Collendina captain-coach Nathan Frye expects his side to be pushing for promotion to the Bellarine Peninsula Cricket Association A1 Grade competition again this season.
The Cobras lost last season’s A2 Grade decider to Drysdale, but Frye said the result hadn’t been mentioned once during the preseason.
“We honestly haven’t even mentioned the grand final once all preseason and it’s not even like we’ve avoided it, it just hasn’t been brought up,” he said.
“Everyone’s looking forward instead of looking backwards. We lost two games of cricket for the whole year last year so we’re doing pretty much everything right. We’re pretty comfortable in where we are, what we’re doing.”
The Snakes have lost batter Ben Ricardo, but have regained spinner Jacob Gasior while Baxter Stephenson and seamer Oscar Irwin have signed on.
Gasior will form a potent partnership with fellow tweaker Stan Grazotis.
“Especially in the one dayers where they can get through their eight (overs) each quite tight and quite quickly,” Frye said.
“They can really put teams on the back foot.”
However, Collendina’s run-making prowess is what excites Frye most of all.
“I think batting is our strength,” he said.
“We’ve got some really good top-end bowlers, but we’ve got some really good top-end bats as well. I think it’s going to be the depth players, the next four or five, it’ll be rotated around because we’ve probably got 15 or 16 A Grade players that would play at most other places.”
Collendina had several promising youngsters make their mark in the team last season including batters Aidan Foard and Ollie Terhorst and seam bowlers Ted Farrell and Gus Peters.
“I’m really excited to see those young guys after another six months just to see how they go,” Frye said.
“They’ve all come back to preseason six inches taller so it’s great as a coach because that’s pretty much all they needed to do was just get a little bit bigger because they’re all bloody good cricketers already.”
Frye’s “dodgy knee” will prevent him from bowling or keeping wickets this season.
“I think I’ll just be standing at first slip watching everything,” he said.
“I’m not allowed to ball anymore so it will be just batting I think for me this year so I’ll have to make sure I get some (runs) otherwise I’ll find myself in the twos.”
The Cobras take on Surfcoast Stingrays in their season opener tomorrow at home.
The Stingrays will enter their second season in the competition and are still somewhat of an unknown quantity for Bellarine-based teams.
“It only takes a team to pick up two good guys and they’re completely different, so until 12.30 on Saturday when we are playing, we’ll see what happens,” Frye said.
Frye said he expects Portarlington and Inverleigh to be up there this season and that St Leonards could do well again.
“Inverleigh have picked up a couple of good ones and obviously coming back from a higher competition, they’re going to adjust pretty well in A2, but you never know until you play everyone,” he said.
“Especially this time of year, it’s hard to make calls.”
