The orange tsunami is rising in the valley ahead of the cricket season – Ovens Valley United are coming.

The Tigers will once again be a force to be reckoned with in both senior and junior divisions of Wangaratta and District cricket, which commences on 11 October for A grade and A reserve, and 18 October for everyone else.

OVUCC president Tom Chettleburgh said numbers at the valley were slowly building ahead of the first over.

“It’s been a slower start, to be honest, and that’s around the Savoy [Soccer] Club, Bright, Myrtleford and Whorouly all going deep into their finals campaigns, so it’s a bit of a sluggish start, but that’s okay, we’re starting to pull numbers now,” he said.

“We’ve been training since the start of August over at the Hub with some Cricket Albury Wodonga sides, Baranduda and linking with Tallangatta for a few, so it’s been really good.”

Chettleburgh said while senior numbers would be roughly the same as last season, with teams in A grade, A reserve and B grade, the numbers in the lower age groups were booming.

“The 16s now have merged with Beechworth for the year, they’ve always had a lower number of participants, we recognised that pretty early,” he said.

“Our 14s have had pretty good numbers and our under 12s program is thriving. There’s a potential we might have to roll out a third [under 12] team, it’s exciting for us.

“It’s a pure numbers game, we’ll wait and see in the coming weeks.

“We’re teetering, because with under 12s, if you have 11 or 12 in a team it’s actually too many – your participation drops down a little bit based on balls faced, it’s really customised to eight to 10 a side.

“I think we’ll come pretty close to three teams.”

On the senior front, there’s been a changing of the guard, with former skipper Dylan Bursill handing the baton to opener Seamus Phillips.

Last season’s undisputed best player in the league Geeth Alwis is going around for another year, and the Tigers have secured the services of a pair of English bowlers, Joe Monk and Joel Jordan, to help them rise up the ladder.

With the competition removing red-ball cricket, and with a new-look side, it’s shaping up to be an interesting year in the seniors.

“Both of our imports are here now, one has been for most of the preseason,” Chettleburgh said.

“We’ve gone with two this year because we knew we were going to lack in that space a bit with the bowling, that’s why we went after them – we’ll shore up that end of it and make sure the locals get some runs on the board.

“At the end of the day, as a club, we might’ve voted to keep two-day cricket but we fully support the league’s decision and everyone else’s vote to go all one-dayers and we’ll fully embrace it.

“We really appreciate Dyl’s efforts over the journey, but he just expressed his interest that he wanted to take a step back and enjoy his cricket again, and we’re very conscious at our club of burnout for volunteers.

“It’s going to be a good change, Seamus is that prime age to take that responsibility on board.

“It’s going to be different, a different philosophy, a different outlook – we want to try and keep what we believe in, but it’s going to be a different look in how we go about games.”

The club also has social memberships available for those who want to get around the club but aren’t too keen on playing – for more information, visit the club’s website www.ovucc.com.au or check out Ovens Valley United Cricket Club on Facebook.