The PINT Cricket Club will celebrate 50 years of existence
A former president of PINT looks back on 50 years of one of Darwin’s proudest cricket clubs and who helped make it great. See some of the best photos from the club’s history.
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All it took was a bottle of scotch to literally lay the foundations for a proud Darwin cricket club’s first step into a new era.
Back in the late 1980s, former PINT president Craig Fildes’ father in law played a key early role in the club’s move from Gardens out to Marrara.
Working in the trucking industry, he acquired a dozer to flatten the land for the club’s training facilities — all for the relatively cheap price of a bottle of scotch.
It proved to be an important piece of ground work before the club’s golden era arrived more than 20 years later with a historic threepeat from 2012.
And on Saturday night, the club will look back on those three famous flags and plenty other special memories, and people, that have ensured the club has flourished for 50 proud years.
It comes as the PINT Club finds itself in financial strife with the club’s committee voting to enter voluntary administration on July 13.
The struggles came as the Territory government requested the club return a grant of up to $200,000 alleging the funding was not use for the intended purpose.
Fildes, known as “Fiddles” among those who know him well, will be flying up north from Adelaide, where he runs a retail business, for the big show.
His involvement at the club began towards the end of the 80s when the club was located behind the old Channel 9 offices at Gardens.
With just a couple of nets, facilities were pretty limited, Fildes recalled, but he was embraced with open arms.
“I went up to Darwin for two years in 1986, and I came back in 2016,” Fildes said with a laugh.
“It was a very welcoming club.”
However, through plenty of fundraising and some good old fashioned hard work, the club built its own facilities out at what we now know as DXC Arena.
“We’d have working bees out there planting grass for the run ups,” Fildes said.
“We raised money, we had to build our own cricket nets.
“Everyone just got involved, that’s what’s great about the club.
“A lot of people donating their time and money.”
It would become part of PINT’s DNA, with the club’s volunteers and supporters offering up rooms for visiting imports to stay, with the likes of Trent Kelly and Graham Manou playing in the green and gold in the 2000s.
“You embrace them, you give them that family life,” he said.
“That’s the great thing about PINT.”
When asked about the key figures over five decades, plenty of names come to mind: life member Jim Kuskey, former president Anthony “Harro” Harrison, loyal supporter, patron and sponsor, the late Bill Passmore, to Jack Coady and his late wife Margaret who passed away in 1999.
Up until this season, Jack had been a fastidious exponent of cricket scoring for the club’s Premier team, with all the right coloured pens.
“He’s been around for forever and a day, 40-plus years,” Fildes said.
“The Coadys are synonymous with PINT.”
Then there’s other life members, like Paul and Cathy Allen to Roger and Kaye Cowley, with the latter a strong contributor to the club’s junior program for 25 years.
There’s also Darwin’s original My Cricket, John “JM” Marshall, a long term supporter who has become known for his treasure trove of competition statistics.
And on the field, the club has produced a number of high achievers, like Luke Robins, Kane Richardson, Cameron Francis and Joel Logan
However, the club’s current president and leading batter Simon Lavers remains one of its greatest recruits, who arrived in 2004.
“I was present when (Lavers) first came to our club,” Fildes said.
“Now he’s the leading scorer in A Grade cricket.
“He’s come a long way from that young kid who turned up from Adelaide.”
PINT Cricket Club will hold its 50th anniversary celebrations on July 29 from 6.30pm.
See PINT Cricket Club through the years.
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