By Marcus Uhe
Kiruba Sathiyaseelan is the man tasked with leading Narre North Cricket Club back to prominence on the back of its promotion to Turf 3 of the Dandenong District Cricket Association.
Sathiyaseelan brings seven seasons of Premier Cricket experience to Narre North, with stints at Casey-South Melbourne, Kingston Hawthorn and Monash on his cricketing CV, reaching as high as the Swans’ Second XI in the 2017-18 season before injuries curtailed his ascension.
Set to return to the playing field after a summer off from his most recent club, Sathiyaseelan was enticed to the position in part due to his friendship with pace spearhead Fazmin Mohamed, eager to get Narre North “back to where they should be”.
“He’s (Mohamed) one of my best mates and he talked about some of the stuff that’s going on at the club, and wanted to get it back to where it wanted to be in terms of Turf 2 and above,” he said.
“There’d been some stuff previously going on around 2019/20 where they lost a semi final and since that year, they’ve struggled a little and I think they just needed some guidance from a coaching perspective to help develop some of the players they have at the club.
“They’ve done a fair bit of work in the background to get to where they are now, so it’s a matter of progressing now.”
With the league scrapping the Turf 4 competition, Narre North has been elevated back to Turf 3 for the first time since the 2021/22 season, when they finished last in a win-less season.
It was the second consecutive bottom-placed finished from the club, having rounded out the table in Turf 2 in the summer of 2020/21.
With the only sides above them on last season’s ladder already having teams in higher grades, and the departure of Doveton North from Turf 3, Narre North became the obvious choice for promotion up the rungs of the DDCA.
There’s hope that they can use the element of surprise to catch some teams off-guard, eager to not make up the numbers in their new division.
“Whatever league you’re playing in, you’re going to try and win the flag, so that’s going to be our main goal,” Sathiyaseelan said.
“There’s no spot on the ladder (we’re aiming for) but we’ll always try to make sure we can achieve the mighty goal of winning a flag, also keeping in mind that we’re also playing for the future ahead as well.”
