Piesse - Favourite Cricket Yarns

Foreword

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I was destined to be a cricketer. I never wanted to be anything else. Mowbray Cricket Club was my home away from home. I was in my element sitting in the rooms among the players and their gear, listening to their banter. When everyone had gone out to field Id pick up a bat and play some strokes, imagining I was in the middle at Bellerive, or even better, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).

My Dad would take me to all sorts of games, from club to Sheffield Shield matches. For a few years I worked the scoreboard at the NTCA Ground in Launceston. I felt like I had the most important job in the world, especially if there was a Shield game on.

Mowbray picked me in their firsts when I was fourteen, a game I still recall fondly for a sharp catch at gully. It was a full throttle cut shot and I just thrust out my hand and miraculously it stuck. Our wicketkeeper Richard Soule dashed across and picked me up in a bear hug and told me it was as good a catch as hed ever seen. You can imagine how I felt after that. He was keeping regularly for Tasmania back then and the guy Id caught, Richard Bennett, was a regular in the Tassie top-order. Yes, that was a good day

At school, my mates would ask me what I wanted to be. It was a silly question really. I was going to be a cricketer. Full stop. And other than working as a groundsman at Scotch Oakburn College for a few months in my mid-teens, thats what Ive been ever since.

I was telling the story of my early days to a gathering at the MCG late last year when I was made Patron of the Australian Cricket Society (ACS). Among the crowd, sitting close to me in the front row, dressed in whites and a cricket shirt, was a young boy. He was clutching his bat, just as I used to when I was a similar age. I stopped what I was saying and said to him, You know, I was just like you exactly like you. Going everywhere in my whites hoping one of the older guys wouldnt show up so I could get onto the field anything to be involved.

He was only knee-high, but I could tell how passionate he was about the game. Later I picked up his bat. Feels pretty good, I said. And it did.

One of the things I admire about the ACS is its involvement in the scholarship scheme run by Bryce McGain and his Elite Cricket Academy in Melbourne. The course revolves around the fast-tracking of twelve and thirteen-year-olds, giving them the best possible coaching and experiences. When I turned sixteen, I was fortunate enough to have some time at the Australian Cricket Academy under Rod Marsh. Along with Andy Gower, another junior from Launceston, I spent a fortnight in Adelaide on a scholarship organised by the Century Club in Launceston.

You need skill, passion, commitment and luck to be a cricketer and having that time in Adelaide under one of the greats in Rod was a real eye-opener. I realised a career in cricket was a possibility after all, and I still thank those businessmen in Launceston who were so generous in backing me. Its a story I never get tired of repeating.

Cricket people are good people and they all have a story to tell, as I found flicking through some of the early manuscript pages for Favourite Cricket Yarns , Ken Piesses latest book. In between being president of the Australian Cricket Society and captain of the Kingston Saints third XI, mentoring and encouraging young players, Ken lives, eats and breathes cricket like few I know.

Most of you are likely to have at least one of Kens books in your libraries. This is his forty-ninth cricket book and his sixty-eighth overall on cricket and football. Thats a fair innings.

Theres a great blend of characters in this one, from the current crop to the oldies-but-goodies. I especially like David Lloyds pun at Lords when he was worried about the press-box lift stopping again (see Handsome but not handsome enough in chapter 4).

Ken helps give everyone the best seat in the house, bringing us all closer to the action, with the emphasis on his amusing anecdotes. Like me, he thinks cricket is the best game ever invented and I wish him well with his latest creation.

Ricky Ponting

Melbourne

Ricky Ponting with Ken Piesse at the launch of Ricky's autobiography in Melbourne late in 2013

Authors Introduction

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The great game of cricket charms us in so many ways, from matches and events to the mates we make. I revel in the backroom stories, like Tony Greig failing to recognise the Don at Adelaide Airport at the start of the Rest of the World tour and shrinking in embarrassment when Garry Sobers arrived and said, Sir Donald what an honour.

And Greigy, on his UK debut at Hove, being caught plumb in front, first or second ball, only inexplicably to be given not out. It just so happened that the umpire and Greigs Dad had been drinking buddies in Queenstown

Terry Jenner told me about a prison cricket match at Waikerie, during his stint in jail. T J said, Our team had the best record of all: a murderer, a drug pusher, two embezzlers, a couple of bank robbers and a few blokes whod tried to diddle social security!

So upset was rookie captain Ian Craig by his poor form in South Africa that he went to fellow selectors Neil Harvey and Peter Burge in mid-tour and said he was stepping down. No way will I be a part of that, said Harvey. No touring captain has ever dropped himself. Forget it, youre playing.

An eighteen-year-old Ian Chappell, motoring to his first ever A grade ton in Adelaide club cricket, had just entered the 80s when the second new ball was taken. Immediately pulling Sheffield Shield paceman Alan Hitchcox for 4, he said with typical Chappell scorn, Fancy you playing for South Australia. Hitchcox extended his run and tried to knock Chappells block off only to watch his next three balls clatter into the fence at backward square. The shorter he bowled, the harder Chappell hooked. In four balls, Chappells score advanced from 84 to 100. Within a week hed been chosen by his state.

Years ago, flighting one of my loopy leg breaks at the MCG, I had David Hookes caught on the boundary from a steepling hit which would have surely gone over the old Southern Stand had it still been standing, a strong southerly bringing the ball back into the arena for cricket administrator David Richards to take a lovely outfield catch just metres from Bay 13. Hookes and I were in at a radio studio years later and he signed a copy of his autobiography for me:

To Ken

Remember when: Hookes, c. Richards, b. Piesse.

Best wishes,

David Hookes

Having a Test player sign one of his books for me has always been a thrill. At the Centenary Test match, armed with four newly acquired Percy Fender tour books, I approached Percy, then eighty-four and in a wheelchair, and asked if he would mind signing them. He was all but blind and had brought his teenage grandson with him to be his eyes. Id be glad to, he said. And in tiny writing he wrote his name on each one.

Keith Miller was the most vibrant of souls. We lived in adjoining suburbs. One morning I dropped in for a cuppa and he was in tears. You know I should have captained Australia, he said. Don Bradman ruined my life and you can quote me, Ken.

Of course you should have captained, Nugget, I said, but so shouldve Shane Warne. You two had a bit extra happening in your lives and didnt you bowl a bouncer which almost poleaxed the Don in his testimonial match?