve the club and community with a place to play cricket in the Glenunga area and surrounds.
In all, Glenunga had a positive season of growth and building foundations for the future. Plans will start for the following season very soon, with implementation on ideaas on building Glenunga Cricket Club into a destination for Junior and Senior Cricketers, and with any luck, some Premierships!
