AS Sunraysia Cricket Association First Division gets ready to round the turn into the second half of the season, a key piece of the Mildura West squad said that while winning is important, it isn’t the only focus for his 11.
West captain-coach Chris Williams said a positive club culture was just a important as fighting for silverware.
“Our focus is making sure the guys are enjoying their cricket,” he said.
“It’s a really key focus of ours.
“It’s about making sure we have a really good culture in our club and in our team, and putting the processes in place. Winning becomes part of that.”
West sit fourth on the table, equal on four wins with top side Irymple, second-placed Gol Gol and fourth-placed Nichols Point, while Mildura East hold second but on three wins.
Williams said the push into the second half of the season and the quest for finals was an open book at the moment, and that made the competition interesting.
“Most players I speak to have enjoyed the fact it’s an anyone-can-beat-anyone competition,” he said.
“At the Christmas break I think we’ll have a very good indication of who the better two-day sides are, and everyone will need to be on their game on the day.
“We’re just hoping to put in as many good performances as we can and be there, or thereabouts, in early 2025.”
On Saturday, West undertake the second leg of a two-day clash with East at Mildura Sporting Precinct.
West scored 7/184 in 54.5 overs last Saturday, with the top order logging more than 100 runs, including 21 for Williams before he went leg before.
With the balance of the 80 overs to come, the skipper said he was hoping the tail could wag.
“We’ve still got a bit of batting to do,” he said.
“We are eight down, so we’ll just have to try to accumulate as many runs as we can with the lower order.”
In West’s round 6 game in mid-November against the struggling Settlers, Ryan Muir and Liam Naylor did the damage with an equal share of an eight-wicket haul.
When it came to the upcoming challenge, Williams said he was less concerned with the journey to success than the ultimate outcome.
“If someone can have a day out, that’s fantastic,” he said.
“Generally you are looking for a consistent effort from your bowling group, so you can be confident when you throw the ball around and make some changes and put some batsmen under pressure.
“We just need to make sure we’re hard to score against and the batsmen have to take a risk to play some scoring shots and if they do that, they’ll bring wicket opportunities for us to make inroads into their line-up.
“They have a couple of good players at the top of the order who can be quite damaging and we’ll need to make sure we’ve got our plans in place to limit their damage.”
When it comes to his own form, Williams said he found himself getting inside his own head at times.
It’s a habit he was working to shake out of his game.
“I’m probably just frustrating myself at the moment,” he said.
“I keep finding ways to get myself out. I just need to bat with more time.
“If Chris Williams can spend more time in the middle, then I’ll be making runs.”
