Car woes and letter from home

20 December 2006

England's Jenny Gunn is writing a diary for ecb.co.uk during her stint playing cricket Down Under this winter. Follow her exclusively here on ecb.co.uk

My week started off brilliantly as I had a nice surprise when I got a letter from my grandma. My mum keeps her up to date each week with my cricket diary, so she thought she would write to me with Grandma's diary, which I thought was really sweet.

On Wednesday Balmain had a Christmas BBQ. It was really for the kids who had a super 8's competition but it gave the seniors a chance to catch up and have a few drinks.

At the end of the super 8's, the winning team were presented with some prizes, as were the players of the day. It was quite funny that I got a bigger cheer from the kids when I was presented with something than when Julie Hayes and Gozzy were presented.

I think it was more the fact that the kids (and the coaches) have been giving me stick for the past few weeks.

In my last diary I wrote about how the Blackwell's had lent us their spare car, which was great but you may find this hard to believe but it broke down, that's car number three.

On Wednesday afternoon Cheesy (Rosalie Birch) dropped me off at the train station before she headed up to Newcastle for her training. Well the car made it half way before it blew up on the freeway.

It now requires a new engine. Kate and Alex now feel really bad even though they weren't to know that this was going to happen.

Thursday afternoon I flew over to Brisbane to meet up with South Australia. We had training on Friday morning and even though it was only 9.30am, it was so hot and humid it felt like I was back in Sri Lanka.

It was not a nice heat at all. Friday there was a big thunderstorm (if you didn't know I'm not a huge fan of them) and was fuming when another one was forecast on Saturday.

Queensland won the toss and chose to bat first. Queensland had not lost a game or had not been bowled out so far in this year's competition. We started off quite well and claimed wickets at regular stages throughout there innings.

Neisha Iles took 3-24 and claimed the wicket of Melissa Bulow who had been their main batter going into these games.

I claimed 2-23 from 10 overs and Queensland finished on 182. There was a bit of rain about and then when I went out to bat there was thunder in the distance.

We had to make sure we kept above the Duckworth Lewis and some good hitting by Kris Britt kept us close to the rate. I faced one ball of the 29th over before a massive lightening struck.

The umpires said we had to go off. I didn't need to be told twice and I was off the field in and instant. The game finished there and we were 1 run a head of the Duckworth Lewis.

The second game we lost the toss again and were bowling again. We had a great start getting quick early wickets and had them on the edge.

Some good tight bowling from Shelly (Kelly) Nitschke in the middle claiming 3-24 and Kris Britt's 2-10 at the end helped us bowl them out for 134.

We got off to a great start with Shelly and Lauren (beep) Ebsary with a good partnership before a great catch in slips by Bulow to dismiss Shelly. Kris Britt got us to the target with 5 overs to spare to finish off a great weekend for us.

Next week is going to be strange, as it still doesn't feel like Christmas. I need to get on the case and start my Christmas shopping.