By John Harms
On the last Friday November 29, 1974, fifty years ago to the day precisely, eleven boys, mainly in white Penguin shirts, unbuttoned, with their cricket shorts pulled up slightly too, waited at the big gate of Oakey Primary School. Some shadow-hooked, flourishing their own personal cricket bats, Polyarmours, although I had a Shaw and Shrewsbury; some spun a paintless compo from hand to hand; some practised the cocked cobra of the star of the 1972 Tour of England, D.K. Lillee whose back had troubled us even more than it had troubled him; some chatted, sipping from their water containers.
“Wally Edwards is out?”
“Who the hell is Wally Edwards?”
“New opener.”
“Another opener.”
“But who is he?”
“He’s Ross Edwards’ brother.”
“No, he’s not.”
“Cousin.”
“Yeah. Cousin. They’re from WA.”
It was the very first morning of the Ashes summer of 1974-75, which was to become, without a doubt, the most pivotal cricket series of my childhood. Australia had been 2 for 10 and we feared for a disastrous collapse.
Stephen Varley’s mum, Averell, was nowhere to be seen. Nor was my mother. We were all getting more and more nervous. We still had to drive the twenty minutes or so, past Kingsthorpe and Gowrie Mountain, to take on the finest of rough-and-tumble Wilsonton, the most western suburb of Toowoomba, at cricket.
“They’re not related,” I said.
“Who?”
“Ross and Wally.”
We kicked the dirt with our Dunlop Volleys, and Narms. A couple of the fill-in cricketers wore gym boots and their whites were borderline, grubby T-shirts. But they were getting an afternoon away from the blackboard and Morgy O’Brien who could cast a dark, after-lunch eye when you weren’t as enthusiastic about singing ‘Finiculi, Finicula’, ‘Eerie Canal’ or ‘Lime-Juice Tub’ during Let’s Go Music.
I had my red Sharp pocket radio with me. It sat on a fence post so we could all follow proceedings from the Gabba, just two and a half hours down the range. I can still hear Alan McGilvray.
The Chappells had dug in; the Australian innings had been steadied. Skipper Mike Denness had thrown the ball to Tony Greig to find the spark. We were still getting to know the new visitors, but we remembered Tony Greig from the Rest of the World tour in `71-`72. And England. Toweringly tall, and running in from about mid-off, he was pigeon-toed and his left foot kept landing bang in the block hole. Every time he did, Ian Chappell would walk over, re-mark his guard with a spike, and dish out some lip.
The world had Muhammad Ali, but we had I.M. Chappell.
Neither was going to concede. In the effects mic, you could hear individual voices from under the poincianas letting Tony know what they thought. Alan McGilvray called it in that old Australian voice that had placed cricket in every nook of the country. It’s funny what stays in the mind. An enterprising historian might try to find that ABC recording. I’d be keen to check my memory.
The impasse went on and on and on – probably for the grand total of one over – until the Varleys’ canary yellow Falcon pulled up and half the team piled in. The other half went in our Austin Tasman. We’d upgraded from the Morris 1100 and dodged the P76.
We were becoming cricketers.
Nay…we were cricketers.
The feel of the ball coming out of the middle, the sound of your delivery clipping the bails, a hot catch behind square leg, was winning us. And so, too, the hope to wear The Baggy Green.
Oakey Primary was the biggest of the local schools – with about forty kids at each year level. During my Grade 6 year, we’d beaten the little schools in the wheatfields like Jondaryan (although they had a genuine quick in Tony Ryan), Bowenville and St Monica’s Convent pretty authoritatively and so Morgy nominated us for The Big Smoke. We played all our games In Town, taking on some of the kids we played with, and against, in Saturday morning Under 12 and Under 13 club cricket. The Brothers Harms played for Wests.
We played backyard cricket, on a strip of turf we watered and mowed and rolled; we listened to the cricket; we watched the cricket; we read everything we could about the cricket.
Yes, we loved the game. The 1972 Tour of England (which is when I got my Sharp radio, I reckon) had helped create the love, but the Summer of `74-`75 was something else again.
The Chappells put on a hundred while we were serving it up to Wilsonton. We did enough. I got a wicket, caught and bowled, with my first ball – the final wicket of their innings – and we got the runs.
After the middle order failed in Brisbane, Australia were 8/229 but, thanks to Max Walker’s 41 and the mop-haired Jeff Thomson’s 23, reached 309.
Then the action started.
In those days, when the ABC assumed the responsibility to bring sport to the nation, the match could not be televised in the home state until after Tea. Listening to the radio, we pictured balls whizzing past English throats. Thommo went nuts at the top of the order until Tony Greig stood up to him and put together what I remember as a swashbuckling century. It took five hours. The Poms got to 265, close enough to be right in the Test match.
The Australian middle order batsmen were better in the second dig, with Greg Chappell, Ross Edwards and Doug Walters all making half centuries and Rod Marsh cashing in before the declaration.
Surely the Poms couldn’t chase the runs down – 250 was considered an enormous final innings score. They had to get over 300. Unheard of.
Lillee and Thomson were fired up, Thommo’s eccentric slinging action making the ball fly. He put fear into the eyes of the visitors, sending five of the first six batsmen back to the quaint tropical pavilion himself, the last one being Tony Greig for pittance, with his famous sand shoe crusher. He polished the match off by putting one through Mike Hendrick and we (Australia was still we in those days) won by heaps. England: All Out 166.
“Wow,” we said, when convening under the pepperina tree down by the incinerator. “How’s Thommo!”
“How’s his ball to Tony Greig?”
“He might kill someone.”
“It’ll be Dennis Amiss. For sure. He’s weak as piss.”
“They all are. Pommy sooks.”
My brother Peter was a good cricketer and we had some other handy ones. When Tony Ryan attended a World Series Cricket Clinic at Toowoomba Grammar School a few years later, Ian Chappell spotted him and took his phone number. Tony went off to study IT.
Stephen Varley was a wonderful friend. He was only ever known as Hector after the road safety character. An outstanding all-rounder, Hector was an intelligent left-arm opening bowler from a young age and a technically sound batsman who had all the shots and could really get going. His father Bob was a barman and horse trainer. After high school, Hector worked in a bank, while he was building a career as a bush race caller, until he was killed by a drunk driver in an awful highway accident.
We won about half our games In Town.
We couldn’t wait for the WACA.
John Harms is a writer, historian and publisher who lives in the Barossa Valley.