My Greatest Cricket Season
Stuart Maurice | May 01, 2023
Looking through my old memorabilia today I came across a prized trophy from 1974. By the end of that day I had thoughts I could be joining Lillee and Thommo scattering pom's stumps at the SCG in the next few months. I was a dreamer though.
It all came about when I was attending Matraville High, the home of Russell Fairfax, the Ella brothers, Llyod Walker, Eddie Jones, David Knox and on a non-sporting note, Bob Carr.
To say this place was a sporting icon is selling it short, it was sport, sport and more sport and a few people actually thought we were there to learn academically. They were kidding themselves.
Anyway, in the last term we only had 2 weeks to play in the 1st X1 team before we had to break up for HSC study and exams. As such the bulk of the players in 6th form (you'd call them year 12's these days) decided not to participate in Wednesday sport. Fatguts, Yatesy, Scull and myself decided that some of us older blokes needed to lead the young 5th formers into battle and show them the ropes, so we signed up for the 2 weeks to help out an inexperienced 1st grade team.
Our first match was against South Sydney High at Snape Park Maroubra, a lovely ground with a turf wicket (we didn't get to play on many turf wickets) and a white picket fence. It was just like the SCG minus the grand stands and the crowd. The ground hadn't really been prepared after a torrid winter of rugby league and the Bulli soil pitch area still bore the scars of a thousand stud marks and looked decidedly dicey.
Winning the toss we sent South Sydney in expecting them to crumble under the pace of Fatguts and Yatesy. T'was not to be as the South Sydney openers ripped into the bowling and after 8 overs were 0/60.
The ball was then thrown to me to bowl my little medium pace out swingers. If they smashed the daylights out of Fatguts and Yatesy, what the hell was going to happen to me? The Souths boy also must have thought the same as he danced down the wicket to my first ball and smashed it back over my head. To my relief, Fatguts had anticipated this and had posted himself on the boundary where he took the catch. 1/0.
Next batter was a bloke called Deveraux. He had caned us many times in the past and I knew he'd be after me again. I ran in and bowled a good length ball that hit a stud mark and ran along the ground hitting middle stump. 2/0
As I waited for the next man I remembered what Dennis Lillee had said when asked what sort of ball he'd ball for a hattrick. "Straight and fast" was his reply. I stood at the top of my mark and ran in like I was racing Usain Bolt. My arms and legs were flailing all over the place as I released the ball like a thunderbolt. It was a thigh high full toss. The batter's eyes lit up and he summoned an almighty swing, missed the ball completely and it hit middle stump 3/4 of the way up on the full. Hattrick!!!!! 3/0
Being 1974, we still had 8 ball overs so there was more destruction for Souths to come. I managed another 2 wickets to finish my over 5/0.
The next over went for 3 runs (all off the edge) and Scull managed to get in on the act and take a couple of wickets leaving me to clean up the tail with the first ball of my 3rd over giving me 6/3 from 2.1 overs.
They went from 0/60 to all out for 68. Time to show these guys how to bat.
We were dismissed for 32 out of which I made 14. I still to this day can't work out how we lost that game.
Anyway, we played our 2nd and last game the next week where I took 3/6 giving me a season total of 9/9. A record that still stands to this day at Matraville High and I believe there has only been 1 more hattrick in the history of the school in 1st grade.
I did my exams and never played another game of cricket for 4 years but by that time I had lost my mojo and had to be happy to watch my team mates in Mark, Glen and Garry Ella, Eddie Jones and David Knox score all the runs and take all the wickets while I just dropped catches in the outfield.
Oh what might have been
