Eastern Cricket Association: Toorak Prahran “primed” for a tilt at the MacGibbon Shield
It’s been five summers since the Southern Cricket League packed away its kit bag one last time. Now that league’s last champion is keen to do it all again.
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It’s been five summers since the Southern Cricket League packed away its kit bag one last time.
After dominating the league’s final summer, Toorak Prahran won the last Menzies Shield and then headed for the Eastern Cricket Association.
While most clubs have seen a considerable change in personnel since then, the combine’s tight-knit group is still largely together and readying itself for another premiership tilt, this time in the ECA’s MacGibbon Shield.
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“About half that team is still together,” Toorak Prahran skipper Hugo Trotter, himself the grand final MVP back in 2014 said. “We’ve had a few come across from other parts. (But) it’s been great to lead a group of players who’ve stayed together for the last half-dozen years.
“It’s been great to captain a team with six to eight blokes, all similar ages and from similar walks of life. A lot of us have come from junior cricket together at Toorak.”
With one week of the home-and-away season to come — on Saturday Toorak Prahran will be defending 8-221 against STC South Camberwell at the Hartwell Sports Ground — the combine is almost four games clear at the top of the ladder.
A semi-final berth has been secure for quite some time.
But, it’s a position the club has been in on a number of occasions and Trotter isn’t taking end-of-season success as a given.
Just 12 months ago his side was rolled by Edinburgh in the season-decider.
“We’ve fallen short a few times,” he said. “But we’ve done a lot right this season. We’ll be crossing our fingers, but we’re primed to win it this year.”
Beyond obvious skill with bat and/or ball, the team’s strong bond is its biggest weapon.
After so many summers together, most players know each other’s game inside out.
“We’ve seen aspects of that this year,” Trotter said. “We’ve got different guys stepping up every week. We’ve spoken about it a lot, that we’ve always got someone stepping up that’s different from the week before.”
While most teams struggle to find one good all-rounder, Toorak Prahran has them in spades.
“Other clubs have said that to us, ‘you’ve got so many players that do both (bat and bowl)’,” Trotter said. “And that’s great because if you fail with the ball, you can make it up with the bat.”
As well as the First XI’s stellar season, Toorak Prahran has great strength throughout the club with a junior base the envy of most.
“The grassroots is particularly strong,” Trotter said. “I think we have something like 40 junior teams. I think one year we were the biggest club in the southern hemisphere apart from one other.”
Following this week’s final home-and-away round, semi-finals will be played on the weekend of March 9/10 with the grand final on March 16 and 23.
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