With 10 matches played already in 2022 the Napa Valley Cricket Club (NVCC) is taking a mid-season break to ramp up its social activities off the field. The club hosted their first golf day since 2019 at Rancho Solano recently and had eight groups of four for a day of social, and competitive, golf. The social activities continue with their annual Ladies Day gathering at BeBubbly in downtown Napa last Saturday. In addition, the club will host the AFL (Aussie Rules) Grand Final live from Melbourne on Friday, September 23 at Napa Barrel Project with the game scheduled to start at 9:30pm.
On the field, it’s been a busy season for the club who started matches back in April with a trip to Davis to play the Sri Lions. NVCC fell just short as the Sri Lions chased down their target of 190 with just a few balls to spare. That was followed by a match on May 1 against Sacramento Valley CC on the road where Napa were well beaten despite two wickets apiece for Tim Mills, Nick Martin, and Andrew Healy. The club then renewed their annual three-match series against Marin CC in Larkspur where NVCC were again on the wrong side of a close game.
June brought the club’s first win of the season with a convincing win in Larkspur. The tone for Napa’s innings with the bat was set by opening pair Club Captain, Jake Radloff (27 off 36) and Jason Beveridge (22 off 27) with the pair putting on 54 runs in 9.2 overs. Fellow batters Karan Grewal (50 off 50 ) and Avinash Tuta (47 off 44) helped NVCC reach 218 runs in their 40 overs. Tight bowling restricted the chase with Marin ultimately falling 57 runs short.
NVCC hosted their first home match of 2022 at the Expo in downtown Napa in late June and the Sonoma Gullies were first up on the home roster. A strong batting performance from the Gullies notched up a record score of 316 runs in their 35 overs. A century for Ishan Patel was the highlight of the Gullies innings. On any other day the NVCC reply of 223 runs would have been a great effort but was in vain when chasing such a massive target.
The club’s marquee match of the year, the Napa Valley World Series of Cricket, was held on July 9. Napa Mayor Scott Sedgley was the guest of honor as he presided over the toss. The match pits club members against each other based on their country of birth and as in previous years it was an Australia/America (AA) team against a Rest of the World (ROW) team. The World Series match hadn’t been played since 2019 so it was a giant step back to normality for the cricket club. Sorabh Das captained the ROW team, won the toss, and decided to put the AA team in to bat. A top score of 44 runs off 86 balls from Rob Bolch helped the AA team to 125 all out with Das taking three of the AA wickets with his accurate spin bowling. Despite some impressive fielding from Jason Beveridge (2 catches and a direct hit run out) the ROW team were brought home by Jeff Keene (39 off 81) and Karan Grewal (31 off 45) with seven wickets and four overs to spare. The win by the ROW team in 2022 puts them ahead 5-4 in the nine playing of the World Series.
The club took part in the New York Life T20 tournament in Marin where they were well beaten in the semi-final by Team India. The Bay Area Lions visited Napa in late July and were soundly beaten in a shortened match for the clubs second victory of 2022. In a first for NVCC they hosted Bay Area Tibetans at Kimberly Park in American Canyon. A nail biter of a finish saw the Tibetans score two runs off the second last ball to win the match. To wrap up August the club traveled to Minneapolis to play the Minnesota Royals on a tour match and despite a bright innings with the bat didn’t have enough firepower in the bowling department.
Next Match
Saturday 24th September, 2022 – NVCC host the Bay Area Lions on the Midway Green at the Napa Valley Expo in downtown Napa from 10:30am.
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