Ocean Grove heads into the new Bellarine Peninsula Cricket Association season with a new coach and a new captain.
David Bullock has taken over from Robbie Rutley at the helm while Fletcher Long will skipper the A Grade side as the club aims to return to the finals.
The Grubbers will be without star all-rounder Mick Thornton, who has crossed to rival club Anglesea. Paul Jubber has retired.
Grove will welcome English import Zac Jones, who is a highly credentialed all-rounder who hits the ball hard and bowls at a lively pace.
Bullock said numbers have been strong during preseason and that the players were looking forward to the first game for premiership points this Saturday October 5 against Jan Juc at home.
“We’ve managed to get some training done with the weather that we’ve had so we’re pretty positive about the preseason,” he said.
“We’re looking at that list and seeing where we can develop from within. Our focus will be competing for longer. Just trying to stay in the game for longer periods of time, not lose wickets in clumps or sort of go missing for 10 overs or 20 overs in the field or with the ball.”
A trend that has emerged in the BPCA of late is the emergence of slow bowling, not only as a way of reducing the run rate, but to take wickets.
The Grubbers have as good a slow-bowling attack as anyone in the comp.
“The current flavour of the game at local level seems to be to bore teams for as long as possible and let them make the mistake,” Bullock said.
“We do have options for our team, particularly in the ones, so we’ll have plenty of slow bowling options. And if that’s the way that we think the game’s going, we’ll look into that and see what our slow bowling options look like.
“But, I’m sure on the other foot, there’s a couple of guys who can get the ball through reasonably well. Zac coming from England, from what we’ve seen, he looks to be reasonably slippery. But we’ll just look at the makeup of our team and we’ve got a game plan that we think will suit our eleven.”
