Cricket Preview - Week One
Sunday sees the start of the Maccabi cricket season with three fixtures in the Barratts sponsored Maccabi Sunday Cricket League.
Game of the day sees 2007 champions Casual Nomads travel across West London to open up their campaign against the much improved but still very youthful MAL. Nomads appear to have strengthened somewhat over the winter but expect to be without some big names for the game. Nomads skipper Andy Finlay appears to have already found form hitting an unbeaten fifty in their warm up match against Old Elizabethans last Sunday.
MAL showed that their young an relatively inexperienced side oozes class in all departments with their performance at the recent Maccabi Indoor tournament. Led by Gav Lebens, the young guns have some major players including the rapidly improving Yoav Lebens, Yoni Schurder and 2007 Young Player of the Year, Jon Begner in their side.
Nomads will start as favourites but MAL should put out a much stronger showing than they did in this fixture last season.
Match two sees 2006 champions BECC 2nds travel to North London to face 2005 champions Southgate. Both teams appear to have been plagued by an availability crisis of sorts coming into the fixture with new BECC skipper Lawrence Jeffries the latest to pull-out. Southgate too are missing a number of key players including 2007 Maccabi Batsman on the Year, Richard Israelite but skipper Richard Mitchell welcomes back his predecessor Peter Morris (after a 4 year absence) and look set to give a first cap to new strike bowler Nathan Bernstein who has been more than impressive in nets.
Although both sides are slightly weakened, Southgate start as firm favourites and home advantage should provide enough to tip the balance the way of the north Londoners.
Match three sees new boys Barnet travel to the country-boys of Newlands and Northwood. Barnet are an unknown quantity being new entrants to the league but will be without skipper Simon Hayes who suffered an unfortunate broken wrist in pre-season.
Newlands skipper Jon Mymin welcomes back veteran trundler Derrick Sheldon who returned after one year away on a Bosman transfer from Southgate. Mymin may also have any number of class players available including Benny Wolpe, Richard Lipschitz, Darren Cohen and Anthony Etkind(!).
Whilst little is known about either squad, the logical choice would be to back N&N however with Barnet such an unknown quantity anything is possible.
