LOCAL cricket clubs will be hoping for a spike in participation rates thanks to the interest created from back-to-back Ashes series.
With Australia’s battle to ‘return the urn’ and win the 2013 Ashes series in England starting on Wednesday night — and another series scheduled for the 2013/14 Australian summer — there is plenty of interest around Swan Hill.
Nyah District cricketer Shane Fleming and Stuart Dixon, from Lake District in the United Kingdom, have been among those operating with bleary eyes thanks to late night viewing shifts in front of the television.
Dixon, who came over to Australia prior to last summer and padded up for Tooleybuc Manangatang, said he was confident of English success in the northern summer.
“[Victorian Peter] Siddle bowled really well but I think the overcast conditions help [Englishman James] Anderson, especially, a great deal bowling swing,” he said.
The 21-year-old said the famous 2005 Ashes series — a 2-1 victory to the Poms that saw England lay claim to the series’ prized Urn for the first time since 1987 — had led to a spike in numbers at his local cricket club back home.
“That was the main Ashes,” Dixon said with a grin.
“Our club got 150 new kids on the back of that series.”
Fleming also paid tribute on Thursday afternoon to Siddle’s bowling.
“If the bowlers do well we’re a chance, but our batsmen are a big worry,” he said.
Fleming said social media users in Swan Hill had taken to Facebook and Twitter to talk about the event and that Cricket Australia had informed local clubs across the country that it was expecting a spike in participation rates at grassroots level.
“It does [generate interest in local competition]… Certainly for me and most people who play cricket,” he told The Guardian yesterday.
