Maple High School won the 2017-2018 YRAA (York Region Athletic Association) Boys Varsity cricket championship on Monday (October 23, 2017) against Middlefield Collegiate Institute. Concerns about bad weather saw the game brought forward from Tuesday. The wind was getting stronger and cloud cover was increasing from noon onwards at the McCowan Reservoir grounds today and I decided I was not feeling up to watching cricket but it seems I jumped ship on the final a day late rather than an hour or two early.
The score on the YRAA website shows Middlefield CI 100, Maple HS 101. So congratulations to Maple High School who also won last year’s tournament.
Eddie Norfolk
Video of some playing action from the Maple High School (top of West Group) v Bill Hogarth Secondary School (fourth in East group) playoff game at Maple Leaf Cricket Club in October 2017. Bill Hogarth SS opened this year and the team in the YRAA (York Region Athletic Association) had limited cricket playing experience. The video shows about five minutes from the Maple HS innings. One Bill Hogarth bowler finds a line after spraying balls wide on both sides of the wicket but several “better line” balls are struck and powered to and over the boundary. Maple HS had some useful seam bowlers and the Hogarth batting begins with stumps being displaced and a batsmen departing bowled. The batsmen’s position and attempts to hit the ball seem to follow a baseball approach of standing wide of the plate and hitting, or attempting to hit, with a bat at an angle. Some balls beat the batsman for pace but one ball is effectively blocked by a non-straight bat. So some hand-eye coordination exists that with coaching could transform some of the Hogarth players. Maple HS went on to amass 208 runs from 15 overs. Bill Hogarth batted out most of the 15 overs and scored 24 all out.
This video lasts just over 10 minutes.