With thanks to Tom Evans @ Merseyside Cricket Online (merseysidecricket.com can be supported @ https://buymeacoffee.com/tomevanscricket)
Formby captain Ian Cockbain hopes his young players can follow the example of Ollie Sutton, after the all-rounder made his first-class debut for Lancashire.
Left-arm seamer Sutton helped the Red Rose bowl out Middlesex at Lord’s on the first day of the Rothesay County Championship season.
He follows Derbyshire seamer Ben Aitchison as a Formby junior product to have made it to the first class game.
And Cockbain believes even if he doesn’t see much of the 25-year-old this summer, he can still be an inspiration to the likes of off-spinner Archie Davies and batter Lucas Kennedy.
Ahead of his second season as skipper, Cockbain said: “I’m over the moon for Ollie, he’s got a great opportunity to establish himself and have a decent career ahead of him.
“From a selfish point of view I hope to see a lot of him, but for him and his development it’d be great not to see him at all.
“If he does play for us it’s a bit of a bonus.
“Lucas and Archie’s improvement over the last 12 months has been awesome to watch.
“A big goal for me is to keep developing players and put them in the shop window.
“Hopefully other players around, and other young players, will see Formby as that pathway to playing higher level cricket.
“You don’t get the opportunity to play with current and ex-first class players everywhere, and that’s something at Formby we can offer.
“So hopefully moving forward we will be that pathway to either Lancashire or the other counties.”
Cockbain says preparations for the new season are shaping up nicely – he is licking his lips at the prospect of what all this sunshine might do to Cricket Path’s already batter-friendly surface.
Formby finished fourth in the Love Lane Liverpool Competition last year, and reached the finals days of both the Comp’s National T20 rounds and the ECHO Cup.
The chasing pack behind Ormskirk and Northern is a tricky place to improve from at the moment, but Cockbain is hopeful of another shot at some silverware.
“I guess we’re looking for something pretty similar to last summer,” he added.
“On our day, we can beat anyone, but it’s just putting it together week in and week out that we’ve struggled with over the last couple of years.
“That’s our biggest goal for this season. We have to be ruthless against the teams at the bottom of the league, where we’ve slipped up in the past.
“You just can’t afford any slip-ups, especially with how consistent Northern and Ormskirk are.
“If someone had said at the start of the season we’d have made it to a couple of finals days and finished fourth in the league, we would have bitten their hands off.
“But having gone through the season and the opportunities we had, we probably should have won something.
“So it’s a big push for us this year, to get a bit of silverware.”
Helping that push will be left-arm spinning all-rounder Riley Ayre, from Sydney, and wicketkeeper-batter Jack Carney, recruited from Southport & Birkdale and hoping to further his own county ambitions.
Cockbain had the best possible grounding in the game from his father, the late, great Ian Snr, who skippered his son during some of Bootle’s glory years.
He hopes to be able to pass on some of his dad’s winning mentality to his team this year.
“Growing up at Bootle, we were consistently winning, not just the league but the cups as well,” he added.
“So a big driver for me is to get that winning culture into Formby.
“Once we get over the line and get that first one, hopefully it’ll open the floodgates.”
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With thanks to Tom Evans @ Merseyside Cricket Online (merseysidecricket.com can be supported @ https://buymeacoffee.com/tomevanscricket)
