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High twenties and hardly a cloud to be seen seemed like the perfect day to venture out to the newly redeveloped Junction Oval in St Kilda.
The $40-million project was a breath of fresh air for cricket traditionalists in Melbourne compared to watching crickets’ longest form of the game at an empty Melbourne Cricket Ground.
It was a different look for cricket as of recently and didn’t feature any of the bright colours, loud music and crowd chanting that has become ever so common at Cricket Australia’s entertainment package the Big Bash League.
Rather, it was sitting on the hill parallel to St Kilda Road, sitting among various parents of the players and other cricket tragics.
It was rather relaxing to lie back and enjoy the whole experience of watching cricket at sports ground rather than a stadium where it seems almost impossible to relax, either constantly moving to let people into your row or the blaring music making it difficult to focus on the cricket.
The new look oval was host to a Round 5 Futures League game between Victoria and Western Australia. For anyone unfamiliar with the Futures League, it is essentially Australia’s National Second XI Competition.
All matches are four days and only six players over the age of 23 are allowed to play in the team. The competition supposedly used to showcase the ‘next best’ in Australia Cricket.
Victoria won the toss and batted on what looked like a good batting pitch with a little bit to offer for the Western Australian bowlers early on. The Victorians added 31 for the first wicket between youngsters’ Tom Rogers and Blake Thompson which brought the man of the day to the crease, Will Pucovski.
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Pucovski has had his fair share of concussion issues over the recent past which has made him miss a few games and arguably a spot in the Victorian side this summer. However, from the very first ball when he rose up with a short ball and defended it perfectly it just seemed like it was going to be one of those days for Pucovski.
The recently turned 20-year-old scored 138 for Melbourne on Saturday in their win over Kingston Hawthorn in first grade and looked like he had brought this form over to the Junction. Pucovski batted patiently in the first session when he came to the crease at 1/31 after opener Blake Thompson was out caught behind and saw the side with 17-year-old Mackenzie Harvey to 3/76 at the lunch break.
Pucovski came out from the lunch break and played every shot in the book precisely as he made his way to 50, then to 100 and then to 144 unbeaten at the end of the first days’ play. The first hundred at the new Junction Oval was one of the best hundreds that I have witnessed and you could tell that his dad Jan was proud of his son as he nervously paced around the ground and yelled ‘Well done Will’ once his son reached the three figure milestone.
249 balls for his unbeaten 144 compromised of 19 fours and one sole six over midwicket had pure class and genius written all over it. He showed why he has been labelled ‘the next big thing for Australian cricket’ or ‘the next Ricky Ponting’.
He is no stranger to big runs having scored 650 runs at last seasons’ Under-19 National Championships including four consecutive hundreds’ at a Bradman-esque average of 162.50 to go with 754 runs at 94.25 for Melbourne in the last two seasons in Melbournes’ grade cricket scene shows that there is going to be big things to come for the 20-year-old.
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