IT has been 10 years since Ryan Peacock has held a Duke cricket ball, but over the next month he will get plenty of opportunities to familiarise himself with one.
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The Bathurst teenager will do so in his role as captain of the NSW Combined High Schools team which is touring the United Kingdom.
“That’s really exciting, it’s going to be very different,” the all-rounder said of using the English ball.
“It’s a bit of an unknown obviously and we haven’t trained with it. I haven’t even picked one up since I was in England when Trent [Copeland, brother] was there in 2007.
“But at the end of the day we are still playing cricket.”
And when it comes to playing cricket, there are considerably fewer unknowns for Peacock.
A top/middle order batsman and left-arm orthodox bowler, the Bathurst High School student has a host of representative honours to his credit.
Earlier this season he played for Western Zone opens side which won the Country Championship, while Peacock is also a member of the Cricket NSW under 17 and under 19 squads.
On a school level he has not only played in CHS outfits, but also been a NSW All Schools representative.
Still, Peacock said he was surprised when given the captaincy of such a talented NSW CHS touring squad.
“You never expect those sort of things. I found out at our first training session that I was going to be captain of the group and that probably made me look forward to it a fair bit more because I enjoy being in that leadership role,” he said.
“It’s definitely changed my thought processes in regards to I have to think about how I am going to use people in different roles as well as being able to keep the group together for 24 days.
“It’s made me really look forward to getting to know the boys more than I was probably going to if I wasn’t captain.”
Having left Australia on Friday, Peacock and his team-mates have already been to the iconic Lord's Cricket Ground where they watched the Royal London Domestic One Day Final between Surrey and Nottingham.
A highlight was seeing Kumar Sangakkara face up to Stuart Broad.
But for the Bathurst talent, the priority is making sure his side excels every time they put on their whites rather than taking in the sights.
“It’s an extremely talented side that’s for sure, every player there has been exposed to a fair level of cricket,” he said.
“We’ve spoken about it quite in depth at our training sessions, yes we are going over there to tour and we are sightseeing, we are tourists and we are travelling.
“But we have a goal to win every game of cricket that we play, which I think is a really good thing. If we go over there with that sort of intent and buy into it, only good things are going to happen.
“We want to give it a red hot crack, we are not going to take a backwards step.”
The first game for the NSW side will be against the Marylebone Cricket Club next Monday.
It will be followed by matches against Essex County, Warwickshire County, Dorridge CC, Lancashire County, Yorkshire Schools, Lincolnshire County, Staffordshire County then Glamorgan on July 20.
