After a very long couple of days today was spent chilling out at my parents house and had a swim in the afternoon followed by cricket training with my Sydney team getting ready for finals day the day after.
Well its Australia day in Oz, whilst every Australian is heading to the beach or a friend’s house to celebrate the day the English side of me is really looking forward to the day I finally get to play some cricket. There was no chance of me being late and no chance of rain, it was 44 degrees at Blacktown Olympic Park… a little too hot.
We were the first game against Mosman, who had the English lads from Warwickshire Tim Ambrose and the bowler Miller. We batted first and posted 140 on a slow wicket, I managed to get 18*. We kept them to 107 all out, I didn’t pick up a wicket but bowled my 4 overs for 19 runs. After the game I had to leave and couldn’t play in the final because I had a game the next day in Wellington and the only flight was at 6pm so I left for the airport.
When I arrived in Wellington I had a voicemail from the lads at Sydney singing the tam song – they had won the final by 15 runs – it was a good result for the club. I arrived at the team hotel to join up with Canterbury at 12.15am
Well the day was here, no rain and I was going to get to make my debut for Canterbury in one day cricket. We got to the basin reserve and let me tell you it’s not called windy Wellington for nothing! We won the toss and elected to bat on a wicket that have been used for the Test Match here a few days earlier.
We posted a very good score of 260 with Captain two-metre Peter Fulton getting 94, Bob Nichol scoring 60 and a few other lads chipping in. At the half way point we knew that we needed to get wickets early and that we did. We had them 40-4 and managed to get them out for 130. I was happy with how I bowled, I picked up 3 – 12 off 6.1 over’s. So we won and also got a bonus point so that takes us to the top of the ladder with two games left.
I travelled back to Christmas from Wellington and I meet up with my room mate Paul Wiseman – it’s like when we first both started at Durham, we shared a place for the first few weeks, so I’m looking forward to catching up with him and his new wife, Amy.
Read Mitchell’s previosu diary entries here
http://www.durhamccc.co.uk/news/claydon-set-for-second-stint-in-new-zealand/