It’s almost time for the region’s juniors to take on the best from neighbouring cricket leagues, as the representative cricket season begins to ramp up.

This Sunday, November 9, juniors from the under 12 age group all the way up to under 17s will take to the park for a friendly intraleague hit to determine the make-up of the Wangaratta District Cricket Association (WDCA) representative teams for their summer of cricket.

With two under 12 representative trial games, and one each for the four other grades, the best and most talented junior cricketers from across the region will be striving to stand out.

Matches will be held at: Benalla’s Arundel Street grounds (under 12), North Wangaratta (under 13), Barr 2 (under 14), Benalla Showgrounds (under 15), and Bill O’Callaghan Oval/Barr 1 (under 16/17) from 10am.

WDCA secretary Wayne Cooper said this season is the biggest one yet for junior representative cricket, with a quick turnaround from trials to competition.

“We’ve obviously got the rep trials this weekend, which is normal, and we have to quickly turn around because we play Shepparton next week,” he said.

“We are hosting the Shepparton Challenge this year, we have two under 12s, an under 13, two 14s, 15, 16s, and 17s, and a girls game, so nine games next weekend.

“We’re playing Shepparton in the girls for the first time too.

“All of the trials games, we’ve got umpires too, so the commitment from the umpires has been good.

“We want to thank the curators for hosting, because it’s a fairly big operation we’re doing here.”

The Shepparton Challenge is only the beginning – throughout the summer, the representative squads have a full range of opportunities to test themselves, both locally and further afield.

“It’s actually the biggest [representative season] ever,” Cooper said.

“We’re playing Murray Valley on 14 December, then we’ve got Junior Country Week in Northern Rivers, which runs from 5-9 January.

“There’s more rep cricket than in previous seasons, we’re entering another team in the Northern Rivers Country Week - last year, we sent the under 17s, and this year we’re sending two, the under 15s.

“Our biggest excitement is sending the under 15s and under 17s to Northern Rivers, because part of that is they get to go away as a team for a week.

“We’ve got North East Region Junior Country Week which starts on Sunday, 11 January - we still want to support locals, keep North East Region Six Country Week going because that leads to North East Knights, there’s a very clear pathway.”

The junior representative season commences this Sunday, 9 November, with trial games held across Benalla and Wangaratta.