TOM HAYES
CRICKET
LVDCL By TOM HAYES WILLOW Grove Cricket Club may have found a diamond in the rough. Thirteen-year-old Hamish Phoenix took a hat-trick recently, in the Wolves’ C Grade encounter against Latrobe. Back in late-November at Morwell’s Northern Reserve, Willow Grove’s young C Grade side visited in hopes of delivering its first win of the season. Filled with juniors, Willow Grove’s C Grade side for the Round 6 clash was filled with two under 12 players and three under 14 boys – one of them, Hamish. “Our C Grade has pretty much become an avenue to develop a lot of the younger players,” Willow Grove C Grade captain Greg Sallee said. Sallee praises the likes of fellow clubmen Percy Walsh and Peter Grima for helping to develop Hamish’s game. Upon the hat-trick moment, Hamish was beside himself. “I was really excited because I’ve never gotten that in my life, it was a brilliant opportunity for me,” Hamish said. “The whole team got around him, it was just a big lifter for the C Grade guys,” Sallee said. This is just the start for Hamish, but he has already endured experience in senior cricket, in both B and C Grade. “He has played a fair bit of senior cricket, he played C Grade last year and some B Grade games last year for Willow Grove,” Hamish’s father Rob Phoenix said. His father has quite the cricketing brain too. He currently plays for Moe, and boasts four Byrne-James medals for the Central Gippsland Cricket Association’s (now Latrobe Valley District Cricket League) best first-grade player. Funnily enough, Hamish plays as a wicket keeper when in the Willow Grove under 14 side. “I was bowling medium pace,” Hamish said about his hat-trick. “We are trying to develop him as a keeper more, but it’s hard to keep him in the gloves if he’s bowling like that,” Sallee said. Hamish finished with figures of 5/9 from four overs, while fellow under 14 teammates Lincoln Mulley and Taylor Riley got the chance to bowl, the former getting a wicket also. With that success, Willow Grove locked in its first win of the season, in a trying season. Sallee admitted that the team is rebuilding, as the club fielded an A Grade side for the first time in more than 30 years. “(Hamish is) pretty much locked in with the C Grade side, I suppose if he gets his opportunity to go up to (B Grade) he will,” Sallee said. Hamish remains busy with sport during all times of the year, playing football, soccer and tennis, on top of cricket. “I am playing quite a lot of other sports,” Hamish admitted. Nonetheless, playing A Grade cricket remains one of his goals for perhaps the near future. He may well follow in the footsteps of his father, or go one better.
