North West Youth Cricket Pre-Season 2025
North West Youth Cricket Pre-Season
North West Youth Cricket (NWYC) has had a busy and productive pre-season, getting all of our players, from Year 9 through to the 1st XI, ready for the upcoming season. Our strong collaboration with our supporting clubs, Burnside-West Christchurch University Cricket Club (BWCUCC) and Merivale Papanui Cricket Club (MPCC), has been a key factor in the success of our pre season. We are very grateful for their support.
A major highlight has been the opportunity for identified players to work with top-tier coaches.
- Batting: Players focused on improving their technique and learning how to handle fast, swinging deliveries. They also worked on rotating the strike and dominating against spin. This was led by BWCUCC premier men’s coach Carl Huyser, and Mario Williams, who is both the MPCC Chairman and last year’s 1st team coach.
- Bowling: Our pace bowlers received guidance from premier bowler Alex Tait of BWUCC while our spin bowlers were fortunate to work with Harsh Visavadiya, the current MPCC 1st team coach, and Matt Hay, one of top wicket-takers in BWCUCC’s history and Metro Crickets club player of the year 2025. The pace bowlers worked on increasing pace and mastering the slower ball while our spinners worked on perfecting their technique as well as ways to deceive the batsman.
The second half of our pre-season involves a range of warm up games starting on Saturday September 20th when the 1st and 2nd XI have an intersquad game. On Sunday September 21st the 1st XI will then have their first match on grass against Darfield at Darfield. Following that, the 1st XI will travel to Oamaru to play against the Waitaki Boys’ and St. Kevin’s 1st XI teams. Their pre-season will conclude with a match against Shirley Boys’ High School on October 5th before the official season begins on Saturday, October 11th.
A special thanks to Alistair Sim for arranging and co-ordinating this year’s pre-season.
