I mentioned in my article last Monday that a number of the current players could be seen from the figures up to the end of 2012 to have targets they could well achieve during 2013. Last year there were similar targets and one player achieved his in his first match of the season. This year another player has achieved his target in his first match, but he went one stop better in that it was the very first match of the season.
The player this time was Alex Cusack. He entered 2013 with 198 wickets. His target was 2 to reach the first key milestone for a bowler of 200 wickets. Trinity batted first and he quickly took the first wicket of the day to get to 199. Things then slowed down a bit but he reached the magic 200 when he dismissed Wain Voerwood to reach 200 wickets in his 128th match in League and Cup for Clontarf. Alex made his debut for Clontarf in 2003 and in that time as well as reaching 200 wickets he has reached 3,200 runs, apart from the success he has achieved for Ireland. It does perhaps explain the relative difficulty for bowlers to reach landmarks as opposed to batsmen with limits on the overs they can bowl, and these being on occasion even more reduced when the rain hits us. However well done to Alex on this early success in 2013.