Orange hosts the first ever Veterans Cricket Australia Over-50 National Championship this weekend, but if you’re thinking it’ll be a bunch of grey-haired geezers plodding around the city talking about how things were better in their day, best think again.
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“No, it definitely won’t be that,” tournament coordinator Gil McGrath laughed.
“These are the best over-50 players in the country and a lot of them still play first grade for their clubs, there’s some very, very good cricketers and it is a national championship after all.”
Eighteen teams kick-off their bids for national glory on Friday morning across two divisions, with hosts NSW boasting six sides and Queensland the next most prominent with five.
Kinross’ Stu Crisp will line up for the NSW Boomers while former Orange City skipper Bruce Tom, now from Wagga Wagga, will mark his homecoming with the NSW Kangaroos, both sides are in division two.
Bathurst’s Percy Raveneau and Dave Glasson will also be in action, for the NSW Sixers and Kookaburras respectively, also in the second division.
McGrath labelled all four sides decent chances to win, adding he expects the NSW Blues and Waratahs to give the top division a real shake.
“At over-60 level the NSW sides always do well, but so do Queensland and Victoria,” McGrath said.
“I guess it’s hard to know in a way because this is the first time we’ve run an over-50 tournament, it’s all new for us.
“But a few of those guys, Stu Crisp, Dave Glasson and Bruce Tom, were a part of the Western Wildfires side that won the division two state championship in Armidale too, and Riverina shocked the Sydney guys by winning division one there too.
“So these guys from the country will go well here too, I think.”
There’ll be eight teams contesting the top division and another 10 in division two and while Orange is the primary host, Bathurst and Molong will also host one game per day.
“The facilites are great here in Orange and we wanted to get Bathurst and Molong involved too, so it’s good to be playing games in all three places,” McGrath said.
The opening two days on Friday and Saturday and Monday’s finals will be 45-over games, while Sunday’s games will be Twenty20 fixtures.
There’ll also be a T20 day-nighter on Sunday evening at Wade Park.
All games start at 10am each day, while the T20 clash kicks off at 6pm.
A number of Orange’s umpires will be in action too having being appointed over the weekend, with Ian Findlay, Mark Frecklington and Chris King all set to stand, as well as 15-year-old Tom Anderson.
The full draw can be found here.