Christmas is coming - and so's the hot weather!

20 November 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

Our week started off with a bit of a shock when we walked into our local shopping centre and there were Christmas carols on and decorations going up. It’s a little strange thinking that Christmas is only a month a way and it’s hot and sunny.

On Tuesday England were playing NSW at the SCG, so we thought we would train a little earlier so we could watch some of the cricket. It was good to see that even though it was just a warm-up game there was still a mini barmy army singing along.

We had to leave around four-ish as we were going around to Jen Wallace and Leah Poulton’s house for a roast cooked by Natalie Lane. I offered to help and was put in charge of gravy and somehow I managed to mess it up and it ended up so thick, it looked like chocolate sauce. I was sacked straight away and Beth was called into make a fresh batch.

On Thursday morning Lottie (Charlotte Edwards) arrived in a state of jet lag but she did well and decided the best thing to do would be to stay awake all day so she came with us to the city.

Cheesy (Rosalie Birch), Beth and I got invited to bowl at the NSW Breakers on Thursday evening. I thought the session was going to be interesting as I play for South Australia but instead it was really good.

It was good to get on some decent grass nets and it was a really good challenge as they have seven Australian internationals playing for them.

At the weekend my team had two Twenty20 games in Bankstown. As the Breakers were playing we lost four players plus quite a lot of the younger girls due to school cricket, so we had a few 2nd graders playing for us.

We played Wallsend first and we only managed to get 88, which was well short of what we were aiming for. I scored a few runs before getting out to Cheesy of all people.

Cheesy opened the batting and batted well until I got my own back and got through the Delhi defence and bowled her. We ended up losing with two overs to spare.

The second game we played Gordon and decided to bowl first this time. We bowled well and managed to keep them down to 80. I bowled one over and got a caught and bowled and the player I got out came and shook my hand and told me what a good catch it was (strange really).

We won by nine wickets - Olivia Thornton and I were in at the end and I couldn’t believe how hot it was batting in a helmet. I was struggling big time and it’s not even classed as hot yet!