Lives in Cricket No 12 - Ric Charlesworth

Bank of Australia and Rolf Harris. 4 Following several years in the school first eleven Lester played A grade pennant cricket with a number of clubs in the WACA competition during the war. For four seasons he appeared in the lists of the competition’s heaviest scorers: 468 runs in 1940/41, playing for Subiaco; 407 for Claremont in 1941/42; and 420 and 483 back with Subiaco in 1942/43 and 1943/44. By now his movements were evidently confusing the WACA statisticians who, in different editions of the Year Book, seemed uncertain whether he accumulated the season’s highest aggregate of 570 in 1945/46 with Claremont or, correctly, Nedlands. He was again with Nedlands in 1946/47, when he topped the pennant averages with 80.60, and two seasons later, when his 610 runs were the season’s sixth highest aggregate. 5 Lester’s consistency eventually won him a place as opening batsman for Western Australia in eight matches in the 1949/50 and 1950/51 seasons. Thirty-three at the time of his first-class debut, his opportunities for a more substantial cricket career were restricted further by Western Australia’s part-time status: admitted to the Sheffield Shield as recently as the 1947/48 season, it played the other states only once rather than both home and away. After two seasons he retired to concentrate on his dentistry practice. He had scored one century, against Queensland in his first season, and finished with an average of 32.93 from sixteen innings, marginally better than Ric would eventually achieve in his much longer career. 6 Lester continued in grade cricket for three seasons after he left the Sheffield Shield scene. He took eighth place in the A grade averages in 1951/52, playing for Nedlands. Falling out with the club over what he believed was favouritism in some of the team selections, he asked Allan Edwards if he could move to his West Perth club. Naturally Edwards was delighted to welcome a friend whose determined batting for the state side he’d seen at close quarters. The move was a great success. In his first season at West 1952-1969 11 4 The prime minister, from 11 March 1983 to 20 December 1991, was Bob Hawke; Sir Paul Hasluck was governor-general from 29 April 1969 to 11 July 1974; and H.C.Coombs the governor of the Reserve Bank from January 1960 to July 1968. 5 Western Australian Cricket Association [hereafter WACA], Year Books , 1940/41, 1941/42, 1942/43, 1943/44, 1945/46, 1946/47. 6 All first-class statistics in this work are derived from cricketarchive.com , while biographical information about first-class players comes from that source, the author’s The WACA: An Australian Cricket Success Story . Allen and Unwin: Sydney, 1998 and Christopher Martin-Jenkins, The Complete Who’s Who of Test Cricketers . Sydney: Rigby, and London: Orbis, 1980.