A final-round loss to Northcote seemed to sum up the Greenvale Kangaroos’ Premier Cricket season.
The Kangaroos looked in control of the match at 4-184, chasing 231 and headed for their sixth win of the season.
But as has been the case so many times this season, the Kangaroos let their grip slip – they lost 6-17 to be all out for 201.
Zaheer Hussain top scored with 63, with Sunam Gautam making 45.
Coach Stan Nell, in his last game in charge of the Kangaroos, said this season’s results were a fair indication of where the team was at.
“We have won five games and lost another four by one run,” he said. “There’s been a couple of other matches where we’ve been in the box seat. We’ve beaten two teams in the top eight and had one-run losses to another two finalists. It shows as a club we’re slightly off the mark.”
Saturday ended two years in charge for Nell. In both seasons, the side has finished on the bottom of the ladder, but in the previous season it did so with just one win.
Nell said that while he would have loved to have stayed on as coach next season, he understood the direction in which the club was headed.
“When I recruited Jarrod Leggett, I did that with the express purpose of him captaining this season and then stepping up to coaching next season, and I’d be his assistant,” Nell said.
“He said he was enjoying the captaincy, but didn’t want to coach at this time, so they decided to advertise the role.
“The club wants to spread its reach and bring in someone with new contacts and I agree with that decision.”
Nell said that despite the results not necessarily going the way they would have liked, there were a lot of positives to come out of the past two seasons.
“The two 17-year-olds who have debuted this season, Lachlan King and Kevin Spuall, are outstanding juniors,” he said.
“There’s a whole lot of juniors coming through the pathways … we’ve got a lot of young players in the twos, threes and fours who could have long futures at the club.”
He said the development of senior players such as Kyle Adams, Aaron Smillie and Trent Waring had been massive.
“They’ve finished the year in the top 20 bowlers [for the first XI competition].”
Nell said the club needed to add a couple of experienced top order batsmen and continue to develop its spinners across all four sides.
He said he would sit down and decide his cricketing future in the coming months.
“I definitely want to be involved in Premier Cricket in some form,” he said.
Nell will continue coaching junior players through his own coaching program.
