WHEN you win, win big - it is a lesson that Central West Cricket Council under 14s coach Garth Dean learned long ago when it comes to representative carnivals and on Monday his players learned it too.
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The Central West under 14s were crowned the Cricket NSW Youth Championships Country Thunder Pool victors on nett run rate, just nudging out the Greater Southern Marlins for first place.
The Central West outfit, which included Bathurst District Junior Cricket Association talents Connor Brown, Hugh Taylor, Rupert Begg, Ruben Newton, Charlie Rendell, Mark Sheather and Murray Staines won three of the six games they played.
In the games they won, they were commanding.
They beat Western Plains by 126 runs in their opener at Orange to earn a bonus point. Then at Dubbo Central West crushed Murrumbidgee by 10 wickets and beat CAW Murray by seven wickets.
Though they were unable to win any of their Twenty20 games which followed, those three victories were good enough to give them the nod as champions.
"Having experience with these sort of carnivals over the years, I've seen teams win carnivals by doing that. You've just got to create all those bonus points and you've got to make the nett run rate high because you don't know what is going to happen," Dean said.
"I'm really proud, there are some very, very good players in there. We didn't quite work out the 20 over games, we fiddled a bit with the game plans and we probably didn't need to in the end because we played those 50 over games so well, we should've left it alone.
You've just got to create all those bonus points and you've got to make the nett run rate high because you don't know what is going to happen.
- Garth Dean
"But that's just the way it was, we tried to get a few into the game because we'd dominated early ... and those teams we played in the last two days, they'd only been here two days, so they were fresh.
"They'd already played their other pool games and only came here for the Twenty20 games, so they were fresh. That was a factor.
As well as helping Central West to become champions, two of the Bathurst talents ranked highly in terms of the best overall under 14 Country performers.
Taylor's 145 runs runs at an average of 29 saw him the third leading run scorer from the combined Thunder and Sixers pools. He hit 11 boundaries for the tournament and his top score was 65.
Sheather was ninth on the list of leading wicket takers with eight victims at an average of 9.3.
"Mark Sheather he had taken eight wickets before the last day and with the carnival rules you were only allowed to play two days in a row. We certainly would've bowled Mark all four days if he was allowed to," Dean said.
"Hugh Taylor I think he was leading run scorer after three rounds. We moved him around the order a little bit in the Twenty20s. When he gets a bit bigger and stronger he'll be a good all-round player, he's one of the best players in the team."
Dean also had praise for the other Bathurst talents in the team as well as skipper Tom Blowes from Orange.
"Rupert, he had a great second day here, he had a big partnership with Tom Blowes that gave us that massive percent boost and is a good bowler as well," he said.
"Charlie Rendell, like he's a very good bowler and can bat. The players in our team actually say he's the quickest of all our bowlers.
"Our captain Tom Blowes, he is a stand out bat and a very good bowler, he's a good off-spinner. He's probably the best under 14s fieldsman I've ever seen. "
The under 15s Central West side which included BDJCA talents Liam Cain, Mitch Wallace, Eli Morris, Seth Norris and Jayden Spackman and was coached by Clint Bryant placed third for the tournament.
They won their first three games before losing three T20 fixtures and having another game washed-out.
Morris ranked in the top 10 under 15s bowlers across all the Country outfits as he took eight wickets at an average of 9.36, with his best performance 3-4 off four overs in a T20 match against the Illawarra Highlanders.
The under 13s side which featured BDJCA talents Cooper Stephen, Gilby Glawson, Liam King, Jayden Brasier, and Blayde Burke also placed third in their Thunder Pool after four wins, two defeats and a wash-out.
Stephen finished as the equal leading wicket-taker across both pools in the under 13s as he struck 10 times at an average of 7.8. His best effort was a 4-18 against Western Plains, while with the bat his knocks included an unbeaten 41 against CAW Murray.
Burke ranked ninth across all country under 13s batsmen as he scored 152 runs while his 100.7 strike rate was even more impressive.
The BDJCA talents will now have their fingers crossed they are named in one of the Western-Riverina teams which will compete at the State Challenge in January.