THE drive for Ouyen Rams to improve remains despite claiming the Red Cliffs Cricket Association A Grade premiership last season.
Ten wins and three losses during the home and away season makes for good reading, but skipper Brad Parsons believes the Rams can get even better.
With their opening contest of the season, a grand final rematch against Tempy, washed out last week, their campaign is set to open against Robinvale Euston Rangers at Len Arnott Oval if weather permits.
Parsons conceded the Rangers are “probably early premiership favourites” following the addition of former Mildura Settlers skipper Braidyn Turner.
“Best case scenario for us is we’ll be with them come grand final day,” he said.
“There’s obviously a fair bit of talk around the traps of Braidyn coming in and while I haven’t seen him myself before, it sounds like he’ll be pretty handy for them at the very least.
“Our bowling last year was our biggest strength and it’s probably going to be the same this year. If we can bowl those nice tight lines again hopefully we can work our way through them.”
Parsons, who made 27 and took 3/19 in the grand final against Tempy, said the side’s batting was its biggest weakness in 2021/22, however the form of opener Conor Schultz was the exception.
The powerful hitter scored an aggregate of 464 runs at an average of 43.38, including four half-centuries, only beaten by Nursery Ridge’s Shannon Bowen (803 at 89.22).
“Honestly our batting let us down last year, but Conor really stood up so without him, and other contributions at different times during the season we probably wouldn’t have won the flag,” Parsons said.
“He’s going to be a big part of our season again, but the great thing about Conor is he is still pushing himself to improve and that effort gives us all drive to be better than last year.”
Parsons said given the wet conditions in recent weeks, his side are as prepared as they possibly can be for the new campaign.
“To be honest last week was a bit of a blessing in disguise as we had a few unavailabilities but this week we are good to go,” he said.
“It will be pretty much the same line-up but we’ll have a few more blokes available more often during the season. That’s going to help our depth so hopefully we’ll be pushing for finals in both A Grade and B Grade.”
In other A Grade games Millewa host Fire Brigade at Quandong Park, while Cardross are at home against Tempy.
