Country cricket’s most promising junior players will descend upon Horsham this week for under-15s Country Week cricket starting on Monday.
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Seven teams will be visiting Horsham for the week-long tournament, bringing visitors and excitement to the region.
Horsham Cricket Association secretary Darren Chesterfield said everything was coming together for another terrific edition of the Horsham based tournament.
“We’re all prepared to go,” Chesterfield said. “Eight is the perfect number of teams for the fixture, there’s no byes this year and we’ve divided them into two pools.
“We’ve got four turf wickets available which is really good. On at least three days all of the games will be on turf at City Oval, Dudley Park, Dimboola or Sunnyside.
“It’s tough to play cricket 4-5 days in a row so hopefully the weather is kind and everyone has a great week of cricket.”
The Wimmera-Mallee Cricket Association and Horsham Cricket Association have entered teams for the tournament. Along with the under-13s, it will be one of two teams from the HCA after they were unable to put together an under-17s team.
The Horsham Cricket Association team is coached by one of the league’s best A Grade players in Simon Hopper.
Hopper said he was impressed by the amount of talent in the under-15s team and was hoping they would be competitive in this year’s competition.
“A couple of the boys in the team are running around playing A Grade in the HCA so hopefully we get some good results from them,” Hopper said.
“I think Colac and Warnambool will be reasonably strong teams, but I expect us to be competitive with all of them.”
The Horsham team will be led by the likes of Lachie Weidemann, Patty Mills and Blake Turner who all played in the same competition last year as bottom-age players.
Patty Mills and Jett Hopper will captain and vice captain the side.
Promising youngster Connor Weidemann will also step-up into the under-15s as a 12-year-old.
“There’s a couple of younger kids involved in it,” Hopper said.
“Connor is obviously a really good little cricketer so it will be interesting to see how he goes in the older age group.”
Horsham take on Warnambool in their first match of the week in a tough test for the side.
Richard Crabtree
richard.crabtree@austcommunitymedia.com.au
richard.crabtree@austcommunitymedia.com.au
