By Marcus Uhe
Four wins from four matches has Casey South Melbourne “buzzing” both on and off the field in the eyes of new captain Luke Shelton.
The Swans are riding high at the top of the Premier Cricket ladder, where the view is only bettered by that offered by the balcony on the state-of-the-art Lindsay Hassett Pavilion recently opened at Casey Fields, in what is a wonderful time to be a Swan.
Their rollicking start to the year continued on Saturday with a thrashing of Kingston Hawthorn to the tune of 180 runs.
Declaring at 2/301, the Hawks lasted just 52 overs before they were dismissed for 131 thanks to an even contribution from the Swans’ bowling group.
Nathan Lambden has received the plaudits as one of the competition’s equal-leading wicket takers to date, but key contributors have come from throughout the side, from Ashley Chandrasinghe and Michael Wallace with the bat, to Devlin Webb and Jackson Fry’s economic exploits with the ball.
The performances have come as less of a surprise for Shelton, having seen up close the steely determination permeating throughout the group.
“We came into the season with a pretty driven mindset to really improve,” Shelton said.
“We know the potential we’ve got within the four walls and we saw a glimpse of it a few years ago, we weren’t at our best last year but we worked really hard at it this off-season.
“Will (Carr, head coach) and all the coaching staff have got us really bought-in to what we’ve been doing and the way we want to play, and I think everyone’s just jumped on board with that and everyone’s working as hard as I’ve ever seen.
“Everyone’s hitting a lot of balls, bowling a lot of balls, we’re all training really well and that part of it is all flowing into our games and our performances.
“It is a great place to be around, everyone’s happy and everyone’s really enjoying each other’s success.”
In Chandrasinghe, Wallace and Harrish Kannan, the Swans boast three of the top 10 run scorers in the competition in what has quickly become a formidable top-order; Wallace playing the senior experienced head among the crop of precocious youngsters.
The former captain was chief among Shelton’s names of players personifying the side’s hard working ethos, liberated in the glow of early fatherhood.
“I spoke to ‘Wally’ in the preseason about the fact that watching him train this preseason, he’s at the stage of his life where he’s got a young family and his own business and for him, cricket’s a really good release and he now has less pressure with no-longer being captain as well,” Shelton said.
“He’s been great, his leadership is still of high quality and he’s hitting the ball better than I’ve ever seen at my three years at the club.
“He’s just so clear in his mind and really enjoying his cricket at the moment, which is great.
“He’s not stressing about whether he’s scoring runs or not, there’s always something else to get home to and his free mindset is really helping his cricket as well, which is really good.”
Shelton spoke of a desire under his leadership to play “brave” and “positive” cricket this season, and feels that his side is living up to that mentality.
Comprehensive margins of victory have meant the challenges have been few and far between, but in a results-driven industry, their process and approach has been hard for Shelton to fault.
The challenge, now, is to sustain the high levels of output for the remainder of the long and gruelling campaign, as the competition completes the first block of two-day fixtures heading into the Christmas break.
“We’ve got a few key words that we definitely hone in on and we speak about them every week,” he said.
“Even in game situations, if we have to take an easy or hard option, we always want to take the hard option.
“We’ve had four really good games so far and we’re not robots, there’s going to be times in the next couple of months where we find ourselves in a little bit of harder situations where we have to fight hard to get out of it but I’m actually looking forward to that challenge.
“Whenever that comes, we’re ready for it.
“Whether it’s sustainable, I guess we’ll wait and see, but I think we’ll make sure that we keep playing our way, whether that’s winning losing or drawing, we want to make sure we’re doing it our way and stick to what we want to do.”
The Swans head to Windy Hill this week to face Essendon in a Saturday-Sunday clash.
