Country cricket champion Cameron Williams to lead Warrnambool at Melbourne Country Week

Snubbed by state selectors, regional cricket great Cameron Williams — a brickie from Warrnambool — is looking to add more success to one of country Victoria’s most decorated careers at Melbourne Country Week. 

Russells Creek CC champion Cameron Williams with Lee Stockdale.

Cameron Williams remembers his senior debut in local cricket more for a feared opponent than his first cap.

He was 15 when Warrnambool and District association power Nestles selected him to open the batting against Allansford and a fast bowler named Stephen Gibson.

Williams swears he was picked because no one else wanted to face him.

“Mate, I didn’t know him from a bar of soap, but he bowled smoke. I’d made 20-odd in the Under-17s so they put me up and threw me to the wolves,’’ he says with a laugh.

“I faced ‘Gibbo’ for an over and got out to the bloke at the other end.’’

Gibson, he recalls, took six wickets and blitzed a century but rain denied his team victory.

Other than being awed by the Allansford ace, Williams did little that day.

But in the years since he’s achieved a lot as a wicketkeeper-batsman, in the local competition and at representative level at Melbourne Country Week and the Australian country championships.

And he’s done it with a happy-go-lucky demeanour that has endeared him to teammates, if not, he suspects, some of the officials in charge of teams.

Cameron Williams enjoys a Russells Creek premiership with son Lane.

Williams calls himself “just a brickie from Warrnambool who plays cricket on the weekend’’.

He is an uncomplicated cricketer and fellow. After a game he likes to relax with a cold beer, preferably a long-neck Carlton Draught, a puff on a cigarette and talk about the day’s play.

Williams, 32, says he’s a “pretty relaxed sort of character’’.

He says he plays cricket as seriously as anyone, but applies to it a certain detachment reflecting the fact that the game brings more failures than triumphs.

“You’ve got to have fun, because 85 percent of the time you play you won’t get good memories … you’ll have more bad days than good days,’’ he says.

“I’ve always had fun. Life’s bigger than a game of cricket. You can’t get emotionally attached to it, because you’ll end pretty bloody sad.’’

Next month, Williams will captain the Warrnambool association in its return to the Provincial division of Melbourne Country Week.

He’s played much Country Week cricket, just as he was a regular for Victoria at the national country championships. He must be counted as one of the Vics’ most decorated players, having figured in two titles, gained three Australian selections, received three Ian Healy trophies as best wicketkeeper and won two awards as Victoria’s leading cricketer at the carnival.

Cameron Williams attacking the bowling.

Two years ago he caned 187 off 125 balls against the Philippines, prompting his mates to tell him he almost single-handedly destroyed a country’s developing cricket program.

But his past performances weren’t enough to secure him a place at this season’s championships.

To his deep disappointment, the selectors looked elsewhere, going with another keeper and another opening batsman. The Vics won the title.

“I was shattered,’’ he says. “Obviously they went a different way. Credit to them, the two guys they brought in performed really well. I’ve never been a selfish player … I was stoked for them, because I’ve been part of two (championship wins) and they’re the best fun in the world and you become mates with guys who have the same passion for the game as you. Anyway, I’ll have a crack at it next year because I think I’ve got another couple of years left in me.’’

His absence from the nationals has fixed his focus on Melbourne Country Week.

“I can’t wait for it. It’s an awesome week away with guys you normally play against,’’ he says.

Cameron Williams on the job keeping for Russells Creek.

His first Country Week selection came when he was 18 and he’s now preparing for his ninth trip.

Williams has helped Warrnambool to two Division 2 titles and a Provincial grand final it lost against Geelong. That was in 2016-17 and he had a bumper week, putting up scores of 65, 47, 83, 87 and 27 to lift his name into twinkling lights among Victorian regional cricketers. The following season he was in the Victorian Country team, heading to Geraldton in WA.

Always, he has looked to put pressure back on bowlers. “Just try to get them on the back foot and make them not want to bowl to you,’’ he explains.

His attacking approach has brought him a string of big scores made at a fizzing rate.

“Someone’s got to play like that,’’ he says. “You can’t have 11 blockers out there. Someone’s got to get on with it and when it works you hold on to it very dearly. People don’t talk about ducks in the first over, do they?’’

With his wicketkeeping, he’s always liked to go up to the stumps to the quicker bowlers and look for leg-side stumpings. He thinks they’ve won his team a few matches.

Cameron Williams (right) and Vic Country teammate Nathan Walsh after a thumping partnership.

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Cameron Williams, Warrnambool born and bred, says he always wanted to be like his father, Geoff, and become a bricklayer and a wicketkeeper, a brickie and a wickie, you might say.

He did both. He started on the bricks when he was 15 and now has his own business. He started as a wicketkeeper when he set out playing cricket at Wesley CBC.

When he was 15, Williams followed his brother Geoff to Nestles Cricket Club.

After 99 senior matches he headed to Russells Creek, his home for the past nine years.

“Just felt like I needed a fresh start, but it was a bloody difficult decision,’’ he says. “In the overall scheme of things it was the best decision for my cricket and for me personally.’’

He’s played in seven grand finals and four premierships for Russells Creek, captaining two of the flags.

“We’ve had an awesome run,’’ he says.

It was the same with him for the Vic Country team, which Mark Ridgway coached to a title.

Former Tasmanian paceman Ridgway enjoyed Williams’s cricket and his company – “He’s one of the best blokes you could ever meet, genuine and authentic,’’ he says – and still chuckles about the carnival in Shepparton in 2018-19.

Williams was opening the batting with Jordan Moran – the Williams-Moran combination prompted one wag to call them the “Underbellies’’ – and kept getting run out.

When it happened a third time at the Tallygaroopna ground, a frustrated Williams, wanting to take his mind off his dismissal and the game, resorted to helping an old-timer brick in a door at the pavilion. He was rewarded for his work with a six-pack of beer. As he lined up his bricks, Moran lined up the bowling and scored a century against South Australia.

“Everyone thinks it’s a great story,’’ Williams says with a laugh.

“I thought I might as well do something useful.’’

Cameron Williams, pictured with grandmother Rosalie, has played in four premierships for Russells Creek since crossing from Nestles.

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Like fellow Victorian country players Heath Pyke and Adrian Burgiel, Cameron Williams had a season of Premier Cricket.

It was with Essendon in 2013-14 and he moved to Melbourne for five months, living with another left-hand batsman and wicketkeeper, Aaron Ayre, and Shane McNamara. He worked as a brickie all over the city.

But, he says, the “hustle and bustle’’ of the city was not for him.

He didn’t really enjoy the training – “They trained for three-and-a-half hours and did a 45-minute warm-up and I’d already been laying bricks for 10 hours’’ – but he relished the cricket.

Recommended to Essendon by former player Brian Salmon, Williams played two First XI matches for the Bombers, in one of them giving Northcote’s Marcus Stoinis a send-off after he had classically stroked the previous three deliveries to the cover boundary.

He made 39 in his only innings in Premier Cricket.

Ayre was ahead of Williams in selection and went on to play first-class cricket. “Fantastic player,’’ Williams says.

Essendon president Simon Tobin has warm memories of Williams, calling him an “absolute beauty’’.

“He came through the place like a whirlwind, like a bloody cyclone, this great breath of fresh air,’’ Tobin says.

“He was incredibly popular, a genuine throwback to 30 or 40 years, just a great country guy who was not only a good cricketer – and he really was a good cricketer – but had a good understanding of cricket club culture and threw himself into club life and made friends with everybody he encountered. He had this full-of-beans personality.’’

Tobin has an enduring memory of Williams turning up with a few teammates to watch the First XI in a final, reversing a ute on the long-on fence, setting up some deckchairs and producing an Esky holding more beer than ice.

His boisterous support for the Bombers extended from 10am to 6pm and tempted Tobin to make him man of the match. “He led the cheering all day long and we won the game,’’ Tobin says.

He’s adamant Williams would have played a lot of First XI cricket for the Bombers if he had stayed at the club.

Ridgway agrees. “He would have kept in every first grade team in Premier Cricket – and opened the batting,’’ he says.

Williams was happy to have at least one game of Premier Cricket. But he was happier to return to Warrnambool and play for Nestles and make the trip to Melbourne Country Week.

He says the team he’ll bring down next month will be strong and spectators should look out for English player Jack Burnham, who has been making bowlers consider taking up other sports.

It goes without saying that they should also cock an eye on the dashing wicketkeeper-batsman and skipper, the brickie from the ‘Bool.

Originally published as Country cricket champion Cameron Williams to lead Warrnambool at Melbourne Country Week