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Q: Who is the one player from Melbourne District Cricket who played between 1980 and 2000 you’d want as the first player selected if you had the opportunity to start your own Victorian Premier Cricket first grade cricket team?
A: Warren Whiteside, would be my first choice
CricConnect Fans
5 months ago
question
Q: My best Grade Cricket team - Shaun Graf Melbourne and Perth 1976 - 2000
In Melbourne what’s now known as Premier Cricket used to be called District cricket but for sake of consistency of the recent headline I’m keen to participate and pick my Best Grade team of players I played with in District Cricket.
To position my career I made my First grade debut for St Kilda in 1976 and played with the Saints until I made my way to Perth to play with South Perth for the 1983/84 season.
After one season in Perth I returned to Melbourne to play for St Kilda and then joined Frankston for their first 3 seasons in 1993/94, 1994/95 and 1995/96 and then returned to St Kilda in 1996/97 before finishing up in 1999/2000.
So here's my Best Grade team comes from the players I played with at St Kilda and Frankston in Melbourne and South Perth in Perth.
https://www.cricconnect.com/profile/283/shaun-graf/blog/1766/my-best-grade-cricket-team-shaun-graf-melbourne-and-perth-1976-2000
question
Q: I was fortunate for most of my captaincy years at St Kilda I had top quality spinners, a young Shane Warne, Mark Osborne, former St George, and Vic player (right arm off spin), Peter Cox, former Vic (left arm orthodox), and John Emburey, former England, Middlesex right arm off spinner.… so not a bad lot!
Spinners were so much more fun to captain as you and they, always enjoyed setting a trap for the bats, attacking fields and luring them into the net – Warne’s flipper, Emburey’s arm ball, Cox’s doosra and Ossie’s fast, over spinning straight ball … the opportunities to set batters up was fascinating to watch, using the field to create false shots, building pressure then using these type of deliveries sparingly so as to get maximum impact when delivered!
In a Grand Final against Collingwood, both Warne and Osborne had bowled many overs, beat the bat, false shots etc however they couldn’t get out the last couple of batsmen, one being on over a hundred, a left-hand bat that had played for Vic. The state of the match was that in the last session (2 hours) of the final we needed two wickets, however they were playing for a draw as they were the top team at the end of the home and away season. So we really had to try and prise them out.
We were into the last hour needing a wicket desperately so instead of rotating my spinners or bringing on a quick I went to a part time left arm googly bowler, an experienced player, opening bat David Robinson (Vic/Tas) who bowled the occasional leggie.
In actual fact he got 3 wickets in a previous flag, which we won years earlier, so not the worse but like all left arm leggies they can bowl some crap but their most consistent and best ball is usually a wrong’un!
We spoke at the top of his mark, because he could bowl the wrong’un more comfortably we decided that to the in-batter, the left hander, he’d bowl all wrong’uns coming back into him then the 5th ball bowl the traditional leg break across the leftie, couldn’t have gone to plan better, he played all the wrong’uns well but by the 5th ball he was confident, did not look as closely and did not read the leg break which he played forward expecting it to come into him…wrong, outside edge, nicked to me at 1st slip and the rest is history …. Champagne and a a flag and a place in St Kilda’s rich history
blog post
In Melbourne what’s now known as Premier Cricket used to be called District cricket but for sake of consistency of the recent headline I’m keen to participate and pick my Best Grade team of pla ...
question
Q: When captaining Frankston Peninsula v St Kilda, I won the toss and mumbled to my good mate, Jason Jacoby the Saints skipper, that “you can have a bat …. after us!” … the umpires heard what I said but Jason didn’t which was exactly what I wanted. It was very funny when there’s 4 openers out in the middle at the start of play. The Saints openers had to run off hurriedly as did the rest of the team who were just starting to put their feet up relaxing in their shorts and trackies … that was a pretty good crank!
