Down Under with Iain Brunnschweiler: A Hampshire cricketer's winter in Australia.

WE had a very good win at the weekend over one of the better sides in the competition - Bayswater-Morley.

The whole match was an excellent example of how grade cricket should be played. Early on, the wicket offered plenty of assistance for the bowlers, but later in the day, it really flattened out to enable the stroke-makers to flourish.

This kind of cricket hammers home the importance of keeping wickets in hand, as in the last session, having scored slowly for the first two, we put on 190 runs in 30 overs, posting a total of 352.

The opposition batted really well on the second day to give the large run-chase a real go - but we secured victory after a hard day's bowling when Bayswater's last wicket fell for 306. The weather was beautiful for both days, and the cricket was of a very high standard.

There are four grade sides at Perth and each one plays in their own competition. However, there is more emphasis put on winning, as each club has a standing in the overall club championship.

We are currently lying second - which is a real credit to the whole club. The A-grade are in the bottom half of the table but the lower grades are doing very well and the atmosphere at the club is excellent.

During the games, there is still lots of time off the pitch, when you've been dismissed, and it's been good seeing how the Aussies spend it.

One of our players, Stuart Thompson, is very good at rallying a few guys for a game of round the boundary 'boules'.

He has several variations of the game to keep the participants interested but it's funny to see that the same game English club cricketers are seen playing has made it's way Down Under.

One game that Stu also has introduced me to, is Chinese Parrots! This is one I haven't seen before - and is a kind of target game, throwing the scoreboard numbers at a target, after bouncing them on a 'skid-board'!

It's a strange, yet entertaining game - hard to explain, but easy to play. It does a good job of taking your mind off that loose shot, or questionable decision that's just ended the day's batting!

So the cricket is going well but, just as importantly, we saw that Saints picked up a great win against Leicester on the weekend.

I'm not the only person out here who's following the boys in red and white - one of the lads training with us is an 18 year-old called Chris Hall, an ex-pupil of Taunton's College and avid Saints fan. Alan Mullally is also very pleased to see his adopted team doing well and I saw him in the gym last week, looking fit and well after his short time off.

On a less positive note, it wasn't a great start by England in their tour of India.

There was an encouraging performance by Yorkshire's Richard Dawson, though, which I was very pleased to see, as 'Dicky' is an ex-room-mate of mine from youth tours. Hopefully the guys can put together a good performance and level the series this week.