BATHURST’S push to build an indoor academy for the rising stars of country cricket is going from strength-to-strength and looking every chance of becoming a reality.
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Mayor Gary Rush will head to Sydney this weekend to push the cause for the facility in high level talks with officials from Cricket NSW.
Charles Sturt University’s School of Human Movement Studies has also expressed an interest in the proposed centre of excellence.
CSU believes the initiative offers great synergies for it to get involved from a research point of view with players training at the facility.
The meeting in Sydney also shows Bathurst Regional Council has high hopes of ensuring the region is one of six centres of excellence being proposed by Cricket NSW.
“I am going to Sydney to ensure when the academies are rolled out, Bathurst is at the top of the list,” Cr Rush said yesterday.
“There is every chance some of the future stars of the sport will come out of the city.”
According to Bathurst District Junior and Senior Cricket Association secretary Richard Newell, the project has really snowballed since the Western Advocate first broke the story on the front page of its June 30 issue this year.
“It’s coming along really well,” he said.
“That article really generated a lot of interest and raised a lot of awareness.
“It resulted in the CSU School of Human Movement Studies wanting to come on board as they are excited about the whole concept.
“They are keen to get in on the ground floor and believe it presents an opportunity to do research on fast bowlers and have a PhD student studying the bio mechanics of fast bowling.
“The players will also benefit from their involvement. There’s great synergies for everyone involved.”
Mr Newell said Cricket NSW see it as a chance to lift the quality of cricket and training in the bush.
“But they have lifted the bar and the centre of cricket excellence they are working on is a much more high tech facility than we had originally planned, and we believe similar developments could be rolled out at other centres such as Wagga Wagga and Newcastle,” he said.
The facility will cost a lot more than the original $650,000 budgeted for in the original design, but Cricket NSW are hoping the funding will come from the NSW government.
The Head of School at CSU’s School of Human Movement Studies, Professor Frank Marino, says the scope of the project could extend to backing up high level coaching and talent monitoring through its already world-class facilities in exercise physiology and bio mechanics.
“The school already has a successful strength and conditioning model that it uses with the Western Region Academy of Sports (WRAS), and this could be further developed to enhance the athletes in the cricket academy,” he said.
“The prospect of long-term research and policy outcomes is exciting.”
In addition to all of this, Professor Marino suggests that there is untapped cultural potential that could come from cricketing nations if we are seen as a centre of excellence.
