scoresheet NEWSLETTER OF THE AUSTRALIAN CRICKET SOCIETY INC. www.australiancricketsociety.com.au Volume 38 / Number 2 /AUTUMN 2017 Patron: Ricky Ponting AO WINTER NOSTALGIA LUNCHEON: Featuring THE GREAT MERV HUGHES Friday, 30 June, 2017, 12 noon for a 12.25 start, The Kelvin Club, Melbourne Place (off Russell Street), CBD. COST: $75 – members & members’ partners; $85 – non-members. TO GUARANTEE YOUR PLACE: Bookings are essential. This event will sell out. Bookings and moneys need to be in the hands of the Society’s Treasurer, Brian Tooth at P.O. Box 435, Doncaster Heights, Vic. 3109 by no later than Tuesday, 27 June, 2017. Cheques should be made payable to the Australian Cricket Society. Payment by electronic transfer please to ACS: BSB 633-000 Acc. No. 143226314. Please record your name and the names of any ong-time ACS ambassadors Merv Hughes is guest of honour at our annual winter nostalgia luncheon at the guests for whom you are Kelvin Club on Friday, June 30. Do join us for an entertaining afternoon of reminiscing, story-telling and paying. Please label your Lhilariously good fun – what a way to end the financial year! payment MERV followed by your surname – e.g. Merv remains one of the foremost personalities in Australian cricket. His record of four wickets per Test match and – MERVMANNING. 212 wickets in all Tests remains a tribute to his skill, tenacity and longevity. Standing 6ft 4in in the old measure Brian’s phone number for Merv still has his bristling handle-bar moustache and is a crowd favourite with rare people skills. And to think that contact is 0400-501- Ian Chappell once said of him “The trouble with Merv Hughes is that he thinks he is a fast bowler!” This should be 473. His email address is another great Society occasion, so do put it down in your diary and plan to be there with a friend. We’d love to pack [email protected] our upstairs room. OUR CORPORATE SPONSORS LEGENDS & HEROES Editor: Doug Manning Telephone: (03) 9876 3909 Email: [email protected] Mail: PO Box 89, Ringwood, Vic 3134 Future Activities & Events SOUTH AFRICA – 2018 – JUST FIVE PLACES LEFT he travel arm of the Australian Cricket Society continues to offer delightful sojourns at overseas Test venues. Next Tautumn twenty of us will be visiting Cape Town and Johannesburg, as part of an unforgettable and highly affordable South African experience. Fifteen have so far committed, and if you do wish to join us, do act now and talk to our travel partners Events Worldwide. We are touring from March 20 to April 4, 2018 – with the option of exciting must-see add-ons at Kruger National Game Park and Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe from April 4 – 9. Our hotels are booked and we have negotiated a most competitive price with many Beautiful Newlands Cricket Ground-Capetown exciting extras, thanks to our longtime travel partners Glenn and Gayle Hedley from Events Worldwide who have again coordinated private clubs in both Cape Town and Johannesburg, so we cater our itinerary in consultation with tour hosts ACS President Ken both for those who love cricket and also those who want to see Piesse and his wife Susan. and experience the sights.” “This is our sixth ACS/ Events tour and as always we travel with no more than twenty, ensuring a fraternity and intimacy”, said Our Hotels: Cape Town: Breakwater Lodge – March 20 – 27; Stellenbosch – Protea Hotel – March 27 – 29; Ken. “You are also guaranteed Test tickets in the best available Johannesburg – The Wanderers – March 29 – April 4. positions and the opportunity to meet and greet some famous players. Booking Hotline: (03) 5989 7666. Ask for Claire or Victoria – or visit Ken Piesse’s website and download the brochure: “In between the two Tests, in Cape Town and Johannesburg, we www.cricketbooks.com.au have two nights in Stellenbosch. We also have membership of two The President’s Piesse MY NEW BOOK: “HEROES OF THE HOUR” inter time is always an opportunity rows back almost directly behind the wicket I was there when Steve Waugh smote for those of us who love their in the old Cigar Stand at the MCG with my the final delivery of the day from Richard Wcricket books to enjoy some lazy mate Graham Wilson from the Four Dawson through extra cover to bring up Sundays in front of the wood fire with two Kinsmen. The commentators initially called his century at the Sydney Cricket Ground or three new books. I have been busy this it a googly, but Warnie rarely bowled one. in early 2003. Everyone in the press box autumn completing my new Initially he’d worried that it jumped to their feet in acclamation. Later, book “Heroes of the Hour”, would bounce twice. Instead when Steve entered the press conference to be published in October. he perfected a slider and then area with that Charlie Chaplin walk of his, Hopefully it can be another a quicker one again, his famed the whole media contingent stood and ‘Ken Piesse’ title on your flipper first learnt from the applauded. Even the Poms. The buzz around bookshelf. Cricket Academy’s Jack Potter the Australian team at practice the following Here is a sample: before refinements morning was amazing. Everyone wanted to encouraged by his long-time talk about it. Cricket folklore revolves mentor Terry Jenner. Watching around the extraordinary. From A decade later, in July 2013, we were on tv that early afternoon from with 400 equally animated Aussies in the heroics of Don Bradman’s his home in Glenelg, ‘TJ’ Nottingham in a big barn of a room on the Invincibles at Leeds in 1948 almost jumped out of his eve of the first Test in Robin Hood country. to Mark Waugh’s steely lounge chair as the ball Ashes trio Nathan Lyon, James Faulkner, and matchwinning 100 at Port scuttled under Richardson’s Matthew Wade , all in official Australian Elizabeth in 1997 and David bat and zeroed into his middle garb, were among the guests of honour. It Warner’s exuberant century and off stumps. It was every was clear Faulkner and Wade were reserves, before lunch in Sydney in 2017, coach’s dream ball. but surely not Lyon. He’d taken a ‘seven- we thrive on the game’s signature moments. Years earlier, also in Melbourne, for’ in his last Test appearance, just three Ashes performances define a cricketer’s everyone’s hero, high-powered pace man months earlier. As soon as the speeches true worth. Dennis Lillee, Steve Waugh, Graham McKenzie took six wickets all finished, I bowled up to Australia’s spin king Steve Smith, Ricky Ponting…..they have all before lunch on the gloomiest of late and suggested that he should be back at the delivered when it was most crucial; against December days against the Nawab of Park Plaza ‘resting up for tomorrow’. the English. Pataudi’s startled Indians. It was 15, maybe ‘Oh, they haven’t picked the team yet,’ he For key occasions when Tests have been 16 degrees, but with the southerly blowing said. turned by a ball, a catch, or a fabulous innings, straight down the ground from the Antarctic As the team’s frontline spinner, Lyon had cricket purists can tell you their exact it felt like 10. My dad, mum and I were all every right to think he would be among the location, even their row and seat number. huddled together in our jumpers and coats. first selected, but he already knew he was When Warne famously flippered Richie But the cricket was electric. Garth bowled in the backblocks. He just couldn’t say so Richardson at the MCG I was positioned five like the wind. publicly. We were being thrown a curve ball. 2 / scoresheet Volume 38 / Number 2 / AUTUMN 2017 3 The President’s Piesse These were bizarre days for Australian ahead of us on the arena just in front of the cricket. Humbled 4-nil by India in autumn, dressing rooms stood the unmistakable For your diary four players had been suspended for figure of Glenn McGrath. The pace legend, not completing a mid-tour homework in a huddle with Michael Clarke and the chore. It was the most pie-eyed, ludicrous Australian squad, was handing over a administrative bungle in Australia’s cricket brand new baggy green to a tall, tanned kid, history. Those disciplined included the unknown to most of our ACS tourists. It was vice-captain Shane Watson who went home Agar, the athletic bowling allrounder from temporarily, very publicly questioning the De La Salle College, lured west to fast-track worth of High Performance Manager Pat. his first-class ambitions. Australia had Howard and castigating him for his role in selected a first-game smoky, so unknown the stand-downs. A week later he was back that a week earlier his own captain had in India as the team’s stand-in captain! to introduce himself. He’d never even The once proud leaders of the cricket seen him play. Agar’s parents John and world were losing face like never before. Sonia and younger brothers Will and Wes Just days into the new tour the head coach were also there, having just flown in from was sacked and frontline batsman David Melbourne. They’d been told of young Ash’s Warner sent to Siberia. Two reinforcements, selection 36 hours earlier. Agar, 19, was to Steve Smith and teenager Ashton Agar, be Australia’s specialist spinner and bat at were lifted into the group, totally from left number 11.