Plenty of fizz before serious work starts

10 November 2006

Our intrepid trio hit the beach....with brollies at the ready!

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 well after my team won again at the weekend. We played Beth Morgan’s team (St George Sutherland) and they batted first and scored 188 with Beth scoring an important 33 not out.

We were going quite well until we lost a few wickets in a short space of time and made it a bit more difficult than we would have liked.

We won by five wickets and I finally got a few runs and ended up on 26 not out at the end. It was an even better weekend as Wallsend, who are second in the league, lost to Bankstown. Good for my team but not so good for Cheesy (Rosalie Birch).

Training with my club is going well and I’m starting to get to know all the team now. We’ve just had our first training session with the Australian international players, who have just finished playing in the Rose Bowl Series against New Zealand.

We have Julie Hayes and Michelle G, who both strengthen our squad considerably.
It worked out well that we didn’t have as much training this week as we had another problem with the car. We had a phone call from a friend who is helping us fix it and she said that we had been given a parking ticket for $128 for parking the wrong way on the road. We were fuming!

We had no cricket this weekend because NSW (New South Wales) have their trials for the state cricket team, which starts next weekend. So we decided to travel up to Newcastle for the weekend and stay with some of Cheesy’s family.

Not the kind of weather you imagine on an Australian beach!

You may find it hard to believe but it has rained for the past two days and it’s been very windy. We must have been the only people on the beach that day but it didn’t last very long so we were soon back in the car and heading home.

Somewhere along our travels we heard a cooking recipe for lemonade scones, which we found quite funny. Being quite bored we decided that because of my love for orange Fanta we should try and make some.

Delia Smith eat your heart out!

Well you may find this hard to believe - but they were quite delightful with a nice shade of orange.
As we had no cricket on Sunday we had a free day and were taken to a vineyard. They had beautiful surroundings and we all had an educational experience!

I have now got a few days of lighter training as I start playing for South Australia in the National League on Saturday against Western Australia.

This means I will have to fly over on Thursday afternoon to meet the rest of the team, which should be fun. I’ll fill you in next week.