Just Like It Was Yesterday – NSW 1982-83 Sheffield Shield Champions

Peter Langston | September 13, 2023

I have always loved birthdays and after so many of them, you would think there would hardly be surprises in store at the next. Good, better, best should have been long gone but then last Friday, the 67^th took me to new, ethereal heights as I celebrated it with mates, heroes and my first love, cricket.

Peter Quirk and Geoff Kirk – Quirky and Kirky, my life’s Bill and Ben – are committee members of the Hunter Lord Taverners, a charitable organisation who raise funds to support the sight impaired and others with disabilities to have sporting experiences otherwise denied them by a lack of the advantages us able-bodied folks take for granted. This merry bunch, whom I would euphemistically describe as experienced, also travel around Australia and the world, playing veterans cricket convincing themselves that grace takes precedence over power and the quick single was always over-rated. They play from old memories in making new ones.

Quirky and Kirky had invited me and another close mate, Claude, to attend a luncheon celebration of the 40^th anniversary of the NSW Blues win in the inaugural Sheffield Shield Final. Organised by the Taverners Patron, the then skipper of the NSW side, Rick McCosker and featuring the other ten players who took the field with him over the five days of the Final, three months of anticipation became an afternoon which may have started as recollection but became so much more.

The attendees were (in batting order from the Final):

Rick McCosker, John Dyson, Steve Smith (the original), Dirk Wellham, Peter Toohey, Trevor Chappell, Greg Matthews, Murray Bennett, Steve Rixon, Geoff Lawson, Mike Whitney.

Missing in action from the twelve selected was twelfth man Lenny Pascoe who chose to replicate his role in Perth but this time, not even watch from the sidelines.

If you want the facts and figures of the match, you can go here but I have no intention of falling into the trap of letting them get in the way of the good stories told throughout the afternoon. Suffice to say, neither side reached 300 in the four complete innings of the match. There were no centuries to the batsmen and Lawson’s second innings 5-52 was the only five wicket haul and a man of the match performance. Most present said that honour belonged to Trevor Chappell, whose all round contribution was crucial.

Over three courses, the players regaled us with anecdotes from the game, firstly with knives and forks emphasising key points in personal exchanges as they broke bread with us at our tables. Two seats to my right, Mike Whitney was an entertaining and effusive source of stories, not the least being the role he played in the marriage of Randwick and Petersham, early in his continuing twenty three years as president of the merger.

John Dyson, Geoff Lawson, Steve Smith

It got better, for a planned two hours stretched on into the afternoon as groups of two or three ascended the stage to be interviewed by ex-Newcastle ABC sports supremo, Craig Hamilton. A cricketer and footballer of some regard himself, he bought out the best in the players with intuitive questioning and we were captured, willingly in one of those moments in life where you count your blessing for being present.

Forty years on and yet the bonds between these mates of the early eighties were so tight that the tolerances between them made distinguishing individuality difficult. This was a team: something we don’t often see on sporting fields these days. The old adage of a champion team, not a team of champions came readily to mind as they shared their stories, supporting each other, upholding each other as only mates do. As cricket mates do especially well and particularly easily.

I have often wondered why the bonds of mateship established under Greg Chappell hats appear much stronger. In conversation with John Dyson, it was our conjecture it had much to do with the protracted time spent together during the long hours cricket used to take to reach conclusions, on and off the field. The further hours at the nets and in celebration or commiseration over a few elongated beverages. Apart from match play which often welds you together over a shared experience, those long hours allow you to get inside each other’s skin, to learn more than just their skillset but also their thoughts and idiosyncrasies. Trust develops. Ties bind.

On the stage, all this was evident of these heroes who transformed into blokes we all knew from their deeds and then recognised in the rekindled memories of our own team mates of the days before grey hairs and stiff knees.

There was no guessing required as to their leader. McCosker disavowed the claim he had created the team culture which would lead to a decade long legacy of NSW success which followed the 1982-83 Final. He firmly insisted that his team mates had each provided their own input into that culture, despite different backgrounds, different personalities, different abilities. In saying so, he ignored the role good leadership plays. Good leaders listen. Good leaders are inclusive. Good leaders help their team mates become the best version of themselves and to attain their peak simultaneously and at just the right moment. Good leaders build teams. Forty years later, the love and reverence shown to McCosker confirmed his leadership credibility. He directly attributed all he had learned about leadership was gleaned from Ian Chappell.

Mike Whitney, Dirk Wellham, Greg Matthews with host Craig Hamilton

The love for McCosker was expressed by all, but by none more demonstratively than Greg Matthews, who wept as he described the role Bish had played as a mentor, a supporter and an advocate. Mo credited his opportunities and career to his former captain. His were not the only moist eyes in the room, quickly followed by laughter when Matthews pointed to McCosker in the audience and described him as “one cool cat”. As accolades go, Mo could go no higher.

The stories were rich, regardless of the version of them players told. The removal of Kim Hughes in the second innings is a good case in point. Geoff Lawson described his over after lunch as a mixture of a half volley which was dismissed to the cover boundary and a lazy outswinger which Hughes sought to crash past gully until Peter Toohey took a catch which was almost as sensational as the celebration which followed it. McCosker’s version told of Lawson, exhausted from a summer of tormenting Poms, rising to one last desperate effort in the over after lunch and sending two searing deliveries past Claggy’s nose before removing him with a vicious outswinger and a reasonable catch at gully. They did however agree on Toohey’s remarkable transformation from a normally sedate and emotionally conservative team mate to a raving maniac seemingly riding the wildest bronco into the arms of his teammates as Hughes left.

I have been around cricketers for so long that accepting both versions as being true was easy.

Lawson recounted the outrageous outburst from Claggy as the players left for the lunch break which preceded his dismissal on the last day, with WA needing 90 odd and still having five wickets in hand. With his team’s destiny in his brilliant hands, NSW were merely observers. Several players spoke of the effect Hughes uninvited speech had on them over lunch, including the quietly spoken McCosker, who many heard swear for the first and only time in their relationship. Lawson, who removed Rod Marsh just before lunch, returned to “that over” after lunch and then Trevor Chappell bought down the house of cards as NSW won victory. NSW players had been staggered by Hughes ball by ball commentary of his own batting during his innings but his grandstanding at the gate, whilst considered typical, had them talking over lunch and right into this afternoon forty years later. Although John Dyson admitted that as he left the ground his greater concern was whether hot chips would be on the lunch menu!

There were other key moments and controversies. On the night before the game, the news that Dennis Lillee was unfit and would be watching from the stands, blew through the NSW batsmen like the relieving Freemantle Doctor on a hot Perth afternoon. The decision by McCosker to leave Pascoe out had reverberations still evident to the very afternoon we shared. Bish believed the team would be better served by tying the Sandgropers down and frustrating them into mistakes, so two spinners and Chappell’s accurate medium paced deliveries were the better option than Pascoe’s raw boned pace, often short and short tempered. McCosker wanted control, not the shock and awe their opponents thrived on, especially at the WACA. So it proved but at the permanent cost of a relationship. Although Bennett and Matthews didn’t take a wicket for the match, their 99 overs cost only 200 runs, a crucial element to a victory where wickets were shared evenly between Lawson, Whitney and Chappell. McCosker, as always, was diplomatic, unable to recall Pascoe’s reaction at being omitted and still being the good leader and looking after a team mate.

The funniest of the stories naturally featured Whitney and his clash with Rod Marsh. With Hughes and Marsh building a big WA response to NSW moderate 271 first innings, Whitney removed Marsh and gave him the mother of all send offs, involving the dual concepts of sex and travel. When Marsh, turned, nearly half way back to the gate, raised his bat and asked Roy what he had said, the Matraville Mauler repeated it, with even greater emphasis in order there be clear communication. As they came together, McCosker and Toohey stepped into apply salve to the situation, McCosker having greater concern for the man with the bat than the man who had wanted to wear a South Sydney guernsey into the second row more than he wanted to wear a cricket cap. It was one of two flashpoints – along with Hughes later spray on the fifth day – which galvanised the team to victory and a long legacy of NSW teams who didn’t accept defeat. It was ten years before Marsh and Whitney would hold a civil conversation.

These wonderful anecdotes lacked a WA perspective but who cared? They could tell their own stories.

As I listened and even at times participated in conversations, I reflected on the grief I had always felt at my own failure to reach up and have the fullest of cricket’s experiences. Three deliveries from Andy Roberts had shattered my stumps and dreams one Sunday afternoon at Caringbah Oval in the mid 1970’s. Batting in the nets with my U/19 rep team mates, the NSW contracted Roberts whose club base in Australia was the Sutherland club, had come along at the invitation of our chairman of selectors to offer advice. Bowling off two steps, he casually destroyed my ardent dreams of playing in a Baggy Blue and perhaps Green. It was harder picking up the pieces of reality in the ensuing weeks than it was picking up the pieces of stump behind me. Even with only half of middle left, he still hit it next ball.

Trevor Chappell, Steve Rixon, Murray Bennett with host Craig Hamilton

My realisation in watching and listening to my heroes speak of their mates and opponents was that although their experience was garnered with a skillset plentitudes greater than any of the eighty patrons listening, it was the same experience. Being with blokes you trust, blokes you did and still would give your all for. This was the cricket gift for those willing to play it in the manner intended. More than comradery, which is just the outward expression of what we might shy away from calling love – unless we are Mo Matthews or the garrulous Roy Whitney – but in our hearts we know it. Sitting to my left were two of my best mates whom I love dearly. On the stage were blokes animating my own experience of what you bring to the game and what you take away. In about six weeks, my own team mates will gather again, also forty years since we played our own Test matches on the fields of Armidale and it will be the same shared experience.

The essence of team cradles that experience and perhaps we were lucky to be custodians of the game at a time when it was still important. One wonders if it exists with the same zeal in these days of shortened play and outrageous individual pay packets for bugger all work. How can players being sold in a cattle auction to bowl four overs in India have the same dedication to these greater concepts? How much are they losing in the lack of relationship returns in their future?

I turned 67 last Friday. No doubt my words, my beliefs about cricket underline that accumulation of birthdays but to see the richness of the love those eleven players could express of and to each other was a startling reminder of the importance of being in a team, not a side. Teams live on. Sides disband at the end of a season. To respect and cherish each other with equity at the core of that respect, is everything which is good about cricket. Afterall, the bloke who snicks the ball through slips for his only single of the match is just as important to the team’s tally as the number three who scores a glorious hundred. In the end, every run provides the winning total. The bloke who dives at full stretch to keep a batsmen on strike so the bullet train yorker can take out his middle stump next ball, is just as important as the bowler who delivered it. Cricket is a game where the sum is immeasurably more important than the parts.

Whether winner or loser, both are honourable outcomes in the collection of moments which are our memories of the game. I scored runs I am proud of, bowled more overs than I was worth and held the odd screamer, but having my team mates on the other side of a beer or at the end of a text or phone call, dwarfs any of those achievements because they were shared then and they will be shared still today and with luck and medical assistance, tomorrow … or in six weeks’ time.

I had a three day wait until I could leave Quirky and Kirky and Claude and return home to my battered old ball on its fraying string in the backyard of my rural NSW home. I had time to build the desire to wear a cap again and stand beside other old blokes using long memories to create shorter futures. The ardour will fade and it will just be me and two hundred strokes of that ball before I allow myself to come into my long frustrated wife’s cooling dinner offering. Her ire will dissolve into acceptance and gratitude for my passion for cricket.

A new, powerful memory of old blokes, grand deeds and grander mates and a match long ago, generously shared with me and eighty other cronies, freshens me as I write. The caps of former teams sit on the wall beside me and the sun shines through the window.

Cricket has again nourished me with its fruits.

Life is good.