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The
Tigers team. Wicket keeper Flight Sergeant Jeff Addinsall
was voted the Player’s player of the competition while the
best bowler award went to Sergeant Duncan Carmichael and
best batsman to Sergeant Mick Whitaker.
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RAAF
Base Butterworth’s cricket matches against some of the cream of
Asia’s International Cricket Six teams came down to the last few
bats and balls in Bangkok’s International Cricket Six carnival,
but they couldn’t get close enough to snare even one match.
The 13-man team realised it was going to be “up for some pretty
stiff competition”, as Corporal Daniel Butler described it.
“There were 32 teams in the competition, including players from
the current Indian and Sri Lankan International test and oneday
sides. Sri Lanka also sent its Under 19 International side.”
Although the Tigers gave as good as they got, they could not pull
off a win in the April tour.
April Fool’s Day was an omen as the Tigers assembled for three
games against Bangkok, Malviya and the India (B) side. The Tiger’s
first team came out firing but the first game was a loss with
the team going down by just a few runs.
Undaunted, they came back for the next two games but despite a
gallant fight, luck was against them and they went down again.
The final scores were ADF 63 against Bangkok 69, ADF 54 against
Malviya 72 and ADF 69 against India (B) 73.
A well-earned rest day followed and some of the team took the
opportunity to visit the Burma-Thailand Railway. The two-hour
drive from Bangkok takes in the historical sites of the Bridge
over the River Kwai, Hell Fire Pass and the War Cemetery in Kanchanaburi,
which is the resting place of 6946 Allied prisoners of war, 1362
of them Australian.
On the final day of play the Tigers faced another two games which
they had to win to go in to the finals. “They started at a cracking
pace,” said CPL Butler. “The only problem was the opposition –
the Sri Lanka Under 19 team – which kept cracking them all around
the field.
They ended with a reasonably good score at 61 but with our depth
of batting we were pretty confident of beating them. However,
we fell short at 58 and our hopes were pinned on the final game.”
The second game opened against Singapore with the Tigers bowling
again. They gave a good all-round performance but the opposition
managed to get a break and closed at 73 runs.
The Tigers reached deep with the captain knocking up a stunning
6.4.6.4.6 off one over. “At this stage we were looking good but
he had to retire at 31 runs.
We played hard but after that the game just slipped away from
us and we went down by four runs to finish at 69.” The cricket
may have fallen short of expectations but in November the team
heads back to play Thai, Malaysian and possibly Singaporean teams
at AFL.
