SEVEN DAYS IN SPORT: You don’t have to own a baggy green cap – although it does help – for the great game to miss you when you’re finally out, writes RON REED:
COLIN Lovitt, QC, the eminent and colourful criminal barrister who died after a lengthy illness the other day, was the classic cricket tragic – he won’t mind me saying that he was a pretty average player but he loved the game and served it for a few seasons as president of the Carlton Cricket Club. In his young days he turned out for the Moorabbin Park club where he made his one and only century in one of the lower grades, and was also an inaugural member of the Plastic XI, the midweek team that he and I and a few other mates formed in the 70s and which featured Test and first class players past, present and future and League footballers from Carlton and elsewhere who weren’t able to play and train for full-time cricket. He batted low and rarely bowled but his personality and company were integral ingredients of the fabric of our group.
He had one other link to the game that most club players at all levels would recognise but few would have known about. For much of the second half of the last century – and maybe still, for all I know – a popular scorebook carried on its cover a photograph of the last moment in the famous tied Test against the West Indies in 1960. It shows batsman Ian Meckiff being run out by centimetres by a direct hit from fieldsman Joey Solomon, and was ragarded at the time as perhaps the finest cricket photograph ever taken. It might still be.
It was taken by Lovitt’s father, Ron, a news photographer for The Age and later its pictorial editor. Lovitt senior was a newspaperman through and through and encouraged his son to become a journalist. The teenager chose the law instead, very wisely – he became one of the Bar’s most formidable and successful operators, employing a fearlessly theatrical style that wouldn’t have been out of place in the old British TV hit series, Rumpole of the Bailey. Old Rumpole enjoyed a glass or three of red wine at the end of the day – so they had that in common too.
“The Embarrister,” as he was known to his many mates, was a connoisseur of the grape – a bon vivant, per excellence, in general, in fact. He could cook up a storm, too, and had a powerful singing voice, especially for ancient minstrel classics such as Old Man River, the employment of which was a highlight of my wedding and plenty of dinner parties and other functions in which I was privileged to be in his entertaining orbit.
The day after he died, I took a phone call from Meckiff informing me that his old team-mate Colin McDonald, who I also used to know pretty well, had also just passed, as had another close acquaintance whose name was big in Melbourne sport, Hawthorn footy legend Graham Arthur. It wasn’t a great 48 hours, to say the least. When I mentioned the Embarrister, The Count – Meckiff’s long-time nickname – knew immediately that I was referring to the son of Ron Lovitt, who gave him and the other batsman in it, Lindsay Kline, an enlarged copy of the famous photo, which was then autographed by all the players. It would be worth a bit, I imagine.
“I’m looking at it as we speak,” said The Count, who is now one of only four Australian survivors of that unforgettable match – Neil Harvey, Bob Simpson and Alan Davidson are the others.
Meckiff and McDonald were near neighbours for the rest of their lives, meeting for a glass of white wine whenever they could. After being controversially no-balled for chucking a year or two after the Tied Test, Meckiff never played cricket again at any level – but McDonald certainly did, and I for one am glad of it.
Many years ago I played a couple of seasons with the Melbourne Cricket Club’s A team in what was known as the club competition, which catered mostly for District players and above – and a few lesser lights like me — who were past their competitive peak and no longer had the inclination or time to train.
I was very pleased to find C. C. McDonald was a team-mate, as was tennis legend Neale Fraser, who always batted and fielded in an authentic baggy green cap that he had acquired somewhere. CC was about 60 at the time, I think, but still keenly enthusiastic, still opening the batting and fielding — with reduced alacrity, of course — at mid-on, and always immaculately attired in pressed creams and spotlessly white boots. And always with a story to tell, or a debate to pursue.
Like Meckiff, “Mort” Arthur was a fellow member of the Vingt Cinq Club, a Melbourne institution for sports veterans who enjoy a convivial lunch together, and was also a good club cricketer in his day until footy got in the way as he went on to captain the Hawks’ first premiership team.
RIP to the Embarrister, CC and Mort, all cricket contributors at their own level – and fine people to have known.
NOBODY would dispute that racist abuse from sports crowds towards players is unacceptable. But in the confused aftermath of the incidents during the Sydney Test when the Indian cricketers complained about being confronted with it, there appears to be a groundswell of opinion that spectators shouldn’t be allowed to sledge players at all – at the cricket, the footy or anywhere else.
Good luck with that.
Embed from Getty ImagesGiving the opposition a piece of your mind is such a tradition that there is a small statue on the boundary fence of the SCG of a barracker called Yabba, who turned it into an art form many years ago – with dry humour, and without ever giving offence apparently.
It’s all part of the experience – on both sides of the fence.
As long as it doesn’t become vilification – as long as the minority of galoots can stay on the right side of the line – barracking is to be encouraged, especially at the footy, and not futilely censored by the fun police – not that they would have much hope of achieving that anyway.
WHICH brings us to Tim Paine. Some – but only some – of his in-play baiting of Ravi Ashwin when the game got tight was a bit juvenile and unedifying, although you’d have to have a pretty thin skin to make an issue out of being called a dickhead. Yes, it is very important that the Australian team keeps its fragile behavioural image in good nick, which the captain has managed to do for a couple of years now, to much ell-deserved acclaim. But he’s not a dickhead himself, far from it, and his public apology has been accepted by all and sundry as entirely the appropriate thing to do. Case closed. Ditto for the Steve Smith crease-scratching non-event.
Embed from Getty ImagesI for one won’t miss the Grand Prix, especially as it hasn’t been lost, only postponed. Of all the major global sports events on which Melbourne hangs its hat, it has the least appeal, a sentiment I suspect is widely shared.
The Australian Open tennis is much more popular, but it does seem incongruous that a way has been found for it to proceed while it has been made all too hard for the petrolheads.
Judging by the letters pages, social media and talkback radio, there are a lot of people uneasy about this, which is completely understandable, all the more so with a player who has previously tested positive being allowed to come. It’s a big risk for “only a tennis tournament,” is their view.
Yes, it IS a risk, but the operative word there is “only” – the Open is one of the four or five most valuable events that happen in this city each year, perhaps THE most valuable, so the risk-reward equation is well balanced in this case. We’ll just have to take all care and keep the fingers crossed, as is happening with other travel issues, and get on with life. After all, three cities have held cricket Tests without obvious problems, albeit with far fewer visitors involved.
RON REED has spent more than 50 years as a sportswriter or sports editor, mainly at The Herald and Herald Sun. He has covered just about every sport at local, national and international level, including multiple assignments at the Olympic and Commonwealth games, cricket tours, the Tour de France, America’s Cup yachting, tennis and golf majors and world title fights.
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