DESPITE going into the 2021-22 SHDCA season as one of the youngest teams, last year’s Runner’s-Up Nyah District will once again be looking to surprise the competition.
The elephant in the room for the Demons however is exactly how they achieve that same level of competitiveness without their former captain and star all-rounder Joel Walsh, who is set to spend the summer travelling overseas.
Without Walsh, Nyah District’s batting appears, at least on paper, to be a little thin.
The Demons will be needing big seasons with the willow from veteran Justin Toomey and the hard-hitting Dean Harrop, and improvement from youngsters Drew Lloyd, Mitch Grinham and Charlie Boulton in what will be a new look top order.
As has been the case for a number of seasons, Nyah’s big strength will be their bowling attack, which will be led by new skipper Ben Shadbolt.
Again, youngsters Drew Lloyd and Charlie Boulton, both of whom had breakout seasons with the ball twelve months ago, will need to go to another level in the absence of Walsh.
The Demons will have a bevy of options underneath these three with the ball though, and the more overs they can get into the likes of Cooper Andrews, Mackie Rogers and Jackson Hopkins, the more they will improve as the season progresses.
The likely return of premiership wicket-keeper Josh Gadsden will give Nyah District a huge boost in the field, with Gadsden likely to take the gloves.
It was this area of the game where skipper Ben Shadbolt was hoping to see improvement when he spoke with The Guardian earlier this week.
“Our bowling will definitely be our strength – but I think our fielding will also have to improve and become a big strength of ours as well,” Shadbolt said.
“If you wind the clock back to St Mary’s-Tyntynder’s team ten or so years ago, they were very young, but they were the best fielding side in the competition and that kept them in a lot of games – so, if we can really improve our fielding then hopefully, we can do similar.”
After just scraping into the top four at the end of the home-and-away season last year, Nyah District shocked the competition by beating raging favourites RSL in the Semi Final.
Unfortunately, they were unable to maintain the rage the following weekend, going down to Woorinen in the decider by just seven runs.
“The Grand Final result last year will definitely drive us, I think we kind of got a little bit too confident at times that day, we had them in a really good spot in that game and we just took our foot off, which you can’t do in grand finals,” Shadbolt said.
“That’ll definitely be a driving factor for us – because even though we’ll be really young, I think we can still play some really good cricket.”
Despite the team’s average age, the time has never been better for Shadbolt to take the reins at the Demons, having coached many of the young players who will now be tasked with driving the club towards a new era.
“It’s pretty exciting, I’ve always wanted to captain Nyah District; it’s a great club and obviously there’s a proud family history there for me as well,” Shadbolt said.
“It’ll be a big job this year with a pretty young side, but I’ve been coaching these young boys for the last six years in the juniors anyway, so they already know what I expect of them.”
