An opportunity presented itself for 12 boys to be a part of an invitational team for the Don Bambling Cup – January 2023. The team comprised of players from across the Sunshine Coast and Wide Bay, and for most this was their first 5-day competition. The focus of the Don Bambling Cup is development and every team member capitalised on this experience.
The team was led by Hunter Brown from Kingaroy, who demonstrated a calm demeanour and willingness to lead and support his teammates. He took in stride the opportunity to learn more about the game and allow all members a fair opportunity to demonstrate their skills.
The team’s performance throughout the week steadily improved along with their knowledge on understanding the momentum of the game. The key theme for the week was being able to identify which team had the momentum and what they could do to either maintain, accelerate, or regain momentum. The outcome of this was the team taking 53 of the possible 57 wickets on offer, which included bowling 4 teams out.
Furthermore, we ensured there was role clarity each day and focused on setting fields and angles to support our bowlers. The role clarity was important as we were fortunate to have many bowlers. We had a big pace attack, a niggly medium pace group and the spin trio. As the tournament went on our medium pacers and spinners often guided us through the hot middle periods, tying batters up which was supported by good fielding and runouts.
Our focus with the batters centred around partnerships and where we could steal singles based on opposition field sets. It was pleasing to see partnerships growing as the week went on. Our top order often got us off to a good start with Jackson Kerkow being the top performer for the week (56 top score, total runs 161, 32.2 average) and Kai Watts almost carrying his bat with a well fought 40 in Round 4.
Overall, the boys have been respectful of the opposition and venue, supportive of one another and demonstrated consistent energy on and off the field across 5 hot cricketing days. Thank you to parents for supporting and scoring, and Lucas for his varied efforts supporting the team across the week.
