Daniel in his Polding kit waiting for his chance at the crease.
Daniel Burn has just returned from the NSW PSSA Boys Primary Cricket Championship, where he represented Polding against the best young cricketers from around the state.
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A Year 6 student at St Michael’s Primary School in Deniliquin, he may well be the first student from the school to make it to that level of competition.
Other students in the Polding team came from Catholic schools in Armidale, Bathurst, Broken Bay, Lismore, Maitland/Newcastle and from other Wilcania/Forbes diocese schools.
With students from more than 100 schools to choose from, it shows the skill and herculean effort by Daniel to make the team.
Held across four days in Armidale, the NSW PSSA Boys Primary Championship had 14 teams playing one another in a 50 over format.
Known locally as a batsmen, Daniel was the highest run scorer in the Murray Valley Cricket Association’s 2023/2024 Under-13s season and leading run-scorer for the Deniliquin Rhinos Under-13s.
But for the carnival, Daniel was selected for his seam bowling abilities.
“This is his first representative opportunity in this role. Given he has had a recent growth spurt, this area of his game is rapidly developing,” his mother Jo Burn said.
“Daniel performed well with the ball, opening the bowling for Polding on the first day.
“He narrowly missed out on two wickets due to dropped catches.”
Daniel was also able to experience working as a lower order batsman with the Polding team, impressively remaining not out for each of his three innings.
Other highlights from the weekend were an athletic run out from Daniel, as well as a classic caught and bowled against Riverina in the final game.
The Polding cricket team was scheduled to play four matches, but unfortunately were rained out of their second game on the Wednesday, against CIS, before Polding could bat.
In the other matches, they played and beat North Coast, lost a close match to Sydney East and came up short in a “bizarre“ low scoring affair with the Riverina team.
At the conclusion of the championship, Daniel and his Polding team had placed eighth of 14 teams.
Daniel now returns to his local cricket commitments where he is playing for two separate age groups, the under-13s and under-15s Deni Rhinos teams.
Another highlight for the young Polding players and Daniel was meeting Australian cricketing legend Shane Watson.
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