A bemused Richie Venner has questioned Cricket NSW’s call to abandon last weekend’s entire Plan B Regional Bash Thunder Conference carnival on Saturday afternoon, the Central West coach branding the decision too hasty considering the bulk of the games were scheduled for Sunday.
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He conceded his side’s carnival-opener against Orana on Saturday night could never have gone ahead, but with four games left to play the day after Venner was struggling to comprehend the call, especially considering just two of those games needed to be completed to determine a results-based pool winner.
It didn’t help that Sunday was a beautiful, breezy day with zero per cent chance of rain either.
“Obviously I’m just looking at this from Central West’s perspective and there’s a lot of factors that go into these decisions but at the end of the day the wickets were covered, so I can’t really see why we weren’t given a chance to play two games, or all of them if we could, on Sunday,” Venner said.
“Two games would’ve given us the 50 per cent of games needed to constitute a carnival and given all four sides a chance to progress, instead of just sending the highest-ranked team through.
“Good luck to Orana, they earned that number one ranking from last year, but none of the other teams got an opportunity to progress further at all.
“There is always more to it, like travelling teams and that sort of thing, but I can guarantee you ACT and South Coast would’ve made the trip if there was a chance of the games going ahead.
“This isn’t club cricket, where there’s always next week. Teams and players gear up for these weekends, and travelling is just what you do in representative cricket.
At the end of the day the wickets were covered, so I can’t really see why we weren’t given a chance to play on Sunday.
- Wranglers coach Richie Venner
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“There’s such a big emphasis on this tournament now, being one of the biggest in [Country Cricket NSW] but now a couple of days of rain have ruined half of a division.”
Venner said he’s mainly disappointed his Central West side wasn’t able to press its claims for a final four spot, but empathised with the powerhouse ACT outfit in a big way too.
“The fact the guys didn’t get the chance to showcase their skills at this level, test themselves at this level, that’s the most disappointing thing for me,” Venner said.
“They were all itching to go, but now we have to wait another 12 months and with the squad we had for this competition, I was very confident the more we played together the better we’d be and I think we could’ve really pushed those other sides.
“ACT are obviously the worst off, they had that massive win, went into the weekend as favourites and could well have gone through with one more win.”