Cricket North: South Launceston 2020-21 season review

In the second of a series of reviews, The Examiner looks over the season that was for South Launceston.

Season in a nutshell: Played 14, won six, drew one, lost seven.

The Knights lost several of their best bowlers but still would have counted themselves unlucky to have missed finals for the first time in nine years.

After falling on the wrong side of several tight results in the one-dayers, South lost its last three two-day games to finish six points off the pace in fourth spot.

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Team highlight: South began the season with a thrilling one-wicket win in a grand final rematch with Westbury. Star left-hander Nathan Philip sealed the game with a six.

The Knights made an equally impressive start to the two-dayers, recovering from 5-109 to chase down Riverside's 295 and eventually pile on 9-424.

Team lowlight: A below-par batting performance saw the Knights dismissed for 79 in a one-day loss to Sheffield. The round 16 loss to Mowbray was also disappointing as South chased the big win needed to qualify for finals.

Individual performance: 2020-21 was the year of big partnerships and a 177-run sixth-wicket stand against Riverside between Philip and skipper Sean Harris was as good as any.

Philip hit 25 fours in a career-high 162 while Harris (22 fours, one six) finished on 132 not out and batted expertly with the tail.

What worked: Philip (791 runs) and Harris (412 runs) were as consistent as ever, with the former taking the gloves from Tom Waller and the latter spending much of the season in a new role at number seven.

Waller also proved handy with the bat while Jeremy Jackson (24 wickets) was given more opportunity with the ball and finished in the league's top five.

What didn't work: The Knights dearly missed their two leading wicket-takers from 2019-20 - Josh Freestone and Jackson Young.

All-rounders Ishang Shah and Sisitha Jayasinghe were among those not able to produce their best form.

Best recruit: Wynyard's Alex Licht proved a handy acquisition with five two-wicket hauls, while Martin Potsekayi showed some promise as a big-hitting batsman.

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Surprise packet: The Knights' bowler shortage helped unearth two teen talents in James Leake and Sam McLean.

The pair finished 2020-21 as the club's leading wicket-takers across all grades with McLean picking up a hat-trick and 6-13 in the second-grade T20 final.

Best and fairest: The Knights will hold their presentation evening on May 8.

First-time Cedric Knight Medal winner Philip is a near lock-in after blitzing Cricket North's awards night.

Captain says: A few things didn't go our way with Josh Freestone getting injured and then going back to the UK.

It was really exciting getting Gav Nutting along to the club and things didn't work out there and Jackson Young, who was set to lead our attack, deciding to play down in Clarence put our plans in disarray a little bit.

With those three key bowlers out it was always going to be a bit of a struggle and a few of our batters would have reflected on the year and said that they had pretty disappointing season.

Some young guys like James Leake, Charlie Skipper - we hope those guys are going to have long careers either with us or the Raiders.

[Coach] Dean Hawkins has been in conversation with [Nathan Philip] trying to keep him for next year and trying to develop his role into more of a coaching role which would be cool for us and hopefully for him as well.

We're hoping to retain all of our players and continue developing our young guys so they can play grade cricket.

One of the things I said to our guys at the end of the season was 'maybe this was the season we needed to have'.

We've played finals cricket basically every year I've been there and we've experienced a lot of success and sometimes you perhaps take that for granted and forget that it actually takes a lot of bloody hard work over a long period of time to be successful.

So it might be the little kick in the pants that we need ... with our neighbours Launceston winning, it might be the motivator we need to move forward and be better.