PETER HANLON
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Cricket Victoria Media Awards Cricket Victoria's major award was won by The Age's Peter Hanlon for his special summer seriess Why Cricket, which was adjudged the ‘most outstanding written, photographic, radio or television work relating to Victorian cricket'. April 2008 |
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Through the series, which included features by Lyall Johnson, Chloe Saltau, Warwick Green and John Harms, readers met some of the characters of the game and through them, discovered what it was like to play, be it for St Mary's-Tyntynder or Victoria, for a pub team or a team named after two pubs, for Sedddon or Australia. Why Cricket?  A SPECIAL SUMMER SERIES By Peter Hanlon EVERY summer Saturday, the old and the young rise to greet the weekend with cricket on their minds. They are the players, from flannelled fools down to Milo midgets, and in Victoria this year there are more than 176,000 of them, representing 1128 clubs, in 77 associations. Some wear pressed creams, spiked shoes and arrive at curated ovals lugging "coffins" of sponsor-supplied equipment and lofty ambitions of being one of the chosen, a member of the ultimate first XI. Others drive battered utes through country gates, wheels crunching on gravel no less forgiving than the expanse of barren earth on which they will spend the afternoon. They cobble together shirt and pants that might once have passed for whites, and for a few hours, they escape their lives. The sun beats down, the flies are unrelenting. They make a duck, drop a catch and curse as a local slaughterman takes 18 runs off their only over. Only the beer at day's end is kind. On Sunday they wake up sunburnt, dehydrated and wondering why they bother. Six days later, they do it all again. Cricket is said to be in trouble, fighting for its patch of dusty turf against the marauder that is Australian Rules. No longer, it seems, does its season in the sporting spotlight start in October and end in March. Rather, it competes for oxygen with a runaway spring racing carnival, is choked again until the footy clubs take a reluctant Christmas break, has a few days in the sun over Christmas and New Year, then is volleyed aside by tennis. By February, footy rules again. So what of those who play it, at all of its levels? What is the lure? What do they put into it? What does it give them in return? What brings them back? Why cricket? In a special summer series, to run every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, The Age will speak to cricketers from across the game's broad spectrum. From battlers in the bush to rural stars, strugglers in the suburbs to metro marvels, schools to women, midweek hackers to establishment offspring, eccentrics to professionals. We will meet the characters who make the game, and through them discover what it's like to play, be it for St Mary's- Tyntynder or Victoria, for a pub team or a team named after two pubs, for Seddon or Australia. Take block, scan the field, tap the toe of your bat on the crease. Look up to greet the bowler and swat the flies. Summer is upon us. Play. Published: December 19, 2007 |
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