Lives in Cricket No 12 - Ric Charlesworth

Chapter Two 1970-1976 Entry to medical school in 1970 meant that for the next six years Charlesworth played cricket for University. He had no choice. Although graduates were allowed to remain with the University cricket club, in his day undergraduates were not permitted to continue playing for their district cricket clubs. The enforced move did, however, take him to a club with an excellent recent history and a home ground, within the scenic UWA campus, described as ‘a graveyard’ for bowlers by eventual Western Australian team-mate leg-spinner Bob Paulsen, formerly of Queensland. After the University club was admitted to the WACA competition in 1913, the year the first undergraduates enrolled, there had been occasional attempts to oust it by the other clubs. They were annoyed at losing some of their best young players for a number of seasons – and potentially for ever – and resented the unique status that allowed University to avoid amalgamations imposed on district clubs in response to Perth’s changing demographics. Perth’s only university had formidable networks of alumni in politics, law and other professions able to resist such threats. In 1974 Murdoch University – named after former UWA Chancellor, Sir Walter, rather than the ‘Dirty Digger’, his great-nephew Rupert – became the first of eventually four new ones in the metropolitan area. But UWA cricket and hockey teams remained simply ‘University’. They were part of a proud sporting tradition that included state and Test cricketers and Australian representatives at Olympic, World and Commonwealth Games in rowing, swimming, water polo, hockey and athletics: foremost among the athletes was 1947 science graduate Shirley Strickland (later de la Hunty), arguably Australia’s greatest ever female Olympian with seven medals – three gold, one silver and three bronze – at the 1948, 1952 and 1956 Games. Ric Charlesworth won 21