Thanks for the warm up game Western Suburbs
Western Suburbs District Cricket Club Sydney | July 25, 2024
In 2006 we launched a publication, “Cricket in Black and White: 110 Not Out: The history of the Western Suburbs District Cricket Club”. Superbly compiled by Max Bonnell, the book outlines the history of our club. The following story is an extract from this publication:
In 1985-86, the structure of Sydney Grade cricket received its most radical overhaul in over sixty years. The number of clubs was increased to twenty: Sydney was expelled from the competition, Fairfield was promoted to First Grade, and the Campbelltown and Hawkesbury clubs were created. The draw was standardised, so that in every round each club played one other club in all five grades. The residential qualification, abused or ignored for so long, was abandoned at last. A parallel First Grade limited-overs competition was introduced. And the Sydney Cricket Association was formed, as a subsidiary of the NSW Cricket Association, to manage the Sydney competitions.
Chemist Warehouse Ashfield is a proud sponsor of Western Suburbs District Cricket Club
On paper, Wests had the squad to dominate the new-look competition. Eight members of the First Grade side were included in the State practice squad, and eight of the club's players appeared in first- class cricket at some stage of their careers. Yet the abundance of representative players also created problems, since they were only spasmodically available. Greg Matthews and Dave Gilbert were regulars in the Australian side, and Dirk Wellham and Greg Dyer were fixtures in the State team. On the second day of the Mosman match, the club had to replace seven players who had played on the first day - four in the State side, and Brad McNamara, Andrew Jones and Tony Dwyer in the New South Wales Colts. On top of which Murray Radcliffe played for the NSW Second XI and Chris Killen in the NSW Under 19s.
Greg Dyer
One purpose of Grade cricket is to develop representative players, and a club that does so cannot complain when those players are lost to promotion. It is true that the loss of representative players unsettled Wests' teams during 1985-86, but the inescapable fact is that too many players underperformed -and, when they did, blamed it on Pratten Park. The square at Pratten had deteriorated alarmingly, and the groundsman made a mystifying decision to lay thick kikuyu grass on the outfield, which at times made it almost impossible for batsmen to hit boundaries. But the bowlers - apart from the excellent Radcliffe - failed to exploit these conditions and Wests gained no advantage from the idiosyncrasies of its home ground.
Western Suburbs did play effectively in the new limited-overs competition, but even that ended badly. Wests won four of its five matches in its group, and had the fourth-best points score in the whole competition; but the competition rules were ambiguous as to whether the four teams with the highest points advanced to the semi-finals, or whether the leading teams from each group would advance. Before the last round was played, Western Suburbs had sought a clarification on this question from the NSW Cricket Association and believed, from the answer given, that it would contest the semi-finals if it were one of the four highest-placed teams, regardless of where it finished in its group. Unfortunately, after the last of the preliminary matches had been played, the Association took the opposite view, and excluded Wests from the semi-finals.
"We thought the rules were very clear", says David O'Neil, "and that after the rounds we'd play the semi- final. But the Association disagreed, and so we sued on a point of principle." Western Suburbs took the matter to the Supreme Court, seeking an injunction to prevent the semi-finals from being played until the ambiguity in the rules was resolved by the Court. The matter was settled when the Association agreed to stage a play-off between the two affected teams, Wests and North Sydney. Unhappily for Wests, an awful batting collapse (to 9-43) cost it any chance of winning the playoff, which would have been an utter embarrassment had not Murray Radcliffe dominated a last- wicket partnership in which he struck four colossal sixes. "Trevor Chappell was in the North Sydney side", David O'Neil recalls, "and he was very unhappy about having to play us. After the game he came up to us and said, 'Thanks for the warm-up. The next year, we played Norths in the last round of the First Grade competition. We were already in the semis, and Norths had to beat us to get in, so when we beat them it was our turn to thank Trevor for the warm-up."
Match scorecard. Semi final - North Sydney v Western Suburbs
