Town’s grassroots glory, Cricket Australia’s shame

The Australian cricket team members have one thing in common: they all started playing at a tiny volunteer-run club.

Passionate former cricketers Peter Morley, 78, rear, left, and Rob Asquith, 80, watch on with pride and joy at the oval they have lovingly restored at Euroa in rural Victoria. Picture: Aaron Francis

The members of the Australian cricket team who will line up for the national anthem before the Boxing Day Test match come from all over the continent — every state, city and country — but there is one thing they all have in common: they all started playing at a club, usually tiny, and essentially run by volunteers.

The country town of Euroa, halfway between Melbourne and Albury, has provided Australia with two Test cricketers, both hard-charging fast bowlers: Bull Alexander, who had the temerity to bounce Douglas Jardine during the Bodyline series, and Merv ­Hughes, who bounced everyone. But its cricket, as it has in many places, has struggled in recent times. Its playing numbers dwindled; its association folded; its ­facilities have been burdened.

Four years ago, The Weekend Australian visited Friendlies Reserve, the oldest cricket ground in Euroa, dating from a land grant to the local friendly society in 1874. It was a spartan, parched patch of land with a worn out synthetic surface and a circumference hooped in rusty metal.

The visit followed statements by Cricket Australia’s then chair David Peever committing the organisation to enhance funding for grassroots cricket. “We recognise we have to build this foun­dation much more strongly,” he said.

Four years on, Friendlies is transformed. A turf square is thickly thatched. Santa Anna couch is flourishing, despite hoons doing doughnuts on the ground. The reserve is ringed with a pristine white picket fence. And cricket, now on its Christmas break, will resume there on January 9.

What was Cricket Australia’s contribution? According to Peter Morley and Rob Asquith, who first dreamed of reviving the oval, nothing. Ditto Cricket Victoria and the federal government.

Former sports minister Bridget McKenzie, says Morley, expressed vast enthusiasm for the plan “She said ‘This is a fantastic project. I’ll go to the council meeting. I’m going to go in there and bat for you. Blah blah blah,” he says.

“So the council applied for a grant for the irrigation — didn’t get a thing, and didn’t hear another word.”

But Morley, a 72-year-old retired accountant and leg-spinner, and Asquith, an 80-year-old retired newsagent and wicketkeeper, were undismayed. They persuaded the Rotary Club of Euroa and Burtons Supermarket to co-fund a $20,000 consultation’s masterplan with the Shire of Strathbogie.

They raised another $50,000 from other sponsors, including by selling naming rights to the pickets. They cajoled the shire into matching funding, which in turn loosened the purse strings of the state government. There have been lots of setbacks, overcome in the end by goodwill.

Next step, the changing rooms, good enough for a bunch of blokes in the 1970s, but hardly suitable for the diverse cricket of today. And Euroa’s next notable player may be 16-year-old pace bowler Georgia Gall, who plays for the Melbourne Stars in the Women’s Big Bash League.

Given that India’s tour of Australia will net Cricket Australia $200m, thanks to the magic pull of events like today, it should be a modest ambition. And that’s the other thing about clubs: tiny sums of money can do a lot of good.