Lives in Cricket No 12 - Ric Charlesworth

co-ordinator for the state cricket squad, where Ric would encounter him later. Politics, however, was far from Ric’s mind when he made a mark in the WACA’s under-16 competition in the 1967/68 season. In five innings, he had an aggregate and average of 217, with a highest score of 105 not out. 10 By-passing the lower three grades Ric played his first A grade matches for West Perth as a sixteen-year-old in 1968. His first captain at West Perth, Rodney Marsh, was five years older and hardly a batting role model for ‘the young boy’ of the team, who, Ric scarcely needed to recall, ‘didn’t play in the same swashbuckling way Rod did’. Perhaps Marsh’s flamboyant batting produced enough early dismissals to offer team-mates the best chance to get involved in games. The future Australian wicket-keeper on occasion opened the bowling, then put on the gloves to keep wicket, removing them to ‘do a bit of spin’ before opening the batting. Ric’s first A grade match was against a Subiaco team that included former state and one-Test fast bowler Des Hoare, seamers Jim Hubble, who had toured South Africa in 1966/67 without playing a Test, and Sam Gannon, who would play for Australia during the Packer schism of the late 1970s. Hoare maintained a fiery on-field 1952-1969 17 Hitting the headlines: some early successes. WACA, , 1967/68, p 122.