With 40-over games starting on Sunday, the playing tournament will span five days with a rest day midway through, before culminating with a series of grand finals on Thursday, March 18.
Making up the interstate contingent will be a team from the ACT, two from South Australia and another from Tasmania, while the other 20 squads will be made up of Victorian regional and metropolitan clubs.
With more than 390 players registered to play, carnival co-coordinator Gary Semple said he expected an influx of between 700 and 800 people into the region across the week.
“It’ll be great for the local community, I’m sure a lot of these guys will be quite happy to bring their caravans up and eat out,” Semple said.
“We won’t be able to host a lot of our own social events, but that is still the main emphasis of the week, so they’ll be a bit of that going on.”
And local cricket clubs will also be getting in on the action, with games spread across a host of grounds from Kyabram to Cohuna to showcase the sport.
“The local clubs are going to provide drinks and lunch and get a bit from bar sales. It’s great to support the clubs with groups of funny old men running around,” Semple said with a laugh.
Semple said the division one draw was shaping up to be a crowd-pleaser, with fewer restrictions on batters set to allow individual scores of upwards of 50 on the cards.
“There are some different restrictions in place — no bowler can have more than six overs, so you’ll be getting several different bowlers,” Semple said.
“In division two and three, you can only face 30 balls or make a maximum of 10 runs before coming off. You can go back out again after if it allows, but this way it just gets everyone involved.
“But division one, you’ll see they have 30 balls and can make as many runs as they want.”
With most games starting between 10.30 am and 11 am throughout the week, a twilight game will be staged at Vic Park on Tuesday, March 16, from 3.30 pm.
Semple encouraged anyone interested in playing Over 60s cricket, or spectators in general, to get down to a game for a great day out.
“Have a chat with some of the guys playing, we’re all our own ambassadors for the sport. We enjoy it; I like to say it’s like a men’s shed but on the cricket ground,” Semple said.
“It opens the door for us to continue playing the sport we love.”
● For more details on the draw, head to mycricket.cricket.com.au and search for Veterans Cricket Victoria.
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