School report 1998/1999

As in the past, D.B.S. is still the only Anglo-Chinese school in Hong Kong to have a cricket team. The year 1998-99 was another eventful year for cricket at D.B.S. Support for cricket has been increasing and it is encouraging to see more and more Chinese boys pursuing the sport. One of our major achievements during the year was the recruitment of a large number of new members from Forms 1 and 2. A lot of new equipment was acquired. The new equipment would certainly go a long way towards enhancing our players' performances.

This year, most of our senior players left the school. As a result, players from lower forms now make up the majority of our team. These junior members have shown a talent for cricket and have developed a keen interest in it. All of them enjoyed the cricket season and did well throughout the year.

Two of our boys, Louis Chan and Chandeep Gill, were chosen to play for HKU-19 and HKU-15 respectively. HKU-19 beat Malaysia in the finals and emerged as the champions in the Tuanku Ja'afar Tournament. But HKU-15 lost to the hosts, Malaysia, in the same tournament. Louis Chan is now selected to play for the Hong Kong seniors also in Malaysia from 6th May to 9th May. There were a lot of boys taking part in the Saturday League this year. Louis Chan performed well in the opening role by scoring over 300 runs in the season. Dion Yip, Chandeep Gill, Manesh Nandwani and Faisal Mohammed all provided enormous support to the team. We gained a lot of experience from the league games and I hope that more boys can play next year.

In the first match, we played against KGVB. Adeel Malik and Parvesh displayed a brilliant performance in their bowling by claiming 3 wickets each. The opponent was restricted to 44 all out. Chasing a small total, we got there easily with 13 overs to spare.

We played KGV again in our next game, but against their A team in this game. Parvesh Fabiani was our star bowler again, taking 3 wickets to make KGVA all out for 46 runs. Chasing a small total again, Willis Ho guided us home with a spectacular knock of 21 not out.

The next game was against South Island School. We bowled first and they made 105 runs in 20 overs. Our batsmen showed great courage when they were chasing a big total. Willis Ho (42 not out) and Neeraj Mahboobani (35) made a huge partnership of 97 runs which gave us victory with 20 balls to spare.

After the game against SIS, we advanced to the semi-finals. We played KGVA again. Because of nervousness of our young batsmen, we did not have a satisfactory performance in batting. We only managed to score 77 runs in total. Willis Ho played well again by scoring 34. He is our top scorer of the year. With a small total to defend plus the fact that we could not make early breakthroughs, we lost the match.

We did not have a strong side this year as most of our team members were inexperienced. We played 5 games in the first round and we only won 2 games.

We lost our first game to Delia School of Canada by a small margin. As this was the first game of the year, most of our players were not in good form because we had not have enough practice after the new school term started.

Knowing our weaknesses, we trained harder after that game. We did make a good come-back in the second game, defeating Delia Memorial School. Louis Chan made an all-round performance in the game. He took 34 with the bat and 6/19 with the ball.

We played West Island School in our next game. Our captain, Faisal Mohammed, did well in his bowling by taking 2 wickets, with a price scalp of their best batsman. Chasing 108 runs in 20 overs, we made a slow start. Both of our opening batsmen got out in the 12th over with the total score on 40. Louis Chan and Faisal Mohammed then came in to steady the ship. Louis Chan made a superb knock of 34 not out and Faisal Mohammed (17) batted well to support him. We won the game only by losing fewer wickets. What a thrilling match!

The next match was against South Island School. Our bowling was wayward in this game and we let our opponent to pile up 183 runs in 25 overs. In reply, we could only make 118 runs. Manesh Nandwani made the highest score of the season, 53. Louis Chan also batted well by scoring 30 runs.

We played Kowloon School in our 4th game. We bowled them all out for 123 runs. Manesh Nandwani struck again with 3 wickets taken. We made a good start in our inning. After losing our openers, Dion Yip(25) and Manesh Nandwani(28), our batting order collapsed and we suffered defeat by 12 runs.

Our last game before the knockout was against KGV. We let them score 160 runs in 25 overs and we could only score 121 runs in reply. Dion Yip batted well again by getting 23 runs. This was his first season and he improved a lot during the year.

After the Chinese New Year holidays, we played Delia School again in the semi-finals. We beat them this time. Louis Chan bowled a sensational spell by taking 4/10. Manesh Nandwani also bowled well with a figure of 2/2. Chasing 107 runs, our top-order batsmen got out in quick succession. Brave innings from Chandeep Gill (25 not out) and Dion Yip (15 not out) in the middle order steered the team to victory, leading us into the finals.

We played West Island School in the finals. Two of our key players, Dion Yip and Louis Chan did not play in this game due to unavailability. We lost heavily and we could only get 2nd place in the 2nd division finals. I hope that we can do better next year.