There’s no denying it – Nic Broes is in some serious form.
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The all-rounder has taken to the 2018-19 season of the Royal Hotel Cup like a duck to water, having hit two half-centuries in St Pats first two games and playing a role with the ball, and Broes is looking to add a third in Friday night’s clash with fellow pool A heavyweights Orange City.
The match pits the two unbeaten sides of pool A in their first serious test of the season, with both having overcome struggling Centrals and Kinross outfits in their opening two rounds.
While City have proven themselves capable of climbing the Royal Hotel Cup mountain before, St Pats are showing the competition they’re not to be written off, and Broes has been a big part of that.
But unlike some of the competition’s biggest hitters, Broes isn’t walloping the ball over the white picket fence of Wade Park as the teenager says he tries to bat smarter, not harder, in Twenty20 cricket.
“I feel like I have adapted well to the shorter format, I may not be the biggest hitter but I really believe that to be successful in Twenty20s you don't necessarily need to be able to hit a large ball,” he said.
[It’s] obviously a very big game for us and can't wait to get out there and really see how far we can go in this comp.
- Nic Broes on St Pat's game this Friday
“It's more if you can work the ball well and just time the ball into gaps you'll score runs, especially with myself opening the batting with the new ball I feel it comes off so much better and that way I don't have to hit the ball as hard just time it.”
He said his strong form this season – as well as the two Royal Hotel Cup half-tons, Broes hit 85 and took five wickets in the Western Wranglers’ first Plan B Regional Bash game this year, and has hit another two fifties in the Bathurst District Cricket Association top grade, averaging 38 from his seven starts in that competition.
“Well at the start of this year I looked over my dismissals last year and how I mainly got out and it was snicking off, so me and my father really emphasised me early on not really pushing at the ball and throwing my hands it more just being really compact and really getting my footwork where it needs to be,” he said.
It’s a strategy that has paid off.
“This year I've only been snicked off a couple of times which from last year is a major improvement but still have a lot of work to do,” Broes said.
“I think one thing that has been frustrating for me so far is if you look at my stats there is a lot of scores between 25-50, for me working through that first part of my innings has been good it's just a matter of me cashing in and turning them into 80+ scores.”
Broes has taken 12 wickets for St Pats on Saturdays as well, plus two in the Royal Hotel Cup and the five in the Regional Bash, with Sunday’s game for Bathurst in the President’s Cup yielding another five-for, showing he's turned his off-spinners into a weapon.
Hampered by back injuries, Broes said he hadn’t been bowling as much as he’s liked outside of games, but has done work in Sydney with a spin coach and said he loves the chance to bowl in Twenty20s.
“Obviously in the shorter format batsmen see a spinner and naturally they think easy pickings and should be going for 8+ an over and that's where I pick up a lot of my wickets by building pressure by bowling dots which then leads to a half shot,” he said.
Friday’s game would be a “good test to see where we are at”, and Broes is looking forward to the clash, which pits the two top teams of pool A against each other, as a challenge to see how far St Pats can go in their first season of the Twenty20 tournament.
“[It’s] obviously a very big game for us and can't wait to get out there and really see how far we can go in this comp, because in my mind we have a very deep list and if one person doesn’t fire then it gives another a chance to step up,” Broes said.
“Our ability to dig in with the bat when needed and just having those 1 or 2 50+ run partnerships a game really helps setting us up.”
The match begins 7pm Friday at Wade Park.