In partnership with Toyota<\/p>\n
He describes himself as the modern-day Bill Lawry – a staunch left-handed opening batsman, patiently wearing down opposition bowling attacks before helping himself to a run feast.<\/p>\n
It’s the method Andrew Fitz has employed in a near three-decade stint with Trevallyn in Tasmania’s north – a career which has included almost 500 appearances for the club.<\/p>\n
“I’m not really a strokemaker at the top of the order, more of a pusher and a prodder,” Fitz said.<\/p>\n
“I’ve always opened with aggressive opening batsmen, so I’ve tried to rotate the strike for them, let them do their thing.<\/p>\n
“I’d try and wear the bowlers down and they’d start bowling a bit of crap to me hopefully.”<\/p>\n
In October, that philosophy led to Fitz breaking the club’s long-standing runs record previously held by Peter Walker, who compiled 10,714.<\/p>\n
Up against Evandale Panthers, the 53-year-old went out to bat needing 14 to claim the record. Yet after scampering to 13 and drawing level with Walker’s mark, Fitz’s innings almost derailed.<\/p>\n
“Old mate threw one out wide and I had a crack at it, I got an edge and it flew to third slip,” Fitz said.<\/p>\n
“He got a hand to it, it would’ve been a pretty good catch. I heard all the boys in the changeroom laughing and cheering and carrying on, I think they were hoping he might have caught it so it went on for one more week, but luckily he dropped it and I got it next ball.<\/p>\n
“I got out the ball after that. I got a bit emotional, it was a pretty big thing breaking the nearly 100-year club record.”<\/p>\n
Fitz’s lengthy cricketing career began as a 10-year-old with Mowbray. And he wasn’t always a Lawry-esque statue atop the batting order.<\/p>\n
Long before scoring his first run for Trevallyn Fitz was more in the Richie Benaud mould, excelling as a leg-spin bowler.<\/p>\n
“I played in a few [state] carnivals as a kid, under-15s and under-17s, I was almost on the under-19s squad but buggered my shoulder,” Fitz said.<\/p>\n
“I never really bowled again after that because I couldn’t really get my arm over properly. I turned myself into a slips fieldsman, learned how to catch pretty well and that’s pretty much what I’ve done for the rest of my career.”<\/p>\n
Fitz left Mowbray for Riverside in 1991, before ultimately landing at Trevallyn in 1996-97 where he is now a life member.<\/p>\n
And the milestone man isn’t done etching his name into the club’s history books.<\/p>\n
Two significant marks loom large on Fitz’s short-to-medium-term horizon. He wants to reach 500 matches for Trevallyn, likely one for next season, but not before reaching the 11,000 run barrier.<\/p>\n
And Fitz is also eyeing off further premiership success – the veteran is desperately keen to continue building on a tally already sitting at nine – should his body continue to hold up.<\/p>\n
“I used to do a lot of warming up, these days I can’t really do that, because I wouldn’t be able to play,” Fitz said.<\/p>\n
“I just do a couple of catches now. I used to have a lot of throwdowns before I batted, now I don’t bother with it, I just reckon it’s a waste of time anywhere, they’re not going to bowl underarm full tosses at you when you’re out in the middle.<\/p>\n
“I love the camaraderie of the cricket club, they’re a great club, a lot of really good mates are there that have been there pretty much from the start. While I’m enjoying it I’ll keep playing and hopefully notch up a couple more premierships along the way.<\/p>\n
“You never forget them. Sometimes you’re a bit hazy after them but you certainly never forget playing in premierships with good mates.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In partnership with Toyota He describes himself as the modern-day Bill Lawry – a staunch left-handed opening batsman,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-341708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}