IT’S been a long time since NSW and former Australian Test Match quick Trent Copeland stepped foot on Jack Brabham Park and he said he couldn’t think of a better reason to do so than yesterday’s MILO T20 Blast School Cup, part of Cricket NSW’s Toyota Country Blitz.

Copeland, from Bathurst, was on hand yesterday with fellow NSW quick Doug Bollinger, another former Test bowler, to run a huge number of Orange primary schools kids through the T20 Blast competition.

“I was saying to Dougie early [yesterday], I played a lot of junior cricket [at Jack Brabham] and a lot of soccer as well,” Copeland said.

“I played plenty of men’s cricket around Orange, at Wade Park and those other grounds too. I’ve got a younger brother, Ryan Peacock, playing in the Western Zone sides now and he’s doing well.

“So it’s really good for me to get back out here and say hello to some friendly faces. There’s a lot of talent out this way now, too.”

“I hadn’t been to Orange before, it’s good out here, it’s great fun to come to this kind of thing,” Bollinger added.

“There’s a lot of talent floating around here, we’ve seen a lot of talented young boys and girls.

“It’s great to see so many girls involved actually.”

“There was one girl I saw, she was bowling rockets and then smashing them everywhere. She could be the next Elyse Perry,” Copeland laughed.

The pair were in Orange just days after a practice game against Queensland in Brisbane, the start of the next phase of NSW’s pre-season.

“We played a couple of one-dayers and had a good week of training up there,” Bollinger explained.

“Hang on mate, there’s a girl here that’s just hit three sixes in a row, she’s on fire,” Copeland said while watching one of the T20 Blast games.

“We’re going along pretty well, we’ve finished the hard work. We’ve had a really good pre-season, it’s just over a month until the first Matador Cup game so we’ll just touch up on a few things before that,” Bollinger said.