I can’t quite put my finger on how I came to love cricket. Growing up in Enmore a predominantly Portuguese community, cricket wasn’t the main game. Dad would tell me that I used to like bowling to the painted stumps on a wall in Enmore High. My sisters would say that my love of the game drove them nuts, I would bounce a ball all day and hit things, anything. We had a prolific grapefruit tree in the back yard, and I once managed to hook an unripened grapefruit right off the tree through the very large lounge room window with a broom stick. I broke a lot of windows and learned to replace them sometimes managing to do so without mum and dad noticing. Having spent a big chunk of life on a cricket field, I don’t have a lot of handyman skills but replace a window yes, I can do that.

My favourite players growing up were Dean Jones and Allan Border. Deano’s 210 in Madras just about says everything about Australian cricket. I absolutely loved the Test matches against the West Indies. I remember feeling so nervous for the Australian batsmen as they would go out to bat and would ride their innings with them.

I loved all aspects of the game, bowling, batting, and fielding. I was a small kid, so as the other kids around me grew and I didn’t, my bowling seemed a bit pedestrian. Small kids can bat though, and I took to being a gritty opening batsman modelled on Geoff Marsh and David Boon. For most of my early playing days I was an opening batsman, handy with the ball but not overly penetrative. I played in the local Gladesville District, we were a tiny association, and my memory of those representative junior days were one of defeat, probably compounded by being the captain for most of those matches.

https://www.cricconnect.com/profile/914/edmund-zelma/blog/1020/ed-zelma-hit-the-wicket-keeper-gloves-hard-all-day