Victorian Premier Cricket: Luke Manders helps put Swans in finals contention
‘Class act’ Luke Manders is flourishing in his return to Victorian Premier Cricket with Casey South Melbourne. Here’s how he got back to Casey Fields.
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The comment came from Nick Fry, the father of Casey South Melbourne fast bowler Jackson, at a golf day at Rosebud Country Club last November.
Fry senior was playing with former Swan Luke Manders, and he told Manders he should be playing Premier Cricket.
You’ve got too much talent not to be playing, he said.
Why don’t you go back to it?
It set off conversations at the golf day, a Casey South Melbourne function organised by club great Mick “Squizzy’’ Taylor for past and present players.
The result was that Manders trained with the Swannies the following Tuesday and Thursday, and was selected in the First XI two days later.
As Jackson Fry noted, “when you think about it, it all happened pretty quickly’’.
Almost as quickly as Manders has climbed the Premier run charts.
A plumber, he lives in Foster in South Gippsland and felt he was too busy with work to make a comeback to the Swans.
But his talk with the Frys and then club president Shaun Petrie at the golf outing prompted him to change a few things – to work around work, you might say – and resume playing with Casey South Melbourne, which he left in 2017-28.
He’s glad he did.
The right-hander returned in Round 4. And in seven hits he has made almost 350 runs, with two centuries, including last Saturday against Camberwell Magpies at Casey Fields.
The Swans are in finals contention. And Manders is in superb form. He faced only 97 balls against the Magpies and put away 14 fours and 3 sixes.
He played all the shots, including the reverse sweep (which he made sure to bring out after coach Will Carr had said in the press that it was the only stroke he didn’t employ in his 107 not out against Essendon in Round 7).
Carr hadn’t seen Manders bat before this season. But he’d heard a lot of about him, particularly a century he made against Fitzroy-Doncaster four years ago.
Watching him in the nets that Tuesday at training, Carr resolved to start Manders straight in the firsts, a gamble that continues to pay off.
Go back to last March. As they announced their recruitment of Luke Shelton and Ruwantha Kellepotha, the Swans also confirmed their past batting average winner Manders would be returning.
A few months later it was clear he wouldn’t be.
“Work got a bit too much for me. I didn’t think I could get around it,’’ he explained.
“The season started, I wasn’t playing. I had that think after the golf day at Rosebud and I decided to scale back a bit and start playing again. And here we are.’’
Lining up alongside Fry, Cal Dodson and Shelton was a lure for him. They are tight, having played together at Chelsea Heights Football Club.
Manders is making the trip from South Gippsland for training every Tuesday and Thursday, with Carr letting him slip off after a hit and some fielding and fitness so he can make it back to Foster to put his young son to bed by 7.30pm.
But he and his wife, Alana, have got their house on the market and are planning to buy in the Carrum area, where Manders grew up and came through as a talented young sportsman.
He started his cricket at Edithvale Aspendale RSL and was starring in senior ranks as a teenager, first with East Sandringham and then Bentleigh Uniting.
Manders joined the Swans in 2016-17. In one-and-a-half seasons he played 16 First XI matches and hit 581 runs at 29, including the century against Fitzroy-Doncaster that Carr kept hearing about.
The move to the country took him to the Poowong-Loch and Outtrim Moyarra Kongwak clubs in the Leongatha association.
The pace of life and the pace of the bowling were appreciably slower than he was used to.
OMK won the premiership last season and Manders’ contribution to it was 500 runs at an average of 55.6.
He missed out on a century.
But since Christmas he’s made two with the Swans (delighting his two-man fan club, Matt Loader and Al Jenkins, whom he met at Poowong-Loch) and shared two century stands with young Ashley Chandrasinghe.
Manders said he saw his role at Casey South Melbourne as “without being told it, trying to complement Ash and make it simple for him, because he’s one we’re trying to get into the system and play at the next level’’.
“I just try to tick the scoreboard over and let him concentrate on batting,’’ he said. “It’s probably helping me a bit, thinking more about him than me.’’
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Carr said on Sunday he was “running out of superlatives’’ for Manders.
“He’s a class act,’’ he said.
“He’s batting as well as anyone I’ve seen in the competition this season.’’
Carr sees as a batsman with “great awareness and a simple technique – he’s either a step forward or a step back – he’s got great placement and he knows where his singles are and he knows where his boundary zones are’’.
Jackson Fry enticed Manders to Casey South Melbourne for his first stint in Premier Cricket.
And his golf partner Nick Fry helped lure him back, an ace move for player and club.
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