BRYSON Lush’s 2019-20 Sunraysia Cricket Association season is one of the biggest breakout years from a player in any Sunraysia sport.
The 22-year-old Irymple cricketer and this season’s joint Innes Medal winner with Workers Gol Gol’s Wade Hancock endured a horrid run with injury in his final year at Mildura West.
In the 2018-19 season he did not play before round 10, starting in the Second Division before playing five Third Division games alongside his father, Nigel.
A season later and he polled five votes in two of the final three rounds to reel in hot medal favourite Hancock and tie on 19 as the SCA’s First Division best and fairest.
“I was extremely surprised, I was happy with my season but I didn’t really see anyone catching Wade,” Lush said.
“It’s a big honour and I’m pretty proud of it”
A stint in England with Killinghall Cricket Club in the Nidderdale and District Amateur Cricket League over the Australian off-season, where Lush led the side’s batting with 555 runs at an average of 30, helped reignite Lush’s passion for the game.
“The one thing I wanted to do coming to Irymple was to win a flag,” he said.
“And just start enjoying cricket again. I sort of just fell out of love with cricket but going to England got that spark back, I wanted to give it a red-hot crack with the boys at Irymple.”
He said his form in England and the lift it gave him helped grow his game.
“I think a lot of it is just confidence. The more confident you are, the better you perform,” Lush said.
“I obviously had a pretty good stint in the UK and brought that back and rolled into the season here.
“The last time I played a full season of First Division was the year West lost the grand final, so that was 2016-17, so it was four years of maturity, growing up and getting to know my game.”
After the strange circumstances of the Innes Medal night, which was conducted as a live stream due to the COVID-19 pandemic, following the grand finals being called off, Lush has had time to sit and reflect.
Government directives have forced the personal trainer by trade to stay at home, ensuring plenty of down time.
“I probably think too much about the season just gone to be honest,” Lush said.
“Now with all that has happened, the semi-final loss doesn’t really matter but just about what could have been. There’s a couple of games in the season we dropped that we probably should have won and could have finished top, but it was a good first season personally and we performed well as a team.”
Between reflecting on the season just gone, and whiling away hours on the PlayStation while under isolation, Lush has also spent plenty of time in his home gym ensuring he is physically prepared for next season.
“It’s a good release. If I’m stuck inside doing nothing all day I’d probably drive myself crazy and drive the missus crazy as well, it’s a bit of a release,” Lush said.
Plenty of time on his hands
WADE Hancock calls the Innes Medal his biggest personal achievement in sport.
The 27-year-old Workers Gol Gol batting maestro, the 2019-20 Sunraysia Cricket Association joint Innes medallist with Irymple’s Bryson Lush, is no stranger to success in football or cricket but the 19 votes he polled in this year’s SCA best and fairest delivered something he’d wanted for most of his career.
“I’ve been lucky enough to win a few premierships and have some other success but the Innes Medal, growing up, was the pinnacle of cricket in my eyes,” Hancock said.
“Guys like Dave Hogarth and a lot of those legends who were still playing when I was around at 15-16 back here (in Sunraysia), your Richie Wylds and those sort of guys, to be a part of that group now is pretty special.”
Hancock polled three votes in rounds 1, 3, 7 and 10 to have most pundits wondering by how much he’d win the medal by, before slowing down in the second half of the season as others pinched votes off him.
This allowed Lush to charge home and claim equal honours.
With the Innes Medal not being able to be attended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hancock was a close watcher on the SCA’s coverage.
“I watched the live stream, I wanted to see how they’d do it – I was quite curious,” Hancock said. “There’s a lot more important things going on than the
Innes Medal so it doesn’t bother me in the slightest – I want to make sure we get this period through together and hopefully come out of the other end of it as a collective closer.”
Now, with government directions in place around the COVID-19 pandemic preventing sport in Sunraysia going ahead, Hancock’s preparation s for the football season have been put on hold.
The Wentworth co-coach has spent time focusing on the important things in life with wife Tomara and their two young children.
“It’s probably the first time since I was a kid that I haven’t been training or playing sport. I’ve always gone from cricket to footy and there’s been no gap so
I’m spending time with the family to be the best father and husband I can be,” Hancock said.
With no football training, Hancock’s fitness regime is limited to picking up boxes of grapes on the family block, but the respite from competitive sport has also helped the talented sportsman relax a little.
“I am an over-thinker, a lot of my mates call me a bit intense, which I don’t know if I am, but I suppose to everyone I do seem that way,” he said.
“I find it pretty easy (to switch off) but I can’t really just sit down, I’ve either got to do work … or in the backyard doing something.”
