Centre Of Excellence

Well the first of the two camps my region runs at the Cricket Australia Centre of Excellence has come to an end in style with a 100 run win over Australian Sports gateway X1 at Allan Border field on Friday.

The week has been excellent apart from a day of rain on the Wednesday where we had to go indoors all day at the GABBA. But this gave the players an opportunity to see a world class stadium and a change of scenery.

The week for the players consists of general training, fitness testing, two games of which we won 1 and lost one, specialist fielding coaching from Mike Young who is the former Australian Baseball coach and now Australian Cricket Team fielding coach.

For some of the players it is their first time to Australia and for some even the first time they have played on turf pitches. The ages range from a young boy from Indonesia who is 16 all the way to a 28 year old Fijian player. This is a important program in our high performance calander and a chance for us to select the better players to then represent the region at the Australian Country Cricket Championships which is in January 2009.

The highlight for me during the week long camp was how well the guys played in Fridays game and winning a rare game for the region. The boys played against a academy side that features world cup players from Bermuda, scottish under 19s players and some 1st Grade cricketers from Brisbane. Just the way the players delivered what we had discussed after our dissapointing and non competitive game on Tuesday against the same side.

Today I have had the chance for a bit of time to relax and time to myself, the week for me is very exhausting with a lot of coaching during the day with its challenges of languages and general cricket culture. In the evenings Im organising their allowances or driving them back down for dinner at the Centre of Excellence.

Now it is time to welcome the PNG cricket team who are preparing for the world Cricket League Division 3 on their way to a hopeful berth in the next world cup in 2011.

The squad is coached by Martin Gleeson who was formerly in my current position and now works at Cricket Australia, this is great for me as it allows me to take a back seat role and also work with someone I have worked with for sometime over a number of years in different roles.

PNG arrive into Brisbane and then Depart next Saturday, I will also depart for melbourne on Saturday and step straight onto the cricket field and play for Prahran.