The long off-season is almost over, with the 2024 HCL season set to kick off this Saturday, June 1. Not only has the off-season been long, but it has also been a momentous one, with some major changes announced by the Nova Scotia Cricket Association:
- the addition of a new club, Scotia Strikers CC.
- the league expanding from 3 divisions to 4 divisions.
- finally getting a 2nd ground, Don Bayers. Unfortunately, NSCA as the official cricket body in the province has to share bookings with other unofficial leagues, but the extra capacity is better than nothing.
At club level, we've had a couple of changes to the board, with Dhruv Mohta and Andrew Irving stepping down after long stints and new blood Zeeshan Ansari and Revant Sharan joining incumbents Sagar Mandhan, Tushar Sehgal and Steve Smith. With the move to 4 divisions, the board has been working furiously in recent months recruiting 32 new players to ensure our playing roster can fulfil the increased schedule, one in which the club has 72 scheduled games plus what we hope will be many finals. We look forward to seeing these new names feature prominently in our results recaps as the season progresses.
Sunday is shaping up as a big day with three of our teams playing back to back at the Halifax Common.
Our brand new Division 4 team, led by last year's Division 3 skipper Steve, will get us started at 9.00am with a game against NS Avengers CC. The game will see the debut of eight new players.
We then see our first clashes with Scotia Strikers CC, with our Division 1 team playing them at 12.00pm, followed by Division 2 at 3.30pm.
Div 1 this year sees a change in leadership, with star allrounders Zeeshan (captain) and Satnam Singh (VC) stepping up. Both are skillful cricketers with sharp cricketing instincts and the team is in good hands. Dual 2022 championship winning skipper Sagar Mandhan steps down after 2 seasons at the helm, but will no doubt still be an influential figure in the line-up. The team welcomes pace bowler Abdur Rehman and keeper-batsman Rakesh Tripathi, who have both joined us from East Coast CC and will be big additions to an already strong team which will look quite similar to the unit that made the Final in 2023.
Div 2 sees a continuity in leadership with Tushar again captaining the team after winning it all last year. He will have a vice-captain this season, with Revant taking on the role having become a senior player in the team since joining is in 2022. As with Div 1, the core of last year's team is back with some exciting new additions as well.
Our last team to get started for 2024 is our Division 3 team, who have to wait until Tuesday evening (5pm) to come up against East Coast CC at Don Bayers. With some of last year's squad leaving, and others moving to Div 4, we will have an exciting new look outfit led by new captain Kazi Rahman and his deputy Ahsan Hafeez. Great to see a couple of our younger guys ascend to these important roles. A further seven players will make their Cannons debut in this game. We predict some big things out of this team as they seek to go further than their semi final appearances in the last two years.
Div 1 also play on Tuesday evening at the Common, their second game of the season coming up defending champs Hfx-Titans CC.
Let's have a great start to the season and enjoy being back out on the field!