Somerset youngsters head down under

Thirteen young cricketers from the Somerset Academy will set off next week for a 14-day cricket tour to Western Australia.

The party will leave Taunton on Thursday and fly by way of Hong Kong to Perth, where they will stay until they return to England on March 30th.

During their visit down under the youngsters will play eight days of cricket, against a mixture of club and school sides which will be a build up to them playing a two-day match against the Western Australia Academy. Between matches the party will spend their time training and practicing hard.

The party will be accompanied by Pete Sanderson, the Somerset Youth Development Officer and Coaching Coordinator, and Sue Ashwin from Richard Huish College in Taunton, who run the Academy in conjunction with Somerset County Cricket Club.

The coach told me: "The aims of the tour are threefold. Firstly we want to see how our boys compare to their Australian counterparts. Secondly we want them to experience playing in different weather conditions, and with the temperatures out there currently 40 degrees they will play on some hard wickets. Thirdly it will provide a good pre-season warm up, especially for those who are likely to be playing Second XI cricket for the county this season."

To pay for the trip each member of the party has raised £1,200. The young cricketers have raised money by a variety of methods, including helping to organise the car parking at the County Ground over the Christmas period.

The previous assistant coach, Julian Wyatt, also raised valuable funds for the trip with a sponsored cycle ride from Land's End to Taunton in the autumn of 2000. For part of the ride he was joined by a number of youngsters as he cycled across Devon.

Earlier this week Somerset Chief Executive Peter Anderson told me: "This will be the second tour undertaken by our Academy, and I'm sure that they will be competing against a tough school out in Perth.

"It is a time when they can find out about themselves characterwise and assess whether or not they have the ability to compete against other leading youth players."

One thing is certain. When the youngsters arrive back in England at the end of the month they will have learnt a lot, and will no doubt be the richer for playing against their Australian counterparts.