Beginning today, Cricket Shepparton will field an under-17 and under-13 side against Auckland-based club Suburbs New Lynn, with both matches to take place at Shepparton’s Deakin Reserve.
This initiative serves as an opportunity for the association’s best young cricketers to play together and get the rare chance to compete against a team from overseas.
An exciting platform for these young stars to shine, Cricket Shepparton junior co-ordinator Peter Holland explained how the concept came about.
“The Shaun Brown Cricket Academy reached out to a few cricket associations around Melbourne and asked if they could host a touring team from New Zealand,” Holland said.
“Suburbs New Lynn brought over a couple of sides and are doing a tour of Victoria basically, so we jumped at the chance to have them come up and play against our kids.
“Everything was pretty quickly ticked off and we are very excited to host them for two hotly-contested games.”
Once the touring side was locked in, the next challenge came in selecting two teams to play against the Suburbs New Lynn boys.
With an eye to country week, Holland explained the selection process.
“With the under-17s side what we’ve done is basically select all the available players from the under-16s country week team to give them a bit of a hit-out leading into that tournament,” he said.
“The under-13s was a bit more difficult, however, Suburbs New Lynn has a lot of younger kids in their side, so we tried to balance that out by picking a few more underagers.
“At the end of the day, this is all about giving our kids a chance to play representative cricket and they are all very excited about it.”
As for the level of competition Holland expected from the New Zealand teams, he said despite not having seen them he was sure they would give the Cricket Shepparton boys an excellent challenge.
“I had a bit of a look at their website and they seem to be a pretty big club over in New Zealand, but I don’t know anything more than that,” he said.
“We are expecting a very tough contest, especially in the under-17s, and just a good level of cricket to be displayed by both teams.
“We see this as a great opportunity for our kids to play representative cricket and test their skills against a team from another country.”
Both matches will take place at Deakin Reserve, Shepparton, beginning at 10.30am, with the under-17s playing on Thursday and under-13s on Friday.
Cricket Shepparton junior representative teams to play Suburbs New Lynn
Under-17
Mason Reeves (c), Tyler Green, Noah Muir, Walter Jackson, Ryan Ash, Nate Earl, Rory Duffy, Sam Holland, Max Hooper, Declan Newbound, Will Trower. Coach: Chris Earl.
Under-13
Jimmy Blekic (c), Austen Hogeboom (vc), Callan O’Dwyer, Noah Hawker, Jackson Crouch, Clancy Keenan, Lloyd Akers, Toby Keady, Xavier Waters, James Mawson, Nate Yze, Gus Byrne. Coach: Peter Hogeboom
