If Cooper Jones had his way, he'd play cricket every day.
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That's how much he loves the game.
It's a passion that is matched by talent with Jones cleaning up at the Tamworth Junior Cricket Association presentation on Saturday night.
The 11-year-old took home five awards including the top honour of the season - the TJCA Representative Player of the Year.
He also won the batting average, bowling average and aggregate, and best bowling figures for his under 12s Gold side after taking 23 wickets and scoring 194 runs.
Jones had little time to bask in his success though with another cricket adventure to prepare for.
He is playing for Polding at the State PSSA Boys Cricket Carnival, which begins in Ballina on Tuesday.
It is his first time donning Polding colours and was one of his goals for the season, his father Adam said.
"It's one of the things at the start of the season he wanted to have a really good crack at, being his last year (in primary school)," he said.
He is set to play a prominent role, being informed by his coach at their training run on Monday that he would be batting in the top order and opening the bowling.
Continuing through to Friday, Jones will be straight in the car once the carnival finishes to get back to Tamworth in readiness to captain St Ed's against Peel Valley in the Year 5/6 grand final on Saturday morning.
He'll then pad up for Bective East fourth grade in the afternoon as they continue their final round clash with West Tamworth.
It sounds a lot of cricket but that's how Jones likes it. There's no such thing as too much cricket as far as he's concerned.
He said winning the Player of the Year award was "very good" and "a big surprise", and credits his great season to his dad "helping me to train and get better".
They've been working on his allround game, but particularly his batting and playing straighter.
That hard work really came to fruition at the Lismore carnival in January with Jones being adjudged the Player of the Tournament after scoring 160 runs at an average of 53, and claiming 13 wickets.
"His coaches Adam Daly and Nigel Parkinson have done a really good job with him, they've given him the captaincy, and responsibility and he's enjoyed that," Adam said.
It has given him a lot of confidence, and he has grown with that.
After coaching him in the Tamworth under 11s last season, Parkinson wasn't really that surprised by the season Jones had.
"He's definitely got a lot of talent and he's been threatening to do this for the last couple of years really," he said.
He added that it is well deserved, noting how hard he works at training.
If he had to pick one, Parkinson said it's probably with the ball that he's really stood up this season.
"He's just so accurate. We did a drill at training once where everyone was just bowling at the stumps with no batsmen and he hit the stumps a ridiculous amount of times," he recalled.
His team-mates also look up to him, which is one of the reasons he was a bit of a natural choice to captain.
"You can tell the way they interact with him, they look up to him," Parkinson said.
"And he's got a good cricket brain. There were times there this year ... you see something in the field and you go he should really put a fielder there and the next minute Cooper's done it."
