Cricket North: Launceston 2020-21 season review

In the last of a series of reviews, The Examiner looks over the Lions' breakthrough season.

Season in a nutshell: Exactly 10 years since its last Cricket North and Greater Northern Cup flags, Launceston replicated the double with an outstanding campaign.

The Lions lost just once in the season proper and held strong in the final to send retiring veteran Rowan Smith out on a high.

Team highlight: The Lions performed in the big games. The one-day cup victory over Westbury was emphatic, while winning the Cricket North grand final required persistence and belief over three days.

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Team lowlight: The T20 cup final was all that came between Launceston and a perfect season.

Ben Humphrey (61 not out) piloted the Lions to a competitive total but the bowling attack had few answers for Jesse Digney and Jono Chapman.

Individual performance: Skipper Alistair Taylor's 109 in the grand final wasn't the biggest ton by a Lion in 2020-21, but it was arguably the most important.

The bowling efforts of Tom Gray and Rowan Smith on the final day of the same game were also crucial.

What worked: Quite simply, Launceston had the biggest spread of contributors of any team in the competition.

Cameron Lynch (513 runs at 39.36) enjoyed a career-best season and was one of five Lions to make tons, one of seven to make 50s and one of seven to finish with 10-plus wickets.

Humphrey and James Curran finished with the same three accolades.

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What didn't work: Westbury, a grand finalist for nine of the past 10 years, was the only side to match it with Launceston in 2020-21.

The two sides finished with two wins, two losses and a draw from their five clashes across all formats.

Best recruit: Veteran Dilan Sandagirigoda (382 runs at 23.88) proved a more-than-handy acquisition from Longford and decorated the season's final session with a 31-ball 58.

Surprise packet: In his first and only A-grade innings to date, Tom Beaumont steered Launceston from the brink of defeat to an outright win over Mowbray.

Arriving at the crease at 6-82, the 16-year-old made a brilliant 133 to help the Lions to 284 all out.

Best and fairest: Not since Dane Anderson's 1176-run campaign in 2012-13 has anyone made more tons in a season than Taylor's four.

The skipper finished with 767 runs at 63.92 and has more Cricket North centuries to his name than any other current player.

Captain says: We're pretty happy with how the season ended up - we worked pretty hard.

[Coach] Andy Gower joked that we wouldn't lose a game all year and it was funny that we lost only one.

We had blokes stand up at different times which is what you need for success - you can't rely on one or two guys to always score hundreds or take five-fors.

Throughout the year I'm sure the stats show we had lots of different boys score hundreds and lots of guys stood up with the ball.

It's sunk in for a few of us I think ... probably a couple of the older guys that have been looking forward to something like this for a long time - I think everyone will have their own ways they'll look back on it.

We knew [Smith's retirement] was going to happen.

We're pumped for him that he got one last flag with this group of guys because he was the captain when we weren't going too well, so he put in a lot of hard work and effort not just into this year but the last 10 years that I've been around the place.

He's still one of the hardest trainers every week, he barely missed a session and was always willing to do the team thing whenever needed, he'll be sorely missed.

Hopefully he'll hang around and have some sort of role next year with us but he's certainly a much-loved member of the group.

We're not sure on James Curran [playing next season] with uni stuff in Melbourne, Daniel Smith has retired as well.

You always seem to lose a few but you always gain a few as well every year, so we'll hopefully have a very similar core squad of boys next year.

We want to thank all the volunteers and supporters of Launceston throughout the season for all their help.

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