MILDURA East captain Josh Berry is hopeful his side can take a step towards the Sunraysia Cricket Association (SCA) finals while simultaneously getting more games into their young playing group.
Much like last season, East will attack the 2021-22 campaign with a core group of players aged between 18 and 25, which the skipper hopes can fast-track their development at the top level.
Young batsman Blake Meyers has been elevated to vice-captain, while the continued improvement in the likes of Tom Dowling, Charlie Berry and the Hunt brothers, Jayden and Zane, will be important to East’s fortunes.
With seven wins across the past two seasons, Berry hopes the side can push on from their rebuilding phase.
“It will be a pretty young list again,” he said. “We lost a few boys who have relocated elsewhere, but otherwise it’s going to look pretty similar to last year.
“It’s quite a young age demographic in our current list, it’s a young group mostly between the ages of 18 and 25 and if we can get a few others to come on board we’d love to have a few more in that age group to help us build together as we go forward.
“We’re trying to sound out a few others, potentially guys who are looking for some opportunities that they may not get at their current club.
“We’d like to be knocking on the door of finals while still giving some more exposure to these younger players.”
Berry said the turnouts at preseason training so far have been strong, and is hopeful it can create depth and competition across all four senior grades.
He added that the season, which was meant to begin this Saturday, being postponed due to COVID restrictions could actually have a positive impact for them.
“It’s a bit frustrating we aren’t starting on time but it also allows us to put in a really solid preseason. It can be a bit hard after footy season because there’s only a one or two-week turnaround before getting into cricket,” he said.
“We’re also a really multicultural club with a number of Indian and Pakistani players, so the more time we can spend together in the nets and … bonding with each other, the better. It might be what we need to take another step forward.”
Berry said the Hunt brothers are improving and could be a force with the new ball.
“I think Zane is just on the cusp of 18 and Jayden is only 21. Hopefully they can take that development and run with it,” he said.
“Even at his age, Jayden has a fair bit of experience while Zane was named rookie of the year in First Division over the whole league. We gave him the opportunity and he just ran with it. He took the new ball at stages and he provided some powerful hitting in the middle order.
“Blake Meyers has been named vice-captain this year, which is great recognition for him and although he’s still very young I’m looking forward to working with him to hopefully develop those leadership skills further.
“He’ll be up the top of the order, along with Tom Vadlja and myself. Ideally we’d like to have a couple more experienced players there to help anchor the line up, but if it also means we get more games into some of the younger guys we’d be happy with that.”
