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Sports correspondent & historian with |
I have always been a keen follower of sporting records.
Records are the bar of excellence that propels sportsmen and women to break through the unknown, to set new marks of performance.
There is no better example than the four-minute mile on the athletic tracks of the world.
Since Roger Bannister broke through the four minutes mark in running 3.59.4 during 1954, the magical number of the world mile record has become 3.43.13, run by Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj in 1999.
Cricket is the Home of Records - with statisticians recording a staggering array of individual and team facts and figures.
Last Saturday, two United Indians batsmen set a partnership mark that had tongues wagging in the Western Bay of Plenty Cricket community.
Hawks Division Two batsmen, Amritpal Singh and Bikram Sandhu, came together in the seventh over against Greerton 2nd XI and where still there at the end of the regulation fifty overs.
The scoreboard showed that the Hawks CC 1st XI had hit 396 runs for the loss of two solitary wickets, in the first turn at bat.
Incredibly, the Hawks top order pair had put together a remarkable 340 run partnership from just 256 balls, at a strike rate of 132 (per one hundred balls)
Amritpal Singh was the major partner in the pair’s big innings, smacking an unbeaten 170, which included twenty-one 4's and three 6's.
Not to be outdone, Bikram Sandhu, finished with 147 not out to his name. His turn in the battle zone produced nineteen 4's and three big heaves over the boundary line.
Perusal of the two respective batting ledgers showed that both scored many of their runs through judicious placing of the ball, rather than attempting to slog the ball out of the park.
Greerton were unfazed with the near four hundred run mark when they went into bat. They attacked their opponents bowling attack from the get-go with a good number of Greerton batters getting solid starts.
As the overs ticked past, the Hawks bowlers started to grab the ascendancy. However, a solid attack from the tailenders, was highlighted by Richie Earl, who was the last of his teams batsmen called to the crease who belted 63 from 40 balls.
The match concluded when Greerton were finally dismissed for 360 with 16 balls remaining.
Both Hawks and the Black and Gold brigade can look back on an incredible game of cricket where 756 runs were scored in an afternoon.
As the keeper of the Western Bay of Plenty Cricket records for nearly two and a half decades, I scrambled for my records to find comparable feats of cricket endurance.
Just four Western Bay batters have smashed the two hundred run barrier since I took over the records in 2002.
Last season Danphe CC batsman, Ajit Chaudhary set a new mark with 245 runs. Others to blast through the two hundred run mark are Karan Bains (216), Khan Greig (213no) and Colin Chase (212no).
On the other side of the equation, four bowlers have posted the big feat of eight wickets in an innings.
Former premier bowler, Chris Uden leads the list with 8/15 while Rob Ermens (8/19) Ramandeep Kahlon (8/28) and then Otumoetai College quick, James Meyrick (8/30) have their bowling feats recorded in Western Bay cricket history.
Owning a big number scored on the field of play always garners much respect in the game of cricket.