Harper Sercombe
While Sunshine Heights have already doubled its wins from last season, skipper Moshin Abbas says his team has underperformed to this point in the Victorian Turf Cricket Association division 3 season.
The club won its first game back from the Christmas break which was just its second positive result for the season, after escaping relegation last season despite a bottom placed finish.
“I can’t be complacent with what we have achieved so far, but we have underachieved in a couple of games,” Abbas said.
“There were a couple of close games that we should have won, it’s always tough in the close games when things don’t go in your favour.
“But still I think the bottom six teams are fighting for spot three and four. So every game from now on is pretty much a must win and hopefully we get on the right track at the start of this year.
“We need to take every single game as a knockout and at the end we will see where we finish, most of our games are home games, we only have one away game left so hopefully we will be fine and we will be hunting for spot three or four for the finals.”
The main problem for Sunshine Heights this year has been with their batting. Abbas said he has been a part of the problem with the bat and is hoping he can turn his form around in the coming weeks.
“The discussion with the players is about having the mentality of killer instinct and the destiny is in the players hands and the team’s hand,” he said.
“From a captain’s perspective I’m shuffling myself around, I haven’t been up to the mark batting and hopefully I can contribute some runs in the upcoming games.
“Babur [Nadeem] is the one we are hoping can explode, he’s been starting well every game but hasn’t been able to capitalise… but hopefully he can win us one or two games in the last five matches.
“The batting hasn’t performed to their potential, we can bat through to 11 it’s just that people are not applying themselves and not batting time.”
However, it isn’t all negative for Sunshine Heights with its bowling team performing well along with a couple of batsmen who have been able to step up at times.
“The bowling has been steady, we haven’t been thrashed or anything, we have been taking 10 wickets, it’s just batting that is the key point for us to improve,” Abbas said.
“If we click in the batting we should be fine in the next five games and we will see how we go at the end of the season.
“Ali Mughal has been doing well with the bat and ball and Harshveer [Parmar] is doing really well bowling, he is our leading wicket taker so far.
“Luke Simpson and Siddhant Bindroo have stepped up in the batting.”
The second match for the 2024 half of the season began on the weekend with the first leg of a two-day clash with East Keilor played on Saturday, after deadline.
“They haven’t done that well this year, East Keilor, and this is the opposition where we think it’s a winnable game but again depending on how we start and how we apply ourselves,” Abbas said before the match.
“But we should take advantage of our home conditions, it’s a good wicket. Hopefully we win this game and put ourselves in the top five, and then from there it’s literally a matter of playing each game individually and going from there.”
