Murray Valley Cricket Association fans can pencil in Saturday, November 5 as the beginning of season 2022-23, with the league confirming it would give flood-affected clubs one more week to prepare their facilities.
Similarly to fellow associations in the region such as Cricket Shepparton, a ball has yet to bowled thus far in this season, with wild weather resulting in the cancellation of the first four rounds.
With Nathalia still battling flood damage to both its cricket facility and the town as a whole, MVCA president Anthony Holmes explained why the decision was made to hold fire until November 5.
“Because of Nathalia who have a heap of players and families fighting the floods, we have decided to push the season starting date back to November 5,” Holmes said.
“Every other club is all good as far as I’m aware, but for now it is just common sense to allow Nathalia a chance to get their clean-up going without having to worry about playing cricket.
“It all depends on the rain but hopefully things have quietened down a bit by then (November 5) and we can finally get back to playing some senior cricket.”
As a result of the one-month delay the MVCA has decided to restructure its competitions, as Holmes confirmed three clubs would be moving back to B-grade to ensure everybody played each other once.
“We are effectively having a new start to the season, as a result we’ve decided to drop down Finley, Katunga and Berrigan and have a six-team top grade,” he said.
“So it works that in the A-grade all clubs will play five one-dayers and five two-dayers which makes for an even draw.
“As a result this season we will have six teams in A-grade, nine in B-grade and then five in the C-grade.”