GET READY: Orange District Cricket Association product Chris Tremain has a big season ahead.
By NICK McGRATH
FORMER Kinross quick Chris Tremain has been named in the NSW Speedblitz Blues 13-man squad set to travel to the WACA, Perth, to tackle Western Australia in the first Ryobi Cup match of the summer.
Australian skipper Michael Clarke will captain the NSW team in the side’s first one-day fixture on Sunday.
It’s a new-look Speedblitz Blues outfit following the departures of Simon Katich, Phil Jaques, Brett Lee, Usman Khawaja, Phillip Hughes, Nathan Hauritz and Timm Van Der Gugten over the course of the off-season.
And while all seven players are big losses, their departure gives some of the state’s talented young guns a shot.
Tremain is one of those players.
The 21-year-old quick signed a two-year deal with the NSW Blues prior to the season starting and will have fond memories of the WACA after debuting at the ground in February with figures of 2-32 from 10 overs.
After debuting at Perth in the Ryobi Cup, Tremain then took six wickets in his maiden Sheffield Shield game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and then snared a deal to play with the Sydney Thunder in the Twenty20 Big Bash.
It has been a meteoric rise through the cricket ranks for the boy from Yeoval.
“It’s quite a bit [to take in], especially in a very short period of time, but having played the last two games for NSW and training throughout the off-season with them I feel as if I’m starting to settle into a cricketing environment,” Tremain said.
The right-arm quick believes the work he has done in the pre-season on changing lengths and speed will help him take wickets in the limited over forms of the game.
“I’d like to hope all of the training we’ve been doing with our one-day bowling and end of the innings bowling will help,” he said.
Tremain isn’t the only Western Zone representative in the 13-man squad flying to Perth either, with Mudgee’s Scott Henry and Bathurst’s Trent Copeland also in the squad boasting seven players with international experience.
NSW SPEEDBLITZ BLUES: Michael Clarke (c), Sean Abbott, Doug Bollinger, Trent Copeland, Brad Haddin, Moises Henriques, Scott Henry, Josh Lalor, Nic Maddinson, Peter Nevill, Steve O’Keefe, Steve Smith, Chris Tremain