This week in the history of Gordon Cricket – 22nd September 2024

Gordon District Cricket Club | September 22, 2024

Sunday 22 September 2024 is the first round of the Poidevin Gray Competition for 2024. This is a very important competition for the club and in recent seasons we have performed very well with a joint premiership in 2021.

The Poidevin Gray competition started in 1926 under the guidance of two senior Waverley (now Eastern Suburbs) Cricket Club administrators Dr. Leslie Poidevin and Frank Gray.

Playing in the Gordon Poidevin Gray (PG) team is always seen as an important steppingstone in the careers of our young cricketers, but who in our history can we nominate as our best performing PG’s representative? Is it a close call or is there a standout?

Recent well-known names such as Harry Evans, Steve Colley, Reece Bombas, and Tym Crawford come to mind but to find our best ever we need to go back to the four seasons from 1935 to 1939 and five seasons from 1947 to 1952.

 

Jack Potter

 

Prior to enlisting in the war and serving from 1941 to 1945, Jack Potter played four seasons of PG’s from age 17 to 21.  In those seasons Jack batted 30 times with 6 not outs for 1,430 runs at an average of 59.58 His four innings in the 1936 season totaled 373 runs at 93.25. Cricket historians often make the point that a good batsman knew how to convert a fifty to a century. Jack certainly knew how to do that with 6 centuries and 3 fifties during his PG career.

So how does Jack compare with some of his contemporaries mentioned earlier?

·       Jack scored 1,430 runs and next highest is Reece Bombas at 1,002 runs

·       Jack’s most runs in a season was 488 and next was Ken Eastwood with 387

·       Jack’s PG career average was 59.58 and next best was Sid Carroll with 49

·       Jacks highest average in a season was 93.25 which was followed by Ken Eastwood (77.40) and Harry Evans (74.00)

 

With the change this season to T20 and 50 over matches these 85 year old records are unlikely to be broken.

Jack enlisted in the war in 1941 and unlike many of his teammates, didn’t journey to multiple overseas destinations such as Palestine, Greece, England, New Guinea or Borneo; he was held in reserve in Australia and did an almost complete tour of the country, visiting Richmond, Ballarat, Ultimo, Camden, Townsville (twice), Brisbane (twice), Adelaide, Birdum NT, Batchelor (Darwin), Edgecliff and Lindfield. While jack was held in reserve it was a very important role as he was trained to be ready to face the Japanese and fortunately, he wasn’t needed.  At least Lindfield was a good finishing place for a Gordon cricketer.

 

Barry Eastment

 

If cricket was only played by batsman, Jack would be easily the best ever Gordon PG’s player, but those pesky bowlers often pop up with performances that need to be acknowledged. 

Standing with Jack at the top of the list of Gordon PG players was Barry Eastment, a fast-medium bowler, who had played on the First Eleven at Barker College for an extraordinary five seasons. Being able to play PG’s while still at school, Barry started in 1946, the first year of the PG competition after the war, at the age of 14. He continued playing until 1952 and collected 82 wickets at 15.17 in the PG competition. 

Barry played grade for Gordon, mainly in First and Second Grade from 1948 to 1962 and took 315 wickets at 18.68 as well as scoring 1006 runs.

If you thought that was the end of Barry’s cricket career after 13 years with Gordon, due to his bad knees and back he changed to being a ‘one step’ slow bowler and played a further 45 years with the I Zingari Club, retiring in 2005 at the age of 76. He took 2,292 wickets for I Zingari at an average of 51 wickets per season.

So, who was Gordon’s best ever Poidevin Gary player. I will let you decide.