Cricket North's 2019-20 season came to a premature close last month, with minor premier eventually Westbury awarded the title after nearly two weeks of deliberation.
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In the fourth of a series of reviews, The Examiner looks over the season that was for South Launceston.
Season in a nutshell: South Launceston was clearly Westbury's main challenge for the Cricket North flag.
Knocked out by the Shamrocks in the one-day semi-final, the Knights were set to meet the reigning premiers in the two-day decider for the fourth year in a row, but were denied the chance as safety measures began rolling out to stop the spread of coronavirus.
RELATED: Westbury 2019-20 season review
Team highlight: The Knights would have taken some joy in thumping an undermanned Westbury in round six, but their highlight came in the preliminary final against Launceston.
Battling at 5-109, Tom Waller's men rallied to post 343 as the tail-end trio of Graham Donaldson, Jackson Young and Josh Freestone all posted career-best scores.
South then blitzed the Lions' line-up for just 160 to advance to another final.
Team lowlight: Round 10 saw South Launceston became the only team to lose to Mowbray this season in a one-day or two-day fixture.
The 13-run loss denied South the chance to host a one-day semi.
Individual performance: Nathan Philip and Sean Harris both posted big tons, but in a season dominated by batsmen, it's hard to go past the efforts of two quicks.
Graham Donaldson's 6-64 against Launceston was the best haul of any bowler this season, narrowly shadowing teammate Josh Freestone's 6-81 against Mowbray.
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What worked: The Knights had contributors across the board. A league-high eight batsmen hit 50s in 2019-20, with Doug Ryan (49 not out against Launceston) all but making it nine.
The bowlers also shared the responsibility evenly with the pace trio of Freestone, Donaldson and Jackson Young all taking 20-plus wickets for the season.
What didn't work: South Launceston struggled to capitalise in matches against the bottom two sides.
The Knights tasted just one victory in six clashes with Riverside and Mowbray, but lost just one of their six clashes with North-West opposition.
Best recruit: Indian teen Ishang Shah and Danish international Anders Bulow both impressed with bat and ball at different stages.
Shah hit 420 runs at 38.18 in his maiden Cricket North season and took 3-47 in a win over Burnie, while Bulow tonked 84 against Mowbray in a year that yielded 225 runs and 15 wickets.
Surprise packet: Brodie Jarrad played a pivotal role at the top of the order during the Greater Northern Cup, hitting two 50s and doubling as a more-than-handy spin option.
The school teacher took 12 wickets in 11 games while going for little more than three runs an over, and also made a crucial 38 in the two-day preliminary final when Bulow was rushed back to his native Denmark.
MVP: Harris and Philip were phenomenal.
The pair combined for 1199 runs - excluding the T20 Cup - and both averaged more than 50.
Philip compiled a career-best three centuries over the course of the season while Harris' 592 runs bettered his breakout 2018-19 season by 151 runs.
Captain says: "I think it was definitely a season of improvement from our group, we gained a couple of players and I think we saw a few players step up into different roles at times which was good.
"Overall it would be seen as a pretty good season - obviously we'd like to be able to judge it on that last game, but that's how it is.
"Flip had a really good season again but I think there were a few games there where we didn't heavily rely on him.
"I think the best game we had was our semi-final where we were able to score 340 without arguably our best player there, so I think that's probably the biggest positive.
"Especially towards the end of the season when he wasn't able to score heaps of runs, we were able to gel as a team and not rely on that one or two players like we might have done in previous years.
"At the start of the year in our one-day competition Brodie Jarrad was excellent, I think he got an 80 and a 60 and took 12 wickets - he was probably our best one-day bowler.
"Throughout the year Sisco [Sisitha Jayasinghe] was pretty good.
"He came in the back half of last year and was able to be reasonably consistent. I think we could still get a bit more out of him but he was another positive.
"We probably didn't know we were going to get Ish this time last year and he's obviously proven a pretty good player.
"You never know if we might look for another overseas player but we'd like to keep the side reasonably settled at this stage."
TOM WALLER'S 2019-20 CRICKET NORTH XI
- Cam Lynch (Launceston)
- Matthew Battle (Westbury)
- Sean Harris (South Launceston)
- Dane Anderson (Westbury)
- Nathan Philip (South Launceston)
- Tom Garwood (Riverside)
- Alistair Taylor (Launceston)
- Kieren Hume (Westbury)
- Josh Freestone (South Launceston)
- Jackson Young (South Launceston)
- Nick Spencer (Westbury)
- Jono Chapman (Westbury) - 12th