The Batemans Bay Cricket Club featured heavily in last weekend's representative cricket, as three local girls took to the field for the Shoalhaven District Cricket Associations' Under 15s side.
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Georgia Lovegrove, Neve Smart, and Maddie Malcolm all produced strong performances on Sunday against opposition players who were generally older and more experienced, while playing in the Greater Illawarra Cricket Zone Inter Association Girls' competition at Worrigee's Hayden Drexel Oval.
"The competition was supposed to be an Under 13s and Under 15s comp, but it was right at the end of COVID and we were just starting to open up when they had to make a decision," SDCA coach, Andrew Malcolm, said.
"Our side pretty much was made up of Under 13s players, two Under 14s players, and we actually had a nine-year-old playing."
Although the SDCA team lost both of its matches on Sunday, Malcolm was more concerned with the development of the players than their results.
In game one, against Illawarra, all three girls put forward good efforts against one of the toughest teams in the competition.
Georgia (13) and Maddie (16 retired) batted well at number three and four respectively, and the latter compiled the equal-highest score of the innings which ended at 2-98 from 20 overs.
Neve, meanwhile, took 1-11 from two overs with the ball as Illawarra chased down the target with eight wickets in hand and just under three overs remaining.
"They have a lot of quality players, so we were always going to be up against it and we handled ourselves really well and batted really well," Malcolm said.
"[Georgia and Maddie] both batted really well, and Neve bowled quite well as well."
The second game against the Highlands was much closer, and although their opponents again had a much older side, the SDCA girls acquitted themselves admirably.
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The Highlands, after winning the toss, elected to bat first, and Neve subsequently wrought havoc with a fiery opening spell of three overs which earned her two wickets for 11 runs.
Having stumbled to 4-24 early, the Highlands recovered later in the innings but only managed to post 6-85 from their 20 overs.
In response, Georgia opened the batting and top-scored with 12, as the rest of the SDCA side struggled and fell just nine runs short to finish at 8-76.
The performances of the three Batemans Bay girls on Sunday impressed Malcolm, who is eager to see them continue their development together.
"Both Maddie and Neve played in the Mollie Dive Shield last year, representing our Zone," he said.
"They both got picked for the Greater Illawarra side ... they've got a lot of experience now playing at a really high level for girls.
"Maddie's really improved on her batting and looks to be a really stable and solid batter now, and Neve's an age group younger and is really coming on with her bowling. She'd be one of the quicker girls in the area."
Georgia, meanwhile, is much newer to cricket than her fellow Batemans Bay players, but has a good eye and surprising power for someone her age.
"It was Georgia's first year of cricket last year, and I know she's put in an enormous amount of work in the off-season," Malcolm said.
"She's been down to the nets religiously, and she's got a tennis background so she's really strong with the bat and hits the ball really hard. She's got a lot of technique work to do but I think she's going to be right up there with the other two girls.
"Hopefully we see the three of them kick on together, that'd be good."