STUDLEY Juniors have secured a major coup by attracting former Warwickshire star Dominic Ostler as the newest member of their coaching staff.
The ex-Bears favourite will be joining the club every Wednesday at 6pm to help coach and nurture the region’s future cricketing stars and around 60 juniors were in attendance this week.
Studley captain Steve Rose said: “This is a major coup for us. Dominic scored over 10,000 first class runs, so his experience and knowledge is invaluable.
“The opportunity arose to bring in Dominic and we bit his hand off! He is also a fantastic coach, he has been to three sessions so far and the improvement is already visible.
“When we relaunched our junior section last year our mission statement was to offer the best coaching locally at affordable prices and the acquisition of Dominic shows we are serious about producing top young cricketers and adhering to our statement.”
THERE was disappointment for Studley on Saturday as a poor batting display sentenced them to their first Warwickshire League Division One defeat of the season against leaders Solihull Municipal, who now have four wins from as many matches.
The visitors had the hosts reeling at 140-7 but could not quite kill the leaders off and eventually the form side in the league reached 194 all out.
Chris Moss, captaining the team in Rose’s absence, led the way with 5-43 off 12 overs – a fine spell of bowling in which is accurate line and lengths were duly rewarded.
There were also wickets for Mark Swanick, Glenn Lacey and Moore.
Studley’s chase got off to a terrible start as they lost opener Chris Perrins without a run on the board and things did not get much better as Studley limped to 40-4 after losing Dale Edwards, Simon Stamenkovic and Jay Nazir in quick succession.
New signing Barrie Forrester-Smith blasted a quickfire 40 but then gave his wicket away cheaply.
The star with the ball Moss set about chasing down the target with an in-form Swanick, who batted maturely for his 64 as he mixed solid defence with brute force as Studley looked to be swinging the game back in their favour.
However, once Swanick and Moss departed, the remaining wickets fell quickly and Studley slipped to 154 all out, leaving them with a disappointing six points against the hosts’ 24.
Rose, who is currently injured, has called for his side to toughen up.
“It was a very naive run chase, we do have experienced cricketers in the side, but some players thought we needed to win the game in 20 overs.
“Chasing down a total is an art and someone has to stand up and say “I’m going to get 70 not out and make sure we win the game”. There were way too many shots and way too many people out playing poor shots.
“However, I cannot be too critical as it is the first time we have lost a league match in 16 games, so we will learn from it and move on.
“I know we are much better with the bat than we showed on Saturday and we will put things right this weekend when we travel to Bronze, who have started the season slowly.”
