By Marcus Uhe
Nar Nar Goon/Maryknoll all-rounder James Markland tied for first place in the Eric Winter Medal with Devon Meadows superstar Lucas Ligt as the best player in Casey Cardinia Cricket Association’s District competition for 2022/23.
Both players finished on 21 votes as the awards were presented at the Beaconsfield Football Club on Sunday afternoon.
While Ligt was the white-hot favourite, the result came as a shock to many, no more so than the Marygoons star in Markland.
“I thought Lucas Ligt had absolutely whooped my arse,” Markland said.
“I was very surprised to see my name come up next to his.
“There was no bigger surprise than when I saw my name come up to him on the PowerPoint. I thought, ‘You’re kidding? Surely there’s been a miscount here.’”
542 runs at an average of 45, with five fifties, is a very accomplished season, to go with 13 catches and three stumpings with the gloves, and four wickets, when thrown the ball on-occasion.
The Englishman, who played at Ramsey Cricket Club in Cambridgeshire back in Central England before moving to Australia, attributed his success to a busy off-season.
“It was about my volume of work that I put in,” he said.
“In terms of fitness, I was already pretty fit, but in terms of volume of what I did, especially in preseason, I hit hundreds of extra balls and did a lot of extra glove-work when I wasn’t bowling.
“It’s been a while since I put in a pre-season like I did there, and I’m a massive advocate for it.”
For Ligt, voted the equal-best in the competition in a year where his side won the District premiership, he likened it to something you’d see in Hollywood.
“If I could have scripted how the season would go before it started, that would be the fairytale,” he said.
“It went absolutely according to the most perfect plan I could have imagined.
“I never play for awards, but I’m definitely chuffed to win the Eric Winter Medal with the standard of cricketers that are running around in this league.
“I’m just glad that I was doing my bit to help my side, and got something like that to acknowledge it along the way.”
He paid tribute to his partner, Jess, for her unwavering support throughout the campaign, along with the environment at Devon Meadows, for allowing him to flourish and play his best cricket.
“We live a little bit away from the club and we’ve got a new baby who’s only a few months old, and I was rocking in on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays after 9-10 o’clock and she was on baby duties,” Ligt said of his partner.
“Definitely without her help and support off the field, I definitely couldn’t have done it.
“Her little remarks every time I got out, after my first two hundreds, three hundreds for the season, she wasn’t happy when I came home and told her that I only got 50, she’d say ‘What?! That’s not good enough!’. “Her support and the banter between us definitely drove me to them.
“But also the belief that the club showed in me, they’ve got the perfect balance of believing in me, but they don’t put too much pressure on me, so I don’t go out there and feel like I’ve got the weight of the world on my shoulders.
“If I have an off game, no one cares, and it’s that comfort that I have there that makes it all easy.”
While Ligt and his Panthers will make the jump to Premier Division next season, Markland and the Marygoons are keen to make-amends for a season that fell-away in the second half of the campaign.
“We were in the four for the majority of the season, and then after Christmas we never really got going again.
“The break wasn’t good for us and we got found-out a bit, but we’ll be back into it and I dare say we’ll be pushing for the top four against next year, if we can stay in the four all season.
“I’ve already committed to staying, I’m not going anywhere. Go the ‘Goon!”
