Wangaratta’s sporting precinct is set to be awash in high-quality cricket this weekend, as the A grade season moves into its second week.
For the only time in the one-day home and away season, all three local A grade squads have home games this Saturday, meaning it’s the perfect day to head out to the grounds, watch some big hits and prime bowling.
While Wangaratta Magpies are listed as the home game for their clash with Benalla Bushrangers, they won’t be at their home deck.
The match has been moved from Norm Minns Oval to Barr Reserve 2, due to outfield and pitch concerns in the wake of last weekend’s Wangaratta Show.
Magpies skipper Cooper Matheson said his squad pulled up well from their opening round win over City Colts and were ready to go again.
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“The ground’s [at Norm Minns Oval] pretty buggered, we’re not playing there, we’re not going to get a pitch up and the state of the outfield at the moment is terrible,” he said.
“The outfield’s always bad after the show because they have the horses and all of that on it.
“There are a few sore bodies [from last match], especially ‘Clemmo’ [Chris Clement] being 35 now, but he’s good to go [this weekend].
“Nick Stebnyckyj has got a wedding so we’ve got one out, but we’ve got a fair bit of depth there, so whoever comes in will do a role.”
Having blooded themselves in the extended 45-over format last weekend, an increase from previous seasons’ 40-over innings, Matheson said more care was needed with both bat and ball to extract the most from the game.
“With the bat, it’s a bit more about match awareness as well,” he said.
“When you’ve got a batter in, if you’re the new batter, tick the strike over and keep them on strike, not be throwing wickets away.
“We have heaps of scoring options with the bat, but it’s just a matter of linking together and putting on big scores like we should be able to.
“Especially with 45 overs, it’s only five overs difference [from last season] but it makes a whole lot of difference.
“With the ball, again five [extra] overs makes a lot of difference, blokes aren’t used to bowling the nine overs, so we just need to stick to our plans a lot more and do what we want to do as a bowling attack.”
The Magpies take on Benalla Bushrangers this weekend, who will be eager to make amends for their nine-wicket loss in round one.
“We can’t go by their result from last week,” Matheson cautioned.
“Last year, ‘Steppo’ [Brayden Stepien] tore us apart at the 'Showies', I’m pretty good mates with Vaughn Kirk and he’s a good cricketer but he didn’t do a whole heap last week.
“They’ve got a few blokes there who can take the game away from us pretty quick, so we’ve got to go in there prepared for a close game.”
The A grade match commences at 12.30pm at Barr 2.
On top of the A grade and A reserve action continuing, this weekend marks the official start of the full WDCA season, with the B grade, C grade, and under 12s heading out to the middle for their opening round matches.
The under 15 All Girls league is also set to commence, with matches on Friday and Sunday.
