Kids to get a chance - Cockbain
IAN Cockbain is ready to give opportunities to Formby’s “gang of kids” as he seeks to build on a successful season in the ECB Premier League.
The team from Cricket Path finished as runnersup to Leigh in the MI Dental Liverpool Competition’s top tier and also won the Ray Digman Knockout Trophy in a year when Cockbain sought to strike a balance between youth and experience.
That task will be no easier next summer, when many of the club’s young players will have another season’s cricket under their belts and will be looking to play in the flagship side.
“We have a gang of kids like Ed Lowe, Ben Aitchison, Oliver Sutton, Nick Sutton and my own lad, Jackson, coming through the ranks,” said Cockbain. “If we’d been playing in the Competition’s third tier, they’d have gone to other clubs but the aim was always to offer them first team cricket in the Premier League.
“In an ideal world we’d have 11 lads from Formby playing in the first team but it’ll be great if we can get the nucleus of the team from the area.”
Yet at the same time as he has been promoting cricketers such as the highly promising Aitchison, Cockbain has also employed the first-class county experience of Stephen Parry and Gary Keedy and has brought in high-quality players like the Australian allrounder, Tym Crawford.
“I’ve had criticism because I’ve played Saqib Mahmood and Haseeb Hameed in odd games but that was financed by an outside sponsor rather than the club,” Cockbain said. “It was done to keep ourselves in the hunt and give a platform for these young lads to prosper. All of them are good players and they are going to start coming through.”
“Tym Crawford has gone home now but we will get someone similar from Australia and there’s a possibility Tim le Breton may not be playing next year because he works in London. We’ve had our feelers out to try and recruit players”.