Ken Eastwood's Green Shield Season to Remember
Gordon District Cricket Club | January 25, 2025
As seasons pass, many young players perform brilliantly in the AW Green Shield competition. It’s a wonderful experience for 14-15 year olds to test their skills against their peers in probably their first seasons with a senior Grade club.
There was one Gordon player, however, whose statistics stand out far beyond those of any other boy who has played in the Green Shield competition.
In 1951-52, Ken Eastwood was playing his fourth year of Green Shield for Gordon. In the previous season, he had scored a century and taken 22 wickets, but no-one could foresee him having a series of games like he did. In seven games, plus a final, he scored 949 runs at an average of 118.37! He scored 5 centuries, including a massive 320 against Mosman. In this innings, he hit 35 fours and 6 sixes and shared in three century partnerships.
As well as this, he managed to take a remarkable 58 wickets at 6.55 His best performances were 9-47, 8-19, 8-38, 6-20 and 6-29!
The team reached the Final where they defeated Petersham-Marrickville by 8 wickets.
Ken also scored 387 runs in Poidevin-Gray at an average of 77.40 and played most of the season in 1st Grade. As well, he was 12th man for the NSW Colts against Queensland (aged 15).
A couple of years later, he had to move to Victoria to do his National Service. He continued to do well with his cricket and had great success in the Victorian team, particularly in the 1970-71 season where he scored 737 runs at an average of 122.83. Overall, he played 41 games for Victoria, scoring 2717 runs at 43.13 with nine centuries. He played one Test match against England in 1971 (Test cap 256).
So, if someone beats those performances, we have a pretty good player on our hands!
[Author: Michael Falk]
