The long wait between games for Narrabri Shire’s junior cricketers is quickly nearing an end, with the Narrabri District Junior Cricket Association’s 2021-22 season just around the corner.
NDJCA recently held its annual general meeting, at which Ashley Watt was re-elected as chairman.
He will once again be joined by the brilliant ‘Michelle duo’ – Michelle O’Connor and Michelle Wheeler.
The NDJCA committee told The Courier last week that they expected the coming season to get underway on Saturday, November 6, a decision which will be confirmed in the near future.
“Everything is obviously all up in the air with COVID-19 right now but that date is what we’re aiming for at the moment,” Watt said.
“Rep cricket will actually start the week before that.”
Junior cricket at Narrabri’s Cooma Oval is expected to alter its age groups this season to align with the current representative age groups – under-11s, under-13s, under-15s.
“Ideally we’d like to stick to the same age groups that rep cricket runs under,” Watt said.
“Then we’ll have our young ones too, blasters which are our under-9s and junior juniors.
“We’d like to reflect those rep age groups to get more kids playing in their own age groups.
“But like it has in previous years, where some age groups have stretched wider, it will all depend on rego numbers and we are also limited in the number of pitches.
“But we’d like to have several teams in all of those age groups this season.”
Some of those teams could be made up entirely of players from Wee Waa and surrounding areas, with a lot of interest coming from Narrabri’s neighbours ahead of the new season.
“At the moment, we have a lot of interest coming out of Wee Waa,” Watt said.
“We are looking at potentially having a Wee Waa side in the under-13s, and that could be the case in other age groups as well.
“We’ve at least got someone to run training in Wee Waa. We’ll still have training here in Narrabri, but now the kids in Wee Waa won’t have to travel all the way in here.
“It would be good to have full Wee Waa sides in our competition, it will really add to what we already have and it would give those kids more consistency by getting to train and play together.”
Another change in season 2021-22 will see players aged 16 and 17 not be required to play junior cricket on Saturdays if they would prefer to play senior cricket in the Narrabri District Cricket competition instead.
However, 16 and 17-year-olds will still have the chance to represent NDJCA in the representative arena.
NDJCA has entered four teams into the 2021-22 representative campaign including under-11s, under-13s, under-15s and under-17s.
“The under-17s in particular is pretty exciting,” Watt said.
“It’s been a while since we’ve had a 17s side.
“That team is off the back of last year’s 15s side which made the final. A lot of those guys are going up.”
The NDJCA committee encouraged all keen players to register for its 2021-22 season as soon as possible, and for parent helpers to also register their interest, which would help assist with planning for the coming campaign.
Meanwhile, five NDJCA players were recently selected in Northern Inland Cricket Council regional academy squads for the 2021-22 season.
Gabe O’Connor (under-13s), Clay Hoffman (under-15s) and Ben Keys, Sid Harvey and Bernard O’Connor (under-16s) were all named in their respective rep squads.
A former NDJCA player, Sanchit Jagadeesan who is now in Tamworth, gained selection into the under-14s squad.
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