By sports editor Russell Bennett
WGCA PREMIER DIVISION
GAZETTE 2019/20 TEAM OF THE YEAR
While some of the best of the best of the West Gippsland Cricket Association’s Premier tier missed out on the chance to fight it out for the premiership on the last weekend of the season, Kooweerup and Pakenham players – unsurprisingly – featured heavily in the Gazette’s Team of the Year for 2019/20.
This year’s star-studded lineup is a who’s who of the Premier grade, but it also includes a host of players who played pivotal roles in propelling their sides forward.
Pakenham champion Dale Tormey and Kooweerup keeper-batsman Chris Bright were clearly two of the first chosen in this side, due to their breakout 2019/20 campaigns.
Tormey was once again in dominant touch with the blade – belting a staggering 946 home-and-away season runs at 86.0 – but he also took 21 wickets at 26.4 after his workload with the ball was increased due to the Lions’ injury woes.
But another all-rounder, Tooradin’s Russ Lehman, rightfully deserves a huge share of the season’s spotlight.
He’s long been the most consistent all-around talent in the Premier grade, and this season was no different.
Part of what makes him so incredible is that he devotes his time to his footy pursuits in the winter – effectively meaning he never gives his body a prolonged break.
He’s the WGCA’s biggest workhorse, but don’t mistake that for him being considered anything less than a bonafide star of the local game.
Not only was he once again in the top five leading run-scorers of the home and away season, he was the runaway leading wicket-taker with 40 – an incredible 12 ahead of the next best, Jess Mathers.
And to think, those wickets came at an average of just 10.83.
While outgoing Kooweerup captain-coach Mark Cooper didn’t quite have the kind of season with the willow many have become accustomed to him producing, he was undoubtedly still one of the best top-order batsmen of the association and both he and young protege Tyler Clark richly deserve their selections.
While Clark recorded a number of starts, which he frustratingly couldn’t convert, he was still a model of consistency – with his only single-figure outing (8) coming via a Kookaburra Cup Twenty20 clash with Pakenham. Ultimately, he scored 425 home-and-away runs at a strong 47.22.
This year’s Gazette Team of the Year is unsurprisingly stacked with star all-rounders, including Neil Peake who made a massive impact in his first season as a Seagull – scoring 535 runs at a shade under 45, and claiming seven wickets at just 22.6.
Pakenham star Chris Smith is another such all-around gun, with the former league medallist scoring 420 runs at a brilliant average of 60, despite having just eight home-and-away innings to his name throughout his campaign.
His Lions team mate Jason Williams is another notable selection. Having spent much of his career as a wicket-keeper batsman, the man affectionately known as ‘Boof’ has reinvented himself in recent seasons to become one of the competition’s most reliable spinners.
Many of the competition’s best batsmen single out Williams as one of the toughest bowlers to face in the local scene, and his importance to Pakenham’s side cannot be overstated. Only fellow Team of the Year selections Travis Wheller (186.2) and Lucas Carroll (174.5), along with Clyde’s Daniel Lever (165), bowled more home-and-away season overs than Williams this season. Like Tormey’s, his workload with the ball was significantly increased due to the Lions’ injury issues and, like Tormey, he stepped right up to the plate – claiming the scalps of a number of the WGCA’s best batsmen.
Lever was among the most unlucky not to be selected in this season’s team, along with the likes of Ash Adams from Tooradin, Matt Welsh from Cardinia, and Merinda Park combo Sasindu Perera and Paul Stockdale.
All of those would absolutely be worthy selections if this was a retrospective Country Week squad of players, based on the best performed throughout the season.
Welsh, in particular, had a marked breakout campaign that was highlighted by a clear increase in confidence from previous seasons.
Not only did he take 18 wickets as one of the go-to options of the Bulls’ pace attack, he also stepped right up with the willow – scoring 328 vital runs as a rebuilding Cardinia battled to stave off relegation.
Undoubtedly his biggest highlight with the bat came in the penultimate round of the season when he scored a crucial, potentially defining ton against Devon Meadows that proved to be one of the biggest clutch innings of the Premier division given just what was on the line for the two respective sides. He tied with Wheller for the Cardinia Cricket Club’s Webster Medal.
