Bentley blow for Thomson

THOMSON captain Adam Bliss has confirmed star batsman Louis Bentley won’t be donning the green and yellow for the Tigers this summer, as his side made two changes for today’s clash against Corio.

Hamish Coulston and Jayden Hicks will come in for the unavailable duo of spinning allrounder Suhas Jadhav and Ed Charles.

It is the loss of Bentley however — who hammered 453 runs last summer — that will hurt most.

“He’s now going to have the year off. He works quite a bit and he’s got a young child too, so he’s not going to play, which is obviously a big loss,” Bliss said.

The Englishman, who arrived at the Tigers in the 2015-16 summer plundered eight half-centuries and one ton in his two years at Thomson, at an average of 45.

Bliss said while he may not be playing, Bentley still kept tabs on his old club.

“He’s a close friend of all of us and he still pops down and still around off the field, so he’s going to have the season off and we’ll cross that bridge with him next year and see what happens,” he said.

Thomson suffered its first loss of the season last week at the hands of St Albans Breakwater, seeing its total of 252 chased down in the last over thanks to a counter-attacking 100 from Saints batsman Jake Spalding.

Bliss said his side would be searching for more consistency with the ball today in the final one-dayer before red ball cricket starts.

“One thing we do take away is we need to be more consistent with the ball — we bowled four or five good balls an over then one bad one,” he said.