Four sides will be baying for blood when the Cricket North competition kicks off for another year on Saturday.
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South Launceston emerged as the top side last season but will have to hold off some strong challengers to go back-to-back, with Riverside, Westbury, Mowbray and Launceston all in hot pursuit.
This year’s competition gets under way with the 11-round Greater Northern Cup one-day competition before the two-day Cricket North matches kick off in January.
The Cricket North finals will take place in mid-to-late March.
SOUTH LAUNCESTON
COACH: Mark Nutting
CAPTAIN: Alec Smith
LAST SEASON: Premiers
INS: –
OUTS: Charlie Eastoe (injury) Josh Freestone (overseas) James Beattie (Tasmanian under-19 state side). All should return post-Christmas.
After seeing off table-toppers Westbury to win last season’s grand final, South Launceston skipper Alec Smith isn’t shy about revealing his club’s plans for season 2017-18.
“We want to win,” Smith said.
“After we won last year I’m even more enthused to do well this year, but it’d be nice to do a bit better in the Greater Northern Cup this year, that’d be another goal.”
The Knights have already taken a positive step in their quest for back-to-back titles by keeping together much of the squad that took out last year’s premiership.
Better still, Smith says new blood could still be added to the South team.
“It’s been really good, (we’re) getting good numbers along to training and we’ve got a lot of opportunities for new guys to come and play A-grade.
“We’re hoping to have a few old players returning back to the club, it’s not finalised yet but hoping for a few older players who have played for us before to come back and play for us.”
There’ll be plenty of opportunities for young bowlers to stake their claim at the selection table, with Josh Freestone and young gun James Beattie likely to be unavailable for the Greater Northern Cup.
The Knights’ batting lineup, on the other hand, is likely to stay reasonably settled.
“We’ll have to rely on a pretty wide spread and an even contribution from all our batsman, that’s something we’ve struggled with in the past.
“I don’t think batting-wise we’ll be down to one person in particular but with our bowling we’ve got a really good core with our young quicks Jack Young and Casey Young, and James Beattie bowled really well again last year.
“Hopefully players like Jackson Young, Harry Rand and players like that who probably didn’t get an opportunity last year can put their best foot forward.
“We’ll see how the season unfolds to begin with but we don’t want to change the way we play too much.
“Particularly towards the end of last year we played really well, it’s just sticking to our strengths.”
WESTBURY
COACH: Mathew Battle
CAPTAIN: Richard Howe
LAST SEASON: Runners-up
INS: Conrad Chugg (returning), Alex Kerrison (Riverside), Campbell Fraser (Launceston) Jared Mason (injury), Richard Howe (year off)
OUTS: Michael Lukic (Melbourne) Joey Cullen, Daniel Murfet (England), Shaun Leatherbarrow (retired), Jacob Kooran (Hobart), Dave Rodgers (England)
No side will take as many personnel changes into the 2017-18 season as Westbury.
Following on from two consecutive second-place finishes, the Shamrocks will lose six of their grand final XI including their top three in Dave Rodgers, Shaun Leatherbarrow and Daniel Murfet.
They will also be without two of the competition’s most dangerous bowlers in Jacob Kooran (26 wickets last season) and last year’s top wicket-taker Michael Lukic (37 wickets).
But the Shamrocks still have plenty to look forward to this season.
Filling Lukic’s vacant captaincy role is bowling all-rounder Richard Howe, who returns from a year off, while departing Riverside off-spinner Alex Kerrison will be asked to play an important role with the ball.
In the batting department Conrad Chugg is likely to be asked to fill a role at the top of the order after a 10-year break from the club while young wicketkeeper Campbell Fraser should get a chance behind the stumps.
Howe said it would be an exciting year for the club with lots of opportunities for young players to impress.
“Obviously we’ve lost a lot of experience with some of those guys that have gone out of the side so we’re going to look to develop the young guys this year and obviously stick with the base crew we’ve got which is fairly solid,” Howe said.
“We’re just looking to develop a few of the younger guys and give them a bit of experience at the top and hopefully we should be in fairly good stead still.”
Former Tasmanian Tiger Dane Anderson will be again asked to lead the way with the bat after topping the league’s batting averages last season with four 50s and a ton at 48.45.
The Shamrocks have also retained the services of Jono Chapman (26 wickets, 165 runs) and Mathew Battle (11 wickets, 149 runs) who will both offer plenty with bat and ball.
“South Launceston will set the benchmark,” Howe said.
“We’ve had a fair turnover of players but we’re remaining fairly confident, we’d like to make finals again so to finish top-three is going to be the goal at the start of the year.
“We don’t want to drop off the ball too far and I think with the outs we’ve got we’ve got a few good ins, so hopefully we can cover their loss and stick to the top somewhere.”
RIVERSIDE
COACH: Paul Bunton
CAPTAIN: Tom Garwood
LAST SEASON: Third
INS: Nikhil Kharwadkar (University of Tasmania)
OUTS: Alex Kerrison (Westbury), Jack Williams (UK)
The desire to go one step further will drive preliminary finalists Riverside in the 2017-18 season.
Opener Tom Garwood will skipper the Blues after taking over captaincy duties from Alex Saunders and is hoping his younger players can help propel the side into title contention.
“Hopefully we go deep into the finals,” Garwood said.
“Obviously with the young squad that we’ve got there’s a fair bit of learning involved and we’re looking for a few players to step up this year which would be good.
“We’ll put it on a few of the younger players, and then with a few of the old experienced players we can rely on them with the young guys coming through, so we’ve got a mixture of youth and experience this year.”
The Blues will need to fill the void left by star bowler Jack Williams, who has returned to the UK, and off-spinner Alex Kerrison, who has found a new home at Westbury.
Nikhil Kharwadkar looms as the obvious replacement for Kerrison after joining the Blues from Cricket Tasmania Premier League side University of Tasmania.
The off-spinner took 18 wickets last season with best figures of 5-10 against South Hobart Sandy Bay and will no doubt spend time bowling in tandem with Oliver Wood.
“We’re looking at (Wood) to step up a fair bit with all his Tasmanian stuff, he’s done a fair bit of work over the pre-season and winter so we’re looking to have a fairly big year from him with the bat and the ball,” Garwood said.
“With the bat and the gloves we’re looking for Pete New to step up, he’s spent a season over in the UK and he’s been playing cricket for a fair bit longer so he’ll be ready to go and we’re looking for a few of the young guys to step up with the ball.”
MOWBRAY
COACH: Roger Brown
CAPTAIN: John Le Fevre
LAST SEASON: Fourth
INS: Blake Cassidy (Launceston)
OUTS: Clinton Reid (year off), Jerome Illingworth
The Eagles look set to take a considerably younger side into the 2017-18 competition with 300-game veterans Clinton Reid and Jerome Illingworth both set to sit out the season.
Having both debuted in the 1995-96 season, the pair’s absence leaves Mowbray light on experience but also creates the opportunity for the side’s youth to step up and make their mark.
“We’ll be going in with a fairly young side this year,” captain John Le Fevre said.
“Losing that amount of experience is impossible to replace but over the winter we’ve picked up Blake Cassidy who’s a left-arm quick bowler.
“We think with the natural progression of our younger players through the second grade who won the premiership last year we’ll be able to fill the void in our batting department.”
Last year’s campaign saw Mowbray pipped to the third finals spot by Riverside, a result Le Fevre felt was below what his team could have achieved with the talent on its list.
Le Fevre said consistent performances in both the Greater Northern Cup and the Cricket North competition would be key to his side making the cut for finals this time around.
Luckily, there’s plenty of talent capable of taking them there.
“It’s a very young group but we’ll be looking to Alex Jordan who’s coming back from a stint in England to really play a pivotal role with our batting this year and bat time and score a lot of runs for us.
“Cassidy also offers us a bit of variety... and with natural progression we’ve got Jordan Lee and Callum Peck who we’ve put a lot of time into over the last couple of years, so we’ll be looking at those guys to take a bit more ownership over our bowling attack.
“Jarrod Freeman holds the key to a lot our bowling so he’ll bowl a number of overs and he can keep it quite tight at times - we’re also looking at putting Jarrod up the order a bit and trying to get our young side in and experiencing that senior level cricket.”
LAUNCESTON
COACH: Richard Bennett
CAPTAIN: Alistair Taylor
LAST SEASON: Fifth
INS: Clayde White (Lindisfarne)
OUTS: –
The Lions endured a tough season in 2016-17 but have their sights set on ladder ascension under new skipper Alistair Taylor.
After topping the run scorer’s list last season, the wicketkeeper-batsman takes over the reins from Launceston veteran Rowan Smith and is looking for his side to improve with each new game.
“The goal is to play finals,” Taylor said.
“We’ve still got all of our young players which we’re going to rely on a bit this year and we’re taking it one game at a time basically.
“That’s the most important thing; not getting too carried away with the future and looking at two or three months in advance - so round 1 this weekend and then after that’s done and dusted we’ll look on to round 2 and so forth.”
Aside from the addition of Lindisfarne leg-spinner Clayde White, the Lions should take in a similar side to last season with the majority of improvement expected to come from the development of young players.
Taylor said producing team efforts week-in, week-out would be his side’s top priority.
“As a whole club we’re just working on consistency across the board and having 11 contributions each game, we don’t have any superstars in our team so it’s all about everyone playing their role and the results will hopefully come.
“With the bat we’re hoping the likes of Zac Oldenhof, Tom Bennett and Cameron Lynch (will play a big role), they’ve all played enough cricket now - 60 or 70 games of A-grade - to step up and be more consistent.
“With the ball we’re looking at our former captain Rowan Smith to lead the charge with a whole heap of younger players including Tom Gray who’s come on in leaps and bounds in the last two years... and the likes of Dom Rawlings and James Curran as the spin option there and Clayde White our Lindisfarne recruit as well.”