Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWPix.com. Noah Kelly has resumed playing duties with Beaumaris in Melbourne after Christmas.
By Noah Kelly
I had a really enjoyable Christmas, going to the Melbourne and Sydney Tests with my brother Reuben, who is living in Australia at the moment. But it did involve a quite bizarre and amusing moment in Adelaide.
Myself and Reuben had arranged to meet up to go to the Thursday and Friday of the Adelaide Test, and I had to fly back to play for Beaumaris on the Saturday.
But I arrived at the airport to find that Qantas had cancelled my flight, and it was the last one to Melbourne that night.
So I managed to get booked on the 6.30am flight the following day, and Qantas were going to book me a hotel. They said, ‘Give us your number and we’ll let you know when it’s sorted’.
Anyway, I hadn’t heard anything for a while so went back to the desk. They said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, all the hotels we can provide are gone. The best we can do is find you one which is $800 a night and we’ll cover $200’.
I’m like, that’s not ideal, I’ll just have to sleep in the terminal’.
But they shut it between midnight and 5am.
‘Ok, I’ll sleep outside’.
Picture courtesy of Noah Kelly. Noah keeps wickets for Beaumaris this winter.
Anyway a woman on the desk said that she’d make another call. It’s about 10pm by this stage. And she comes back and says, ‘You’re coming with me. I’ve rung my best mate and she’ll take you in’.
It was all a bit strange, but I didn’t have any other option.
I turned up at this house, a really nice and big place. And there were five other couples staying there. One of them was English, and it just so happened that the guy had lived in Driffield for two years.
Another gentleman then got up at 5am, drove me to the airport and made sure I got on the plane to play cricket.
All turned out well until I got a phone call from our first-team captain just after I’d landed saying the game was off because of rain.
Typical!
I reckon the Adelaide Oval is my favourite ground for watching cricket at. It was just phenomenal. We planted ourselves on the hill in with the Barmy Army, and it was incredible.
Picture courtesy of Noah Kelly. Noah in club cricket action for Beaumaris.
Adelaide as a city, I’d say had the vibe of a really welcoming country town. It had a nice community feel about it.
We also went to both days at the MCG, again in with the Barmy Army, who were just incredible. I also bumped into a lot of people I knew and saw plenty of familiar faces.
I would say the two-day Test at Melbourne wasn’t a great advert for Test Match cricket. I’d much rather watch an Adelaide or Sydney Test, which both went five days.
However, what I will say is that the quality England’s bowlers showed across the two days was high-class.
It was good to see them come out on top but frustrating that they couldn’t do it for longer across the series.
If you were told at the start of the series that Cummins would only play one game, Hazlewood would be out altogether, Lyon wouldn’t be able to play after Christmas, Steve Smith would be out for a game, you’d have said, ‘England have a real big sniff here’.
But I think it was Rooty who called it right when he said that we were only good in patches. To win away, you have to do it for much longer.
Jacob Bethell showed that if you grinded Australia down, it can work.
Picture courtesy of Noah Kelly. Noah is keen to advance his wicketkeeping and hopes to learn from new signing Sam Whiteman.
When you look at Scott Boland’s heat map, he just hammered the top of off-stump time and time again.
I think what the Australians do really well is they’ll bowl well for a session and maybe take one wicket. But they’ll understand that after lunch or after tea, that’s when they get their rewards. If they keep doing that, something’s got to give.
Unfortunately, we just dropped too many catches and weren’t consistent enough with the ball.
We resumed the league season at the weekend after the Christmas break, and it was a double game weekend. We played two 50-over games on Saturday and Sunday and were beaten in both. I made 46 in the first and got a first-baller in the second.
I’ve felt really good since returning to training after Christmas.
I actually took two or three weeks off from training just to refresh a bit.
Having played four seasons straight through, I was starting to feel it a bit through December. So I spent a bit of time with my brother and some time with a few of the lads from the club. But now I feel great again, really fresh and ready to attack the rest of the winter and get ready for the summer back home.
When you cross December and get into January, it almost flicks a switch because it goes so quickly. The summer seems to come round so quickly.
Picture by Paul Kane/Getty Images. Yorkshire’s new signing Sam Whiteman.
I will probably be hitting more and more balls now because the excitement for the English season is starting to build. The hard work you put in on your technique in November and December, you can start implementing it into your game in January.
I’ll be back home in just over a month’s time, on March 2, before we fly to Abu Dhabi just over a week later.
I would miss the finals if Beaumaris got there, which we can still do. We may be bottom of the league, but we’re not far off given how the points system works. We just need to start piecing things together as a team.
Before I come home, I will be involved in the training camp which Mick Lewis is running for the Yorkshire lads. There are obviously a few of us here in Melbourne already, and some more are coming out in a couple of weeks.
That will be really exciting.
Basically, I think we’re going full-time with Victoria. Whenever they train, we will.
We will do most of it at the Junction Oval in St Kilda, but I also think they’re down at the MCG as well. That will be pretty cool. It will almost be like an extra pre-season tour in many ways.
This last week or so, Yorkshire have announced a couple of signings in Sam Whiteman and AJ Tye.
Picture by Steve Bell/Getty Images. AJ Tye is coming to Headingley this summer.
I’m really looking forward to playing alongside and getting to know both of them.
Sam is a top order batter who started his career as a wicketkeeper. The keeping side of his game, he hasn’t done as much of it in recent years because he’s had issues with his digits.
He opens the batting in Western Australia, playing on some of the bounciest wickets in the world. He’s been able to adapt and score runs in conditions which are pretty bowler-friendly. So to average mid thirties across his first-class career, it’s pretty impressive.
I’ll certainly be tapping into his knowledge when I can, trying to learn how he juggled batting the top order and keeping early on in his career when he was my age.
I’ll try and buy him a coffee and get some insight.
AJ Tye, that’s an incredible signing. Losing Jordan Thompson to Warwickshire, there’s no hiding the fact that he was probably our most experienced T20 bowler. So I think it was key for us to sign someone with a lot of experience.
AJ is 39, and he’s been there and done it across hundreds and hundreds of games.
They say the Blast is the hardest T20 competition because of the variety of grounds you play on. You could be at Headingley, Old Trafford, York or Chesterfield, and you have to be so adaptable as a bowler. For the younger guys to have him around and be able to learn from him, it’s another great signing.
