BDCA BEST: THE FULL 25 - PHOTOS

25 – BRENT HAMBLIN  (Kangaroo Flat) – has had the opportunity to learn off one of the elite all-rounders in Adam Burns. Now making his mark in the BDCA, with his match-winning 6-40 against Huntly-North Epsom last weekend testament to his ability with the ball. Handy with the bat, but to go to the next level needs to produce more of the form he showed in 2012-13 when he averaged 58.5 in his final seven innings that season.

24 – BRAYDEN STEPIEN (White Hills) – could easily argue after his 170 last Sunday (back in round two) against Bendigo he should be much higher, but the 17-year-old is still only in the infancy of his career, with this just his third season in the first XI. Last season’s leading run-maker at White Hills and an explosive top-order batsman who only knows one way: see ball, hit ball. The exuberance of youth – I like it.

23 – LUKE BAIRD (Golden Square) – goes about his business with a minimum of fuss and for mine, is one of the BDCA’S most under-rated bowlers. If you don’t follow Square, you probably wouldn’t realise he has taken 70 wickets the past three seasons. And not a bad player to have coming in at No.10 or 11 either – he averages 14.8 and has a half-ton to his name.

22 – MARK RYAN (Bendigo) – one of the grand old men of the BDCA who - I hope he doesn’t mind me saying – is now 44-years-old. Must have an aching set of shoulders having carried Bendigo for so long – since 2000 he leads the Goers in both runs (4322) and wickets (239). Kudos, too, for his work with the BDCA junior program.

21 – GAVIN BOWLES (White Hills) – haven’t seen a lot of him in recent years, which has dropped him down a few rungs in the rankings. Classy top-order batsman who for much of his time at White Hills has been the most prized Demons’ wicket. Would like to see him bowl a bit more, as well as get the chance to finally show his talents in a final after all these years.

20 – TIM WOOD (Golden Square) – will never forget the day he belted 130 before tea against Strathdale-Maristians while playing for Strathfieldsaye in 2008-09. Scored two of his three BDCA tons against the much-vaunted Suns’ attack. Always seems to bob up with a catch or two a game. Bonus points for that impressive new beard of his.

19 – QUINTON BENTLEY (Huntly-North Epsom) – now at his third club following stints at Sandhurst and Golden Square. Earned the BDCA bowling aggregate title last year with his tally of 34 wickets in his first season at the Power, while he was Sandhurst’s leading wicket-taker in three of his five years at the club before leaving. Always economical, his maiden percentage of 27.9 rates as elite in the BDCA.

18 – JASON ABBOTT (Eaglehawk) – won a BDCA Cricketer of the Year way back in 1998-99 and still going strong with the bat for the Hawks. Since 2000, one of only five BDCA batsmen to make at least 5000 runs, during which he has averaged a score above 50 every 4.9 innings.

17 – JONO DAVIDSON (Strathdale-Maristians) – didn’t play last season with a knee injury, but still earns his spot in this list, particularly on his semi-final record in which he has batted five times for 295 runs at an average of 98.3. Here’s a little fact – Davidson has batted in a grand final every 14 innings, and won a flag every 23.3 innings since making his first XI debut in 2008-09.

16 - LEIGH McDERMOTT (Bendigo United) – hasn’t attracted the attention like some of his more high-profile BUCCs team-mates, but you can’t overlook the work of the all-rounder in big games, with both his finals batting and bowling averages bettering his home and away numbers. Combines his unique bowling action with an ability to hit the ball as hard as any, and after last season’s grand final triumph is one of only four players currently in the competition to have captained a BDCA premiership.

15. RICHARD TIBBETT (Eaglehawk) – no-one has the batsmen jumping around the crease these days more than the big blonde from Canterbury Park. Always enjoy watching the Tibbett thunderbolts from the safety of the sidelines, with just how damaging he can be when he’s on song coming two years ago when he took 8-32 against Strathdale-Maristians – the BDCA’s best bowling figures since 2000. Needs one more wicket to notch 100 first XI scalps (he has since taken it).

14. LINTON JACOBS (Strathdale-Maristians) – three-time premiership captain of the Suns, and also the current skipper of the BDCA representative squad. Keeper-batsman, who has been used in a variety of roles in the batting line-up from opening to the middle. Averages 32 over 13 seasons and should tick over 4000 career runs this summer. One of only four current-day BDCA players who has a double ton to his name. 

13. NICK SCULLIE (Strathfieldsaye) – first year back at the Jets after spending the previous 11 seasons at Sandhurst. Comes in at No.5 on the list of BDCA run-scorers since 2000 with 5144 at an average of 42. And through that time ranks No.3 for centuries made with nine. Four of those tons came during his Cricketer of the Year 2006-07 season that featured one four innings patch when he made 531 runs at an average of 265.5. Was Sandhurst’s leading run-scorer in eight of his 11 seasons at the Dragons and consistently puts a high price on his wicket. Like No.14 Jacobs, also has a double-century on his CV.

12. MIGGY PODOSKY (Bendigo United) – the smiling assassin of the BDCA who three times in his six completed seasons has taken 30-plus wickets. Has relished the big stage, having taken 28 wickets in 10 finals, including memorable bags of 5-41 (2009 semi-final v Golden Square) and 7-49 (2014 semi-final v Strathdale). Arguably the most improved tail-ender with the bat over the past two years. In fact, he’d argue he now deserves all-rounder status. He made nine runs in his first three seasons. He’s since made 255 the past three.

11. SAM JOHNSTON (Strathdale-Maristians) – his club is listed as the Suns, but so far, all of his BDCA work has been done with Huntly-North Epsom, where he played four seasons. Carried a massive workload for the Power with the ball, bowling 890 overs, taking a wicket every 7.5. Bowled in 50 games for the Power and took at least one wicket in 44 of them. Combined 117 wickets at the Power with a batting average of 23. Been a valuable inclusion into the Melbourne Country Week squad the past three seasons, where he has average 40 with the bat.

10. ANDREW SMITH (Eaglehawk) – bit of a technicality here considering he’s “retired” from first XI and dropped back to the twos, but hey, he’s still playing BDCA. Rarely over the past decade has there been a game where the veteran hasn’t had an impact on a match with either bat or ball. Played 13 seasons in the ones for 272 wickets and 3663 runs. Has been the Hawks’ leading wicket-taker in seven of the past 10 seasons. 

9. BEN DEVANNY (Strathfieldsaye) – probably would have only scraped into the top 25 at best this time a year ago. But the Jets’ skipper is coming off a Cricketer of the Year season and has started this summer superbly to rocket into the top 10. Didn’t make a century in his first 11 seasons in the ones, but has now made three in his past 12 hits dating back to round six, last season. Taken 50 wickets the past two seasons for a career tally of 144, while he surpassed 3000 runs last weekend. Has also done a bit of wicket-keeping along the journey.

8. NICK CRAWFORD (Bendigo United) – a wily old fox who since debuting in 1991 for his first club Strathdale has six premiership medals – one with the Suns, and five with the Redbacks. Captained the Redbacks’ 2003 premiership. Since 2000 the all-rounder ranks No.2 in the BDCA for wickets (359) with his off-spin, and No.6 for runs (4746). With the WWE's Shawn Michael known as “Mr Wrestlemania”, Crawford’s record in finals, which in the past eight years has included four hauls of five-plus wickets, could easily earn him the BDCA’s tag of “Mr March”.

7. CRAIG HOWARD (Sandhurst) – one of the great things about cricket is that unlike many sports, age doesn’t discriminate. 

In Howard’s case, you can be 40 and still one of the BDCA’s premier players. 

I’ll get to Howard’s impact on the BDCA soon, but what I particularly like about him is that last year he stepped out of the comfort zone of the successful club that is Strathdale-Maristians to take on the coaching role at a club that has languished in the BDCA for the best part of 30 years, Sandhurst.

Howard has played seven full seasons in the BDCA – six of those at Strathdale – and won two Cricketer of the Year awards to go with three flags at the Suns. 

He has 158 BDCA wickets with his off-spin along with 2623 runs, and of the current day players, his record of a score above 50 every 4.7 innings ranks at No.3. 

Has a tremendous amount of experience to impart that includes 16 first-class games for Victoria that the Dragons need to make the most of.

6. SCOTT JOHNSON (Golden Square) – only small in size, but what a BDCA resume the all-rounder has put together at Wade Street. 

Five premierships and one of only two players, along with Wayne Walsh, to have won the BDCA Cricketer of the Year three times – 2013, 2009 and 2001 – are at the top of the list. 

Phenomenal concentration powers at the crease, which since 2000 have yielded the second most runs in the BDCA with 5857 at an average of 42. 

He’s now 38, but showing no signs of slowing down, having been Square’s leading run-scorer each of the past three years, during which he has made 1643. 

Has taken 184 wickets since 2000, a hat-trick, polled the most votes in theAddy’s BDCA Player of the Year award over the past seven years with 174… the list goes on.  

Has 51 scores of at least 50 in his 175 innings since 2000, but I’m sure he would have liked to have converted a few more than six of them into centuries.

5. BEN GUNN (Bendigo United) – back in the BDCA now for seven seasons following his stint with Footscray in the Premier Cricket competition. 

Gunn by name and gun by nature. 

Has all the shots and unstoppable on his day… like the afternoon three years ago when he crunched 160 off 97 in a one-dayer for Strathfieldsaye against Sandhurst. 

Or the night in January last year when he thumped 117 off 56 in a T20 for the Jets against White Hills. 

Has made seven tons in the season proper over the past four seasons - one every 7.4 innings.

4. BEN DeARAUGO (Strathdale-Maristians) – what’s the saying… cometh the hour, cometh the man. That perfectly epitomises the Suns’ star all-rounder. 

He won the BDCA’s equivalent of the Norm Smith Medal – the Taylor-Walsh Medal – in all three of the Suns’ premiership wins between 2011 and 2013, earning them for both his batting and bowling exploits. 

In those three premiership wins DeAraugo took 11 wickets and made 159 runs. 

His 86 n.o. in the 2011 grand final when he came in with the Suns 5-42 against Bendigo United was as good a knock under pressure as you will come across. 

While DeAraugo’s grand final performances will go down in BDCA folklore, he also took 5-14 for Bendigo against Mornington Peninsula in the 2007 Melbourne Country Week grand final win – Bendigo’s first Provincial Group title for 54 years. 

Overall, DeAraugo’s record for the Suns stands at 351 wickets with 13 hauls of five or more and 2272 runs at an average of 25. 

All that’s missing is that elusive century, but in true DeAraugo style, maybe he’s just saving that for when he’s next on the big stage.   

3. HEATH BEHRENS (Bendigo United) - what's left to say that hasn’t already been said about the veteran left-hander from the Redbacks, who for much of his 20 years in the BDCA has been one of the competition’s most sought-after wickets.

Well, here’s what I think is a little gem of a stat – since 2000, “Puggo” makes a hundred every 7.7 innings.

Behrens has made 24 of his BDCA record 25 tons in 185 innings since 2000 and there hasn’t been a season gone by in those summers where he hasn’t made at least one ton.

Just ask Sandhurst about Behrens – he has scored seven of his tons against the Dragons.

Yet the Dragons have escaped the three days where Behrens has plundered double tons – a league record 249 n.o. v Huntly-North in 2003-04; 219 n.o. v Strathfieldsaye in 2002-03; and 201 n.o. v Bendigo in 2001-02.

The only club missing from the full set of centuries is Strathdale-Maristians, with his best score against the Suns the match-winning 97 he made in the classic 2010 grand final the Redbacks won by one run. 

Of Behrens’ 25 first XI tons – one more than Wayne Walsh’s previous record of 24 - two have been made in grand finals (2003 v Eaglehawk and 2007 v Golden Square), and one in a semi-final (2006 v Kangaroo Flat).

And you only need to look at the list of leading BDCA run-scorers since 2000 to see that for "sustained" brilliance with the bat over the past 14 years, there’s Behrens and then there’s daylight. His tally of runs since 2000 stands at 9023 at an average of 57.4, including 74 scores above 50.

Golden Square’s Scott Johnson is a distant 3160 runs behind in second place at 5863.

Behrens has topped the 500-run mark 11 of the past 15 seasons, with his best summer in 2002-03 when he crunched 910.

There have been too many patches of red-hot form to keep track of, but one period that springs straight to mind is his end to the 2002-03 season when in his last five innings he scored 546 runs at an average of 182, culminating in his grand final ton against Eaglehawk. 

The greatest test a BDCA player can face is the ability to perform at Melbourne Country Week, and again, Behrens has had no peer during his time.

Since 1999, Behrens’ 1543 runs at Melbourne are more than 1000 ahead of Bendigo’s next best – Ben Gunn’s 455.

Through that time there have only been 10 centuries made at Melbourne Country Week by Bendigo players, of which Behrens has four.

Six flags, including two as captain, a BDCA Cricketer of the Year winner in 2006, league batting awards, Melbourne Country Week winning captain, he’s done it all, even winning a BDCA fielding award, for as talented as he is at wielding the willow, he also boasts one of the safest sets of mits in the slips cordon.

Behrens has even paid homage to his singing hero Johnny Farnham, as was revealed last month in Under The Pump, in retiring for a short time in 2011-12, before he was bitten by the cricket bug again, much to the disappointment I'm sure of most BDCA bowlers.

2. ADAM BURNS (Kangaroo Flat) - synonymous with Kangaroo Flat and the Bendigo District Cricket Association.

He’s got every accolade in the book – league, club, bat, ball - but what I believe best epitomises just what Burns has meant to Kangaroo Flat was the 2006-07 season when he wasn’t playing in the BDCA.

The three years previous the Roos had won a pair of premierships, plus played in a losing semi-final, with Burns combining for 108 wickets and 866 runs during those three summers.

But in 2006-07 Burns left the Roos for a one-season stint with Premier Cricket club Geelong.

Surely, it was no coincidence that in the one season Burns was gone, the Roos went from being one of the elite teams of the BDCA to tumbling down to seventh on the ladder.

Then, the following season when Burns returned in 2007-08 as captain, taking 41 wickets, the Roos not only returned to the finals, but played off in the grand final against Bendigo United.

Again, a coincidence? I doubt it.

From a pure numbers perspective, Burns leads the BDCA since 2000 in just about every bowling statistic you could find.

Starting with wickets, his tally stands at 381 – even with that one season down in Geelong, Burns is still 20 ahead of his nearest rival, Bendigo United’s wily spinner Nick Crawford (361). 

Of the 17 players who have taken more than 150 wickets since 2000, Burns also ranks first for average (15.49); economy rate (2.35); and maiden percentage (30.36).

The one bowling stat he doesn’t rate No.1 in is strike rate, with his record of a wicket every 39.5 balls surpassed by Miggy Podosky, who takes scalp every 35.4 balls.

Burns has taken a haul of at least five wickets 22 times – 13 of them six wickets or more - including two of them in finals.

I can still vividly recall in March of 2004 sitting in the Canterbury Park grandstand and watching for the first time the brilliance of Burns as he destroyed reigning premier Bendigo United in the semi-final, taking 7-68 off 30 overs – among his wickets, Heath Behrens for a duck.

A year later in the grand final against Eaglehawk at the QEO, he fired on the big stage again with a bag of 6-42 off 31 overs – that’s not a misprint, 42 runs off 31 overs.

Again, he got the opposition’s best batsman – Neil Williams – out for a duck.

Left-armer Burns would be a BDCA superstar just off his impact with the ball.

But thankfully for the Roos, he’s a mighty fine batsman as well, who has made five centuries and ranks in the BDCA’s top 20 leading run-scorers since 2000 with 3524 at an average of 32.0.

One of those tons – his career best 144 in round 10 of 2005-06 against White Hills – came in a game in which he also took 6-15, which sums up his all-round influence perfectly.

But the innings I best remember isn’t one of his centuries.

It was his 185-minute stint at the crease in the 2007-08 grand final on a QEO green top when he was left battered and bruised from the Bendigo United pace trio of Ben Milliken, Nic Balic and Daniel Schmidt, making a courageous 42 of the Roos’ 112 as wickets tumbled around him.

Burns is a BDCA Melbourne Country Week premiership skipper and only needs 10 more scalps to reach 100 Country Week wickets, having been a member of the Bendigo team every season – apart from his stint at Geelong – since 2002. 

Tremendous service to the association.

Burns is now 33-years-old, but rather than starting to wind down and taking a back seat at Kangaroo Flat, he remains as important as ever to the Roos as their rebuild continues.

1. CAMERON TAYLOR (Strathdale-Maristians) - so you’ve probably worked out by now that Strathdale-Maristians’ all-rounder Cameron Taylor comes in at numero uno.

No doubt this selection will be open to plenty of conjecture when you compare Taylor to the likes of Adam Burns (No.2), Heath Behrens (3) and his team-mate Ben DeAraugo (4), whose career BDCA numbers all significantly tower those of my No.1.

Yes, I acknowledge Taylor hasn’t dominated the BDCA for as long as those three have, but my decision to rank him No.1 is based on the old schoolyard philosophy.

And that is if all this season’s BDCA players – barring new recruits, as I haven’t included them in this countdown – were lined up along the shelter shed at Stanhope Primary School and I had first pick for the lunchtime game of cricket, I’m taking the bloke who can open the batting or come in at No.3 or 4, bowl wicket-taking leg-spin, and is no slouch in the field either. 

So that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

While Taylor’s roots in the BDCA’s first XI can be traced back to 2002-03, his No.1 ranking comes off the back of what he has done the past three seasons for he spent much of the 2000s at either Premier Cricket Club Richmond or overseas.

He returned to the Suns full-time in 2011-12, has won two flags and a Cricketer of the Year since and barely has a game gone by where he hasn’t had an impact with either bat or ball, having averaged 2.3 votes per game in the Addy-Bicknells Player of the Year Award.

Since rejoining the Suns, the left-hander’s batting stats read 2024 runs at an average of 44.9, with five tons and 14 half-centuries from his 51 innings.

Three of those tons came in an extraordinary patch of form when in round six, seven and eight of the 2012-13 season, he made consecutive scores of 127, 113 and 102*, becoming the first player since another left-hander, Eaglehawk’s Jeremy Brown in 2003-04 to make BDCA tons in three-consecutive games.

A cricket tragic who loves stats and spreadsheets more than me, I’m reliably informed Taylor’s red-hot patch of form two years ago has helped him to a monthly batting average of 104.6 in December throughout his career for the Suns.

Perhaps a new nickname for Taylor could be Santa Claus, for he always delivers in December.

Helping highlight Taylor’s importance to the Suns is in winning games, he averages 47.7. In losses, that average drops to a mere 12.6. 

It seems when he fails, the Suns tend to as well.

With the ball, his numbers since coming back to the BDCA in three-and-a-bit seasons read 90 wickets at an average of 18.2, including five bags of five or more.

He has bowled in 43 games since rejoining the Suns, and taken at least one wicket in 34 of them, with all the BDCA’s big guns among his scalps.

Bendigo United saw first-hand the match-winning talents of Taylor only two rounds ago when on day one he jagged 4-73 off 22 overs. Then the following week with the Suns under pressure at 4-65 chasing 206 in a game that would have dropped them to 1-3 had they lost, peeled off a crisp 86.

The left-hander has also stepped it up at Melbourne Country Week with centuries each of the past two years that have helped him to an average of 65 downtown, while he also showed his literary skills last season when he channelled the great Warrick Todd with a must-read tour diary.

Yet I can’t gloss over the early part of his career at the Suns, for then I wouldn’t get the chance to mention Taylor’s starring role in one of the most memorable ends to a BDCA grand final when he bowled the ball that Kangaroo Flat’s Tony Taig smashed for six over mid-on at Canterbury Park to not only win the 2003-04 flag, but also bring up his ton.

Back then, Taylor was just a young kid who promised plenty.

Ten years on he’s a star of the BDCA and right now, my No.1 player in the competition.