Narromine Cricket Club were named Cricket NSW's Club of the Year for the 2022/23 season

The Narromine Club were named Cricket NSW's Club of the Year on Wednesday night at the awards ceremony held at Doltone House in Sydney.

The 21st running of the awards recognised some of the game's best players but for Narromine, it was recognition they weren't expecting.

Nominated for the award by Cricket NSW Area Manager Matt Ellis, Narromine's Greg Kerr had no idea why he was receiving congratulations messages in the early hours of Thursday morning.

"We've got three committee members who pretty much do all the work," he said.

"But we've got a heap of volunteers who help us out and get programs running, if people aren't available there is always someone there to back them up.

"We've got a couple of junior cricketers who help us out with the blasters on a Friday afternoon, and a couple of the under 14s spend their time running around with the kids.

"I can't fault anyone for not putting their hand up and helping out."

Rewind five or so years, Narromine only had a social competition for their seniors while the junior cricketers were spread throughout clubs in Dubbo such as RSL Colts and Newtown.

But now, the club has teams from blasters (under 8s) all the way through to under 14s with two sides also in the Dubbo District Cricket Association senior competitions.

When reflecting on just how far they've come, Kerr believes it is pretty special to be honoured by Cricket NSW.

"From four or five years ago, we might have had 20 juniors cricketers," he said.

"That was from blasters through to under 10s, a couple of mothers got together and said 'why don't we have a crack at it'.

"We had an under 12s team with Newtown there a few years ago which are our under 14s now, essentially we just said 'we've got this blasters program running really well, why don't we try to make our own club'.

"It sort of went from there and it's all gone really well, we've got around 80 junior cricketers this year.

"It's amazing, you go down on a Friday afternoon and there are just kids everywhere."

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The hope for Narromine is to continue developing a pathway to keep kids involved in cricket and provide an option for them to play senior cricket with their hometown, should they wish to do so.

In the 2022/23 season, Kerr admitted a few players have already made the step up into senior cricket via the RSL Kelly Cup.

"With the senior club, they've been pretty good," he said.

"We had four or five under 14s kids play a bit of third grade this season with their dads.

"They had a blast, hopefully, the future of Narromine cricket is looking bloody good."

Other awards winners on the night included Cowra's Dan Hughes who took out the Steve Waugh Medal for a third time following his efforts across the Marsh One-Day Cup and Marsh Sheffield Shield.

Hughes also won the One-Day Player of the Year award while Orange's Pheobe Litchfield was named the Sydney Thunder's WBBL Player of the Year.

Following a record-breaking campaign for Western Zone, Matt Everett was named the Josh Hazelwood Men's Country Player of the Year while also helping Gilgandra to the Country Plate title.

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