7/5/2008

Sport

Cricket - Brooksbank seeks strong start

ESHER’S captain George Brooksbank wants a winning start to the new league season when his team take on Ashtead on Saturday.

“We want a good, strong performance against Ashtead to get the ball rolling,” said Brooksbank.

“Ashtead have some useful players, so it is going to be a tough game first up but we will be looking to play hard and win as strongly as possible.”

Brooksbank believes Esher have a team capable of winning games in Division One of the Surrey Championship this season.

“We have a good, strong squad of players,” he said. “The core players from last year are still there, such as Managai, Adam Cole and James Knott.

“I joined the club with a couple of other guys from Cheltenham CC and we have a friend of mine, Will Gifford, who has just been released from Worcestershire and he will be a huge asset to us batting at three.

“We have a very strong bowling attack and bat all the way down.”

He said the aim for the season is to be among the team’s challenging for a place in the Premier Division come September.

“Promotion is a realistic goal but at the same time we cannot get complacent,” he said.

“There are 18 games and with various issues, such as pitches, the availability of players and other strong sides like Weybridge, it is not going to be easy.

“I want to win every single game, but we wlll have to take each one as it comes.”

Brooksbank said the first weeks of the season would be important for any side hoping to challenge for promotion and it would be important to get the tactics right to deal with the conditions.

He said: “At the moment the pitches are not great so it is always best to bowl first.

However, we have a strong enough team that if we do have to bat first on these wickets we can put together some sort of total and let the bowlers do their job afterwards.”

First printed in: News & Mail Series