THE Portland and District Cricket Association has welcomed under-13 representative sides from across the region to a country week tournament from Monday to Wednesday this week, with the aim of developing the next generation of young cricketers.

Teams from the Warrnambool, Hamilton, Horsham, Mount Gambier, Wimmera Mallee and South West cricket associations arrived in the city for three days of action, with many parents and spectators visiting the town to cheer on the players.

Maximising the enjoyment of cricket and the players’ development was first and foremost in the minds of Portland coaches Dean Brewster and Nathan Liersch, with the results a distant second.

“If one of our players goes out there and faces 30 balls, to us that’s a success and they’ll come off smiling,” Brewster said.

“It doesn’t matter if they only scored four or five runs out there… it’s about the kids going out there and enjoying their cricket.

“It’ll help develop the game as well, the kids will go back to their friends at school and tell them what a good time they had… hopefully it pushes the game on, and these kids will get into the under-16s when they’re ready.”

Liersch added that the development he had seen even across just three days and five games of cricket had been out of sight.

“A lot of these kids hadn’t played a proper game of cricket ever before Monday… our hope is that they know more about the game now than they did four days ago,” he said.

“Some kids were walking off upset after going out on day one… but by the end it was tears of joy that they’d gone out there and had a go and had some success, which is what it’s all about really.

“It’s great to see so many kids and their parents from out of town around supporting the local community… that’s the other part of this as well, it’s a great boost to local businesses whenever we can get people in town for a few days.”

Portland managed to get within four runs of South West’s Green side in their first match but were unfortunately unable to get a win over the course of the competition.

The eventual victor was Warrnambool Gold, who defeated Mount Gambier by 10 wickets in the grand final.