BJ Watling Scholarship

The Seddon Cricket Club, in conjunction with BJ Watling, is proud to offer BJ Watling Scholarships. Each year players, coaches, administrators and umpires who display impressive potential, will have the opportunity to receive a scholarship.

These scholarships are designed to support recipients with the cost of initiatives that have the capacity to develop their skills, knowledge and potential, to help them excel in their future cricketing endeavours.

The BJ Watling Scholarship selection committee, consisting of Dan Fenwick (Foundation Member), Brad Leonard (Alumni Member) and PJ Williams (Gentleman of Cricket Member) awarded: Tayden Smit, Hunter Crowe, Josh Hill and Bhavin Parshottam with 2022/2023 scholarships. Congratulations to all involved, we look forward to next year’s nominations, all are welcome. Nominations for 2023/2024 will be open 1 June.

To learn more about the BJ Watling Scholarship visit: www.seddoncricket.co.nz/bj-watling-scholarship Hunter Crowe A smart and confident young man, again with a clear cricketing talent. He is a left handed batter and is a left arm “chinaman” bowler. He has just turned 17 and Hunter plays for the Morrinsville Men’s side, traveling over from home at Tairua. Last season, at 16, he won the senior Men’s MVP award for the year. A major benefit of any financial assistance would be to assist with travel costs as most trainings or games etc are “away” from his home base. Would also look for some offseason coaching and feels that being over in Tairua and at a smaller college (Hauraki Plains College) he sometimes misses out on opportunities that are available to boys from some of the bigger “city” schools. He has had some coaching assistance from Brent Arnel over the last couple of years (also gave a great reference) and also received an amazing reference from his principal around all aspects of his school life.

Tayden Smit

A fairly quiet young man, but with an immense cricketing talent as an opening batter and right arm leg spinner. At 16, Tayden has already played for the Counties Premier Men’s side. One of his short term goals is wanting to make the NZ U19 side within the next couple of years. Looking to use any financial assistance for some one on one, specialist coaching, as his school (St Kentigern’s) has previously had Mark Greatbach assisting with coaching (also gave a glowing reference) but Mark has since left the region so is no longer at the school. Huge praise from Mark that in his 40 years playing & coaching the game, he has rarely seen a player showing such a high level of passion, skill & ability, whilst remaining humble and kind.

Josh Hill The selection committee found Josh to be a particularly special young man, full of resilience, who they all seemed to resonate with, and with him having represented Seddon CC in 2022, we know of his cricketing abilities. An opening batter, who both keeps wicket and bowls medium pace. At 19, Josh plays for the Cambridge Men’s side. He would love to get some off-season assistance/specialist coaching so that he can hit the ground running when the new cricket season gets underway. He has lofty goals of national honors and aspires to one day play in the lucrative IPL.

Bhavin Parshottam A bit different to our other applicants, being a 27 year old lawyer, but was great to have interest from someone from the “non player” portion of the game. As an up & coming Umpire, Bhavin has already, in a short period of time, completed all his relevant umpiring exams and umpired in both the Auckland & Northern Districts regions. Now residing in Cambridge, Bhavin believes he can continue his law work parallel to umpiring, with the hope of reaching the top level in New Zealand umpiring. He had a good reference from Doug Cowie from his time with the Auckland association. Bhavin would like to gain some more/different exposure and feels traveling either domestically or to the likes of Australia to umpire at a cricket tournament would be a good way to achieve this. The scholarship will assist with flights and accommodation to allow this to happen.