16.02.2012 - Graz Tournament Round-Up
A quick summary of events from Graz - by Quinton Norris

First game up was the U/17's where we won the toss and gladly batted first, with Erwin, Tim, Quinton and Vikas all getting over 25 and having to retire, we made a good total of 147; at that stage the highest score midway through day 1. We were confident, however so was Mark who was opening the batting playing for the U17’s against us and he was composed from the start, retired for scoring 25 runs and came back in and managed to score the winning runs against us with 3 balls to go, we had lost the game because we gave away almost 60 extras (58 or 59 it was). The U/17’s scored 150/4, so we almost won it but the "almost" felt like a long way away - the only possitive we can take from this game was that Mark played very well, bowled well and showed great composure whist batting, something the selectors hopefully noticed, great talent for the future.

Our next game was against Velden and we won the toss again and batted, Erwin retired scoring 25, Tim fell 1 shot short of retiring when he was caught, Quinton got a LBW inside edge shocker also 1 shot short of retiring. Then it was turn for the "V's" to show some class with Vikas and Venkat (scored more then 25 so retired) also batting well and we ended up making the top score of the tournament with 160. We were in devastating form in the field and only needed 2.5 overs to sink Velden for 20, Quinton getting 3 wickets and we made 2 run outs. Finally we were on the up and were ready for PCC the next day.

We were confident going into the last day, PCC would be ours, Tim won the toss again and we batted. We started off okay, then disaster struck, Erwin was roofed, Tim was caught, Quinton roofed, Vikas roofed and Venkat caught leaving Michi stranded who was looking good – all out for 57 or something around there, really a bad feeling and ending for us. We took the field and tried hard, however, they got the score without losing a wicket after 6 overs as they did not have to take any chances, which they did not. There we were, out of the tournament and regretting it every moment we could as we watched up until the end of the second semifinal – always wondering and amazed how we were not there… Now we move on to our Tournament in 2 weeks and with that, we will take lessons from Graz and learn from it.

It was good to play, we all played well at times and still had fun, pity we never came back with the trophy but that will change this season!!!

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