Scotland international Jack Jarvis is spending the winter in Brisbane, Australia, continuing his cricket development with Redlands Tigers.
The 20-year-old all-rounder will be detailing his experiences down under throughout the winter on cricketscotland.com:
I’ve been here a couple of weeks now, and I’m still settling in really – I’ve managed to avoid the sunburn so far!
Redlands is located about an hour from the centre of Brisbane, which seems a cool city from what I’ve seen so far – we’ve been into town a couple of times to some nice restaurants, but I’m sure I’ll get more time to explore the city over the next few months!
I’m living with one the guys who plays in the first grade; he’s got a nice place and he’s looking after me pretty well so far. He loves his cricket, so we’ve been watching a bit of the World Cup – he still seems confident despite getting hammered by India!
This week I’ve spent a few days down working on the ground, but it’s all about balancing my time between that, training, and continuing my studies.
I’m still studying my Business and Sport degree with Edinburgh Napier whilst I’m out here; I’m on a dual-career programme which has been great for me to balance studying with playing cricket. It’s all online, and I can just crack on with that whenever I have some spare time.
This is the first time I’ve been away for the winter and my first time in Australia, and I think it’s exciting to be doing something a bit different this time around.
It’s been a few winters in a row where I’ve been indoors, so this is something new, training differently through the winter, and I’m looking forward to seeing what can come from this.
There’s lots of technical, specific things that I want to work on whilst I’m out here, but ultimately, I want to improve all aspects of my game as an all-rounder and get physically fitter and stronger as well so that in six months’ time I feel in a better place with my game.
The guys at Redlands have been really nice, it’s quite a young group which I’ve been able to settle into really well.
We got off to a winning start this weekend – well, over the last two weekends! We play red ball, two-day games across two weekends, so you play the same club on two consecutive Saturdays in the same game, which is different to back home where we just play 50 over cricket.
I’m still trying to work out the points scoring system! We got the win from the first innings against Ipswich in our first game, and then we put them back into bat again to try and get some more bonus points. It is quite a confusing system that will take some getting used to!
The demand of red ball cricket is a slightly different challenge, but it’s exciting to have the opportunity to develop those skills as well. It’s a little bit more technical than white ball and the longer format is more demanding as well. I felt I bowled quite well without reward – I’m still getting used to the conditions and adapting, but winning is always a great start.
We play Gold Coast over the next two weekends, and I’m looking forward to getting stuck in again.
