29th August 2023
| Matt Thompson
It's been a season to remember for Disability Cricket with the hardball performance team winning the D40 Pursuit North Division, in additon to the North Wales MACS team, led by Graeme Winterburn winning their first ever hardball title, finishing top of their league! A quite brilliant season from all the players and coaches involved across both sides - indeed it was 2006 since a Welsh disability team picked up silverware and then two come along in the same summer! A quite outstanding acheivement and everyone at Cricket Wales is extremely proud!
CAPTION: Dan Quick of Cardiff CC had led the performance team with aplomb as they regain top flight status for 2024.
D40 captain Dan Quick shares a few reflections of his own a few weeks on...
"We’re nearly 2 weeks on from winning the D40 Pursuit North, yet it’s still hard to wrap my head around it all and put it into words!
2022 was a tough season, and you could tell by the end of it that it had been really hard on the players. Yet this group of people didn’t sit still. As soon as pre-Season training started in October, you could sense there was a huge fire and determination in everyone to make sure that we turned things around. Although 2022 was hard we analysed everything bit by bit and drew the positives that were there. Because there were a lot of positives to take, and it was a case of taking them with us and helping us move forward.
You could see everyone’s improvement over the Winter, we had a couple of new faces join us and you could see the support for each other and the optimism for the year ahead and the desire to bounce straight back up and win the league.
We got off to the worst possible start which was such a gut-wrenching feeling. I said after the game to the guys that this is the lowest point of our season, we will bounce back. Then we got that winning feeling next time out… and we didn’t stop! The manner of some of our victories was really pleasing, I’ve often thought our biggest strength is our togetherness and our spirit as a team, and a couple of games we won this year was purely down to that, our resolve and ability to keep calm under pressure.
Whatever happens against Essex on the 10th of September will not take anything anyway from this incredible year, and how proud I am of the Players and how proud they should be of one another. What we’ve done this year is incredible, and yet we know we can be better which says to me that we are in such an great position. We look forward to the Essex game, then the work for 2024 begins in October!
The best is yet to come.
DQ"
Wales take on Essex in the D40 Playoff Final in a bid to obtain promotion back to the D40 Quest Premier Division on 10th September at Collingham District Cricket Club at 1pm.
