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Take a seat and get comfortable folks!!
This is Blake Macdonald and this was his season....
Award for most runs Grades 1 to 3 - 952 runs (Belvidere Cup)
2nd Highest Ever Runs in STGDCC 1st Grade Season (All Formats) - 1266
NSW Premier Cricket Team Of The Year
NSW Premier Cricket Equal Most 1st Grade Centuries - 5
NSW Premier Cricket Equal Most 1st Grade Half Centuries - 7
Highest Ever St George Limited Overs Score - 182
Most Boundaries in the NSW Premier Cricket Season - 181
Most Sixes in the NSW Premier Cricket - 54
Most Sixes in an Innings - 14
1st Grade Premiership
Congrats and thank you Blake. Absolutely legendary!!!
Responses
If anyone can explain the logic of why Blake Macdonald lost his NSW contract for 2024–25, I’d gladly sit with you for the 24 hours it would take for you to wear me down with reasons why.
In the last Sheffield Shield game of 2022–23, Blake made his first-class debut for NSW and opened the batting, scoring 21 and 61.
Weeks prior, he scored 98 and 91 for NSW Country/ACT 2ndXI v NSW 2ndXI.
For the 2023–24 season, he was awarded a NSW contract.
Blake was not selected in the first two 2023–24 Sheffield shield games but was for the third game against Victoria when NSW were bowled out for 102 and 173. Blake scored 22 and 14. Only one other NSW batter scored more runs in the game.
In the next game, Blake scored 5 out of the NSW total of 276 runs against Western Australia. NSW won by 10 wickets.
NSW lost their next game by an innings and one run against Tasmania after being bowled out for 181 and 311. Blake scored 2 and 12.
Blake was then dropped from the NSW Shield team and didn’t play again in 2023–24.
As you can see, NSW had been bowled out for less than 200 in the five innings played when Blake was on the team, so it’s not as if all the batters were scoring runs.
Blake has played four one day games for NSW, scoring 147 runs at an average of 36.75.
For a player to score 61 on his Sheffield Shield debut, be so highly thought of as to be awarded a contract, and then score 952 runs in NSW Premier Cricket at an average of 73.23, including 5 centuries and 3 fifties, how does he lose his contract?
Did Blake nail down his spot in the five innings he played this year? No, he didn’t. I don’t know Blake, but I’m sure he’d be the first to admit it.
Interestingly as well, he batted No. 3 and walked into bat after opening partnerships of 0, 10, 23, 0, and 28.
Blake is only 26 and entering the prime years of his cricket and run scoring career. He has shown an enormous thirst for scoring big years, and now, after just one year, when others have been afforded 30 or more innings in Shield cricket, he loses his contract.
I always thought the role of coaches within a state system, or any system, was to work with the players to identify areas of improvement and help them individually become better. Maybe I have that wrong.
You may need more than 24 hours.
