WESTBURY will be boosted by the return of captain Dane Anderson and top-order batsman Sean Stevenson as it attempts to break a four-match losing streak against Riverside in their Cricket North clash at Riverside tomorrow.
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The Shamrocks depth has been tested by player unavailability over the past month and a broken hand to another key batsman in playing coach Shaun Leatherbarrow.
``We haven't had a good month and it has been hard trying to get a team on the park but in saying that our senior guys haven't stood up as we would have liked either,'' Anderson said.
``But with the season proper stuff we're still sitting OK on the table but a win this weekend is pretty important for us leading into Christmas.''
The inclusion of Anderson and Stevenson adds some depth to their batting at the top of the list but Leatherbarrow is unlikely to be back playing until a couple of games after Christmas.
``Riverside are always hard to beat down there and are going pretty well so it will be one of the tougher games we've had down there with the form we're in at the moment,'' Anderson said.
``They have an even spread of contributors so hopefully we can minimise their top order and get back to playing some good cricket.''
RIVERSIDE'S form has been much more consistent having won four in a row over the past month in Greater Northern Cup and Cricket North fixtures.
Blues coach Luke Richardson said his side was looking forward to the challenge of taking on Westbury.
``Westbury have been one of the strongest sides over the past few years so it would be nice to knock them off in our last game before Christmas and go into the break with momentum,'' he said.
``The ladder positions are pretty even and tight which is reflective of the competition at the moment so it's important for us to have some consistency, turn up ready to go and hopefully put in another solid performance.
``We've been stringing a few wins together and we're up at the pointy end at this point of the year.
``Another win this weekend would set us nicely for where we want to be for the second half of the season.''
Alex Kerrison returns to the Riverside line-up in the only change for the Blues.
LAUNCESTON takes on the in-form South Launceston at the NTCA No.1 Ground.
The Lions will be looking to build on its first NTCA one-day win of the season against Mowbray last week when they made 9-244 and bowled the Eagles out for 173.
``Our form was been pretty good last weekend to score over 200 runs in both games,'' Launceston captain Rowan Smith said.
``We were unlucky to miss out on Saturday but had a good result on Sunday and we're looking to turn some form around against South in particular who gave us a hiding a couple of weeks ago in the GNC.
``If we are a chance to make the finals we need to string a few wins together.''
Smith said the team's form continued to build with younger players starting to get some confidence which was showing in better individual performances and mounting into better team efforts.
``In particular our opening batting partnership of Chatfield and Taylor have been doing a good job for us over the past month with a number of decent partnerships that got us into a good position early,'' he said.
The Lions expected to field a similar team to last week with everyone available except Ben Fraser.
SOUTH Launceston coach Liam Devlin said the Knights were missing some players with Kyle Bowie returning home to Zimbabwe for Christmas and Alec Smith and Michael Jones unavailable.
``It's an important game for us and can really set us up for Christmas if we can get a win here,'' he said.
Devlin said Josh Freestone, Ben Darke, Ben Dodd and Stuart Ryan were all in contention to fill spots.
CRICKET NORTH FIRST GRADE MATCHES TOMORROW
Launceston v South Launceston, NTCA No.1 Ground.
Riverside v Westbury, Riverside.
Mowbray - bye