Sudbury bring in Freddie Cloud, Matt Clark and Ned Overbury for 2025 East Anglian Premier League season

After a largely disappointing 2024 campaign, captain Paddy Sadler is hoping that a trio of young new arrivals will help to steer Sudbury to a more positive Thurlow Nunn East Anglian Premier League campaign.

Following a slow start, the champions from 2017 and 2018 struggled to get any momentum going last term and they eventually had to settle for a ninth-placed finish.

And in a bid to add more strength in depth to the squad, the Talbots have recruited Freddie Cloud (Felixstowe), Matt Clark (Sudbury) and Ned Overbury (Coggeshall).

All three players are promising talents, and Sadler is looking forward to seeing how they integrate.

“Last season was probably a bit transitional,” said the skipper. “It was a bit disappointing in some ways. There was a lot of weather around early on and we just couldn’t get any momentum going.

“We had a few challenges, got a few injuries and it ended up being tough at times.

“But I think with the players that have come in, we’re definitely going to be stronger this year and we’ve got more strength in depth.

“Freddie, Matt and Ned are all youngsters with high quality and we think they’ll be important players.

“We were keen to bring in some younger players. I joined the club after the two title wins and a lot of the players were still here last year, so we needed a bit of refresh.

“We’ve still got plenty of experience, but now we’ve also got a new batch that we’re backing to come good.”

Sudbury will get the new season going on Saturday with a trip to Mildenhall (11am).

However, Sadler will not be involved after suffering a fractured wrist during last weekend’s six-wicket friendly defeat to Witham.

The returning Adam Jones will captain the side in Sadler’s absence, while Nic Smit will take on the overseas role for the first three weeks of the season until Manelker de Silva is available.

And while Mildenhall is widely regarded to be a tough place to pick up a positive result, Sudbury will be buoyed by their recent record at Wamil Way.

“We’ve actually done well there recently. I think we’ve won the last two times we’ve been there,” added Sadler, who is expected to be out of action for six weeks.

“It’s a Suffolk derby to start off with and that should hopefully make us raise our game even more.

“If we do what we’ve done the last two times we’ve been to Mildenhall then we’ll give ourselves a good chance.”