The end of this cricket season has arrived! For some, not quick enough and for our 2's boys, all too soon in what has been a historic year for the club producing our first ever Test Cricketer in Ed Cowan.
Ed made his debut on the ultimate stage in the Boxing Day Test match against an Indian team boasting the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, MS Dhoni and Virender Sehwag. He made 65 in the first innings and played all four tests in the 4-0 whitewash of an Indian team many considered the best team in the world when they arrived on our shores before the start of the series.
Ed is currently in transit to the West Indies to be part of the test team for the three Tests against the Windies that start in the next few weeks. We wish Ed all the best and we're sure he will continue to score many runs!
In other GCC Tassie Tiger news Luke Butterworth had another fine shield season, taking 31 wickets in 23.29 to finish 7th on the leading shield wicket-takers list. Along with James Faulkner, Luke engineered a stunning Tiger's comeback in Queensland's 2nd innings of the shield final, taking 3 quick wickets to reduce the Bulls to 7-88 chasing 132, unfortunately, it was not quite enough as the Bulls won by 3 wickets.
To club performance now and we had only one team play finals in 2nd grade who went down disappointingly to University at KGV. While the result was not pleasing, it must still be regarded as a positive for the 2nds who haven't played finals for 10 years before that.
First grade finished seventh but only missed the top 4 by a couple of games in what was a real tight 1st grade ladder from positions 3 to 7 on the ladder. Third Grade, who have played finals for the past few years, fell away poorly to finish 7th, our young (mainly 15's!) Under 17 side finished last, but came a long way to defeat eventual Grand-Finalist Clarence in the final game of their season. Our Under 15 side, ravaged by young talent playing 17's, finished 8th and last but not least our Under 13 side only lost two games all season to finish 2nd. Well done boys!
Individually and Brett Geeves had a fine season leading First Grade finishing 5th in the Emerson Rodwell Medal for the Best Player in First Grade, scoring 676 runs at 33.80 and taking 22 wickets at 25.18.
Damien West won the Allen Newman Trophy for the Best Player in 2nd Grade scoring 31 votes to win comfortably from Clarence's Ben Kanizay, who polled 22 votes. Damien also took home the association 2nd grade bowling aggregate and average with 42 wickets at 10.68.
Last but not least congratualtions to former club captain and GCC favorite son Dane Anderson who led his childhood club Westbury to their first NTCA First Grade Premiership in 17 years. This has been a life long dream of Dane's and we're all very excited and proud of you.
Looking forward and we have the Club Dinner coming up early in May at SOHO and 6 or 8 weeks after that we will all be back into it again with another pre-season beginning.
From all the Board and behind the bar at KGV we wish everyone all the best and hope you enjoy a safe winter and we will see you at the dinner.