ANOTHER weekend of Victoria Premier Cricket Premier Men’s Firsts has wrapped, with plenty of impressive performances around the competition. In this series, we put the spotlight on one individual performance that may have caught the eye of teammates, opponents and fans alike. With plenty to choose from each week, it is worth mentioning that there will be some unlucky players that miss out on a weekly basis.

This week, that status goes to Ringwood bowler Ian Holland, who is one of the more unlucky recipients this season, given how strong his performance was in the win over Essendon. He was extremely damaging with ball in hand, ripping through the opposition batting order with ease as he kept them to a score of just 85. He finished with figures of 5/17 from his nine over stint, and to top it off, he performed quite well with bat in hand. Holland racked up 26 runs to finish as his side’s second-highest run scorer too.

Despite that effort, Rookie Me Central’s Player of the Week for Round 14 goes to Dylan Tibballs of the Richmond Cricket Club. There has arguably not been a better bowling spell this season, with Tibballs absolutely tearing through the Camberwell Magpies batting lineup. They had no answer for the line and length of Tibballs’ deliveries, as he took wickets in plenty of different ways.

He kicked things off by dismissing Magpies skipper and opener Ben Rowles with a terrific caught-and-bowled for a duck. He drew a couple of edges in the overs that followed, as he took his wicket tally up to three, all of which were from quality players at the top of the order. His blistering delivery eluded the bat of Spencer Wood and plummeted straight into the wickets to keep his red-hot form rolling, before drawing another edge, which was taken by his team’s wicket-keeper in Max Parker, who was rock-solid all day. He took his final wicket of the day when he clean-bowled William Walker to top off an excellent outing.

While he was not required to bat in the end (due to his teammates doing the heavy lifting further up the order), there is no denying that Tibballs was the most damaging player on the field in his side’s win. His figures finished at 6/28 from eight overs of action.