Round 1 vs Melbourne University, 5-Oct-2024, University Main Oval
Our men’s teams began their season and Club Championship defence with a one-dayer against Melbourne University at Uni Main Oval. Batting first, the Students made 9/290 in 50 overs before heavy rain intervened during the innings break and ruled out any possibility of a chase. The game saw debuts for Tom Brooks and Brodie Symons, both of whom got among the wickets.
Melbourne University 9/290 in 50 overs (Symons 2/33, W. Sutherland 2/59, Beer 2/69, Brooks 1/33, Wilcox 1/74) vs Prahran – Match Abandoned.
Round 2 vs Carlton, 12 & 19 Oct 2024, Princes Park 1
On to Round 2 which was the start of red ball action against the defending champions, Carlton.
Carlton won the toss and chose to bat first and were dismissed for 232 at the end of Day One. Tom Brooks was the pick of the bowlers, snaring 6 wickets in just his second game for the club. His haul included the wickets of former True Blue and the Blues current skipper Evan Gulbis, and state contracted Xavier Crone.
An opening stand of 73 between James Billington (37) and Alex Turner (56), and a middle order defence by Shanogeeth Shanmuganathan (48) were not enough to get us over the line as we finished agonisingly short of the target by 6 runs, dismissed for 227.
Carlton 232 (Brooks 6/102, Boyce 3/50, Symons 1/38) defeated Prahran 227 (Turner 56, Shanmuganathan 48, Billington 37) by 5 runs.
Round 3 vs Casey-South Melbourne, 26 Oct and 2 Nov, Casey Fields 4
We next faced last season’s runner-up, the Casey South Melbourne Swans. Cam McClure made his True Blues debut; we won the toss and put the Swans into bat but encountered a repeat of the previous game’s showing.
Casey finished Day One with 7/292 on the board, going into Day Two they managed just 18 more as Brodie Symons added to his Day One tally of two wickets to wrap up the last three and finished with a 5-fer.
Chasing 311, we had a strong start with Alex Turner and Cam Hemp, returning to True Blues duty, putting on 84 for the first wicket. Hemp got to his half-century and put on 52 with Max Delaney (39) before being dismissed for 81. Delaney and Damon Egan (36) put on another 64 to take us to 200 but after the latter got out there was slow down in the momentum. Symons attempted to steer us to safety, but a regular fall of wickets left us all out for 300.
Casey South Melbourne 310 (Symons 5/66, Beer 2/63, Shanmuganathan 1/17, Turner 1/26, McClure 1/41) defeated Prahran 300 (Hemp 81, Symons 47, Delaney 39, Egan 36) by 10 runs
Round 4 vs Fitzroy Doncaster, 9 & 16 Nov, Schramms Reserve 1
We went to Schramms Reserve for the last two-dayer in the pre-Christmas leg of the competition. Keen to reverse the previous two potboilers, we ran into a wicket which fortunately worked in our favour.
Prahran batted first after winning the toss and declared with 9/250 on the board, helped by an aggressive 115 from Hemp. It was a knock that included 14 hits to the fence and six over it. We put the Lions into bat late on Day One.
On Day Two we warded off a century by Jack Rudd to pick regular wickets and bring the Lions to 9/191. Some lower-order resistance took them till the last over of the game and a draw loomed as the only possible result until skipper Matt Wilcox trapped Kobe Smith in front on the very last ball to get us our first win in what was an ultimate humdinger of a game.
Prahran 9/250 declared (Hemp 115) defeated Fitzroy Doncaster 196 (Wilcox 4/47, Shanmuganathan 3/33, Symons 3/37) by 54 runs
Round 5 vs Frankston Peninsula, 23 Nov, AH Butler Oval
Back to one-dayers and Frankston put us into bat. Another strong start by Hemp (27) took us to 43 before Egan (58) joined Billington in a 158-run stand for the second wicket that took us past the 200 mark. Billo went on to score 117, his first ton for the club since our 2020/21 premiership season, to help us to 8/282 in 50 overs.
An all-round bowling performance helped us to dismiss Frankston for 214, giving us a 68-run win, our second this season.
Prahran 8/282 in 50 overs (Billington 117, Egan 58, Symons 35) defeated Frankston Peninsula 214 (Hemp 2/23, Symons 2/38, Wilcox 2/45, Beer 1/7, Boyce 1/30, Brooks 1/65) by 68 runs
Rounds 6 and 7 on Nov 30th, T20s against Camberwell Magpies and Dandenong respectively, were called off due to rain. Round 8 was a BYE.
Round 9 vs Northcote, Round 10 BYE, Round 11 vs Kingston Hawthorn, 7-Dec-2024, Walter Galt Reserve
We travelled to Walter Galt Reserve to take on Northcote and Kingston Hawthorn in double-header T20s.
In the first game against Northcote Dragons we batted first and put up 6/173 in 20 overs. Symons made an unbeaten 45 and Shanmuganathan made 37 with four sixes to his name. The Dragons’ chase was stifled by Cam McClure’s 5-fer along with Symons adding two wickets to go with his earlier batting brilliance and Beer adding two to his tally to dismiss the Dragons for 104.
Prahran 6/173 in 20 overs (Symonds 45*, Shanmuganathan 37, Hemp 30) defeated Northcote 104 in 15.1 overs (McClure 5/27, Symons 2/14, Beer 2/21, Brooks 1/28) by 69 runs
Following a bye in Round 10, our winning run was halted in Round 11 by Kingston Hawthorn who dismissed us for 138. This was a reasonable total considering a top order collapse had us 5/31 early in the sixth over. Shanmuganathan was the pick of the batters with a 43. The Hawks made a strong start with opener Thaveesh Attanayake’s 64 and skipper Josh Manning's 30 pushing the total to 3/105 in the 14th over and a comfortable win looking likely. However some tight bowling from Brooks and Hemp tightened up the run-rate and with 10 runs required off the last over a remarkable "get-out-of-jail" win looked possible before the Hawks swung hard and garnered some edges to win on the last ball of the match.
Prahran 138 in 19.4 overs (Shanmuganathan 43, Kane Scott 23) lost to Kingston Hawthorn 7/139 in 19.5 overs (Brooks 2/18) by 3 wickets
Upcoming Fixtures:
14 Dec at Junction Oval
Round 12 – BYE
Round 13 vs Essendon, 1:00 PM
Round 14 vs St. Kilda, 4:30 PM
21st Dec at Central Reserve South
Round 15 vs Richmond, 11:00AM
11th Jan 2025 at Toorak Park
Round 16 vs Greenvale Kangaroos, 2:00PM
18th Jan 2025, at Merv Hughes Oval
Round 17 vs Footscray, 11:00AM
25th Jan 2025, at Geelong Cricket Ground
Round 18 vs Geelong, 11:00AM