New-look Cavs plan to keep up appearances

Cavaliers will enter Friday night’s Royal Hotel Cup clash against Orange City gunning for a phenomenal 17^th Orange District Cricket Association day-night crown, but they do so without arguably three of their most valuable players from last year’s win.

The maroons won last year’s final against Centrals, Middleton pummelled 66 from just 28 balls - only six of which were dots - in Cavaliers’ 9-176.

Then Venner (3-9) and Martin (2-17) led their attack superbly to restrict the red and blacks to 7-102 in reply.

That’s a fair contribution to a premiership win.

Still, the men charged with leading the team into a new Twenty20 season, Josh Doherty and Tom Aggett, believe this year’s Cavaliers will be just as tough to beat.

“Obviously it's going to be tough without our three most experienced players against a side like City, but I think we have enough ability and experience to get the job done,” Doherty said.

“We have guys like Ev McCall, Bailey Ferguson and Alex Wiegold who have been performing well in second grade who've got a deserved call-up and slot in nicely.”

Friday night’s clash is a rematch of one of last summer’s Royal Hotel Cup semi-finals, with Cavs chasing down City’s 5-118 to win emphatically by eight wickets.

In a positive sign, in that chase Doherty (58 not out) and Matt Corben (43) did virtually all of the scoring to steer their side home with 16 balls to spare.

Both will bat at the top of the order in Friday night’s clash at Wade Park, and Doherty was expecting a Shaun Grenfell-led Warriors outfit to be a tricky first-up assignment.

“City are a very classy side, (Dave) Boundy at the top, Grenners in the middle can certainly do some damage … but T20 is a very funny game and I think everyone knows good sides on paper mean very little,” Doherty said.

He said, naturally, defending Cavaliers’ Twenty20 crown was the goal, but the team was taking this year’s tournament with the softly-softly approach of one game at a time, with pool A the competition’s pool of death containing last year’s runners-up and the Jameel Qureshi and Mick Curtale-led Blayney side, as well as past champions City.

“Obviously, (defending the crown is a goal) but that's not a topic of discussion with us, it's about putting together a performance for the current game,” Doherty said.

Friday night’s game begins at the normal time of 6.30pm at Wade Park.