Whit’s Wisdom #3 March 2018 – On Finals, Carly Leeson, Mac Jenkins, Sangha & The Tests

Whits Wisdom March 2018

As we progress into the business end of the season and still have a few teams in the mix, I’d like to thank all the players, volunteers, supporters and everybody else involved with the club for all their work this season, and hopefully there are a premiership or two to come in a few weeks time!

On the club’s finals hopes and season in general

The form of the club post-Christmas has been okay, we’ve been unlucky on a few occasions where we could have capitalised and had a few more wins across the grades. Unfortunately, at times we’ve failed to just press home and it’s left us in a position where we still have a couple of grades in the mix, but we really need to win all the games this weekend. Grades 1-4 need to all win and a couple of them need to rely on other results, and that’s never a good position to be in.

The boys have all tried very hard, just a couple of games here and there that we could have won but for whatever reason we didn’t, couple of outrights we were unable to capitalise on. Things like that always play on you at the end of the season and you look back and think “man if we only had of won that game”.

Overall, the boys have been trying very hard and you can’t ask more than that.

On the debut of our first ever female player

With the debut of Carly Leeson in Fifth Grade, she became the first female player to ever represent this joint club or any of our Foundation Clubs. For our club, it was a very historic moment and everybody has seen the growth of not only women’s cricket but women’s sport in recent years. These days you can’t turn the TV on without seeing womens sport – whether it be soccer, rugby 7’s, AFL, rugby league and cricket – and in a lot of these sports, Australia are one of the best (if not THE best). The Australian women’s cricket team continue to go from strength to strength and are dominating teams now, and there are a lot of younger players including Carly making the grade.

Times have changed dramatically, and Carly is the first of many female cricketers we will have at our great club in the not-too-distant future. I think that’s the way the game is going, and as a progressive club we have to lead in any aspect we can and hopefully that means at some stage having a female cricket team in the next few years.

It was a big moment for Carly and our club. She’s done well taking a few poles and bowls really good line and length. Everything I’ve heard about her has been very positive, and I’m very pleased in the way the boys have shown her the utmost respect as all members of our club should.

Carly Leeson

On the debut of Mac Jenkins in First Grade

Mac Jenkins, the second youngest of all time to debut in First Grade for the Randy Petes. The youngest is of course Jason Sangha, and the third youngest is Usman Khawaja, so he’s nestled in between two Australian representatives and we’d love to see him kick on to that level and make it a hat-trick. He only bowled a dozen or so overs, and bowled quite well, a very tough thing for a 16-year old to do. If you’re at that level you’re either looking for higher honours, or you’re a veteran who’s been there for years and that’s a very tough step for a young kid. From what I heard he handled himself very well and he’s a great prospect for the future.

If Mac is able to keep getting better, keeps his head in the right place and listens to the right people, I know he’s gonna have a big future in the game. Not only with our club, but possible even further like we have seen others do.

Debutants Mac Jenkins and Jamie Hemphrey with “The Whit”

On the continued progression of Jason Sangha after the U19 World Cup

I’ve heard nothing but good things about the way this young man handled himself and handled the captaincy in the World Cup. The hierarchy appear to be very pleased in the way he goes about his business, as both a batsman and a Captain, so again for Jason just like our other younger guys if he keeps his head and keeps working hard on his game with not too many distractions, he’ll keep moving up.

There’s plenty of people at the club and higher up that are willing to help Jason progress, and in the next year or 18 months, without putting too much pressure on him, he’s probably only a couple of good innings away from a debut for NSW.

On the Australian Test series against South Africa and Steve Smith’s ongoing form

Steven again was amazing in the first innings, he is just such a machine and I’ve never seen anyone play like that – and I’ve been around cricket for a very long time!

There are plenty of keys to victory for the Aussie boys over there, it looks like Mitch Marsh really believes in himself now; his brother Shaun again very gutsy, we haven’t seen the best of him yet and if he can get a start going he will kick on and get really big scores.

It was a game that suited the bowlers and our bowlers was just better than theirs. Starc was phenomenal, Lyon bowled really well without taking too many wickets, and the other two seamers just fire them down at 140km or more, it makes it very difficult for the South African batsmen. Going 1-0 up in the series is a fantastic start, and its turned out to be a bit of a spiteful game both on and off the field, but it’s a tough game at that level and people will do anything they can to get under their opponent’s skin.

Some advice for the players as the season closes and we move in to the 2018/19 season

We all probably need to go away for a month or so, enjoy yourselves and forget about cricket as much as you can. Then its all about starting the process of looking back at your season, and think where you would like to improve. Are you going to seek any advice? Are you going to go on a fitness regime? Eat better and not drink as much? Are you going to set goals for next season?

If you’re a batsman, look at how you got out last year or if you’re a bowler, what the bad parts of your bowling were. Were you drifting down the leg side or were you too short? Was your pace down or were you not fit enough for a 2nd and 3rd spell? Were you getting out LBW or did you knick off too regularly? Were you out six or seven times playing the bouncer and perhaps need to put the pull shot away?

All of those things have to be reviewed if you want to move forward in your cricket career. If you’re happy with how you performed and you want to stay in that same spot, fair enough. If you want to continue to move forward and evolve as a player, you need to look where you can improve – batting, bowling or even fielding if you dropped a few easy catches. Its true what they say, catches win matches so you need to have that sharp as well as the other two aspects in your game.

Moving into the season, we’ve gotta start that training and getting back into the nets. If you need to have an extra net every week, maybe go away with a couple of mates to an indoor centre or your local park and work on things outside of Randwick Petersham training. As always, it is paramount that the pre-season will affect how you perform in the season itself. Plenty of soul searching to be done, and asking yourself how you’re going to go about it and figuring how exactly you’re going to do it.

To my brothers and sisters – as always – TRUST / RESPECT / HUMILITY