Picture by Thomas Facey Photography: Noah Kelly is targeting first-team with Yorkshire cricket in 2026.
By Noah Kelly
The training camp out here in Melbourne with the Yorkshire lads over the last few weeks – overseen by our bowling coach Mick Lewis – has been really, really high-quality.
Being out on grass and bowling at or facing up to the Victoria state players has really sharpened us all up, and it feels like the new season is very close now.
Obviously we’re all going to Abu Dhabi on tour in the next couple of weeks, and I think all our games are coming on really, really nicely. I feel in a good place.
I’ve combined that camp with continuing to play for Beaumaris on a Saturday, and I’ve had a couple of seventies in the last few weeks and an 87 over the weekend just gone. Unfortunately, though, it’s been a disappointing season for the team, and we’re relegated now, which is very frustrating.
But it’s a young team – and, do you know what, it might not be the worst thing ever. They’ll drop down a division, hopefully dominate that and come back up the following year with a bit of confidence.
With the training camp, Victoria’s facilities down at the Junction Oval in St Kilda are like that of a Premier League football club’s. They’re absolutely top drawer.
They have three pools – one ice, one hot and one in between, which is a bit bigger for a little bit of swimming and some mobility work. Then they have a state-of-the-art gym as well as a 10-lane indoor centre along with, I want to say, an 18-lane cage outside.
We also had a training session down at the MCG, the day before Victoria played a Sheffield Shield game there. That was just surreal!
It felt so weird walking out onto the outfield there and doing a bit of fielding.
Even with no-one in the stands, it was just incredible.
The typical training day is us getting in at 8.30am, when we have some testing with Alex Donnelly, our lead strength and conditioning coach, who is out here with us.
Then we’ll go outside and do a sprint or agility session on grass. That takes us up to about 9.30-10.
From there, we’ll have a couple of hours of nets before another gym session and some recovery in the pool.
That runs three days a week with optional sessions on Mondays and Fridays.
It’s been really, really high-intensity stuff, and I’ve come back from training feeling really tired.
I feel like Donners and Mick have really nailed the intensity levels of what we need leading into Abu Dhabi.
Picture by William West/Getty Images. Jhye Richardson is heading to Yorkshire.
The crossover with the Victorian state lads has been dependent on where they are in the country. We’ve done quite a bit with their first-team lads when they’re at home, like the day before a Sheffield Shield game.
Last week, they were over in Perth. But they have a big squad, and quite a lot of their second-team lads have been joining in with our sessions when the first-team haven’t.
Someone like a Scott Boland has been around, but I don’t think any of our lads have faced him. I’m not 100 percent certain on that, though.
Talking of Australian Test seamers, signing Jhye Richardson on an early-season overseas deal is brilliant news. He’s a fantastic signing.
He’s sort of the final piece in the jigsaw, isn’t he, alongside Logan van Beek through the first half of the summer.
He’s coming off the back of an Australian summer where he was in the Ashes squad, played a Test here at Melbourne and got a few wickets.
It feels like he’s been around for ages in the Australian set-up, so they obviously rate him very highly. I’m really excited to see how he’ll do for us.
We now have a busy few weeks. We all fly back from Melbourne this weekend and get four or five days at home before heading out on tour to Abu Dhabi.
Picture courtesy of Noah Kelly. Noah keeping wicket for Beaumaris this winter.
We have a couple of PCA meetings, and it’ll be great to see family and friends before jetting off again for a couple of weeks.
I can’t wait for the new summer now. My aim at the start of every season is to break into the first team, and hopefully I can back up some strong performances towards the end of last year.
I don’t want to pile the pressure on myself, but it would be nice to score a ton in April.
A lot of my hundreds last year came mid-to-late season, and it’s hard to put your name in the frame for selection when you’re not stamping your authority on it early doors. So, yeah, that’s a big goal for me.
Hopefully I might get a few opportunities to keep wicket. I’ve worked really hard on my keeping this winter, both on a Saturday in games and with a few coaches during the week.
You never know what happens around selection and availability, things like that.
I’ve absolutely loved it out here in Melbourne once again. I obviously knew what to expect having been out here last winter, and it’s not disappointed at all.
We’ll see what happens next winter, but it might be that I have a bit of a break at home up to Christmas and then come out afterwards to play a few games before the 2027 summer. A lot can happen in six months, so we’ll have to see. I might come home, see the weather and think, ‘I want another six months in the sun’.
