Lives in Cricket No 12 - Ric Charlesworth

defeat on the same ground in the Second Test, Ric Charlesworth was reaching the pinnacle of his first-class batting career in Adelaide. South Australia declared at seven for 289, 57 runs ahead of a Western Australian first innings to which Ric had contributed 38, passing 2,000 runs in first-class cricket when he was 28. In the second innings Western Australia were four for 101 when he came in to bat at number six, rather than opening: ‘I’d been ill and we were struggling.’ When Serjeant was run out for 85 and Mann dismissed for eleven, the team was still only 75 runs ahead. After Kevin Wright helped him to add 22, only tail-enders Bob Paulsen, Wayne Clark and Terry Alderman remained. ‘I was not out overnight but there were only three wickets in hand and a day to play.’ During a partnership of 64 with last man Alderman – ‘Terry couldn’t bat much’ but remained nine not out – Ric reached his first and only first-class century, 101 not out, before Inverarity declared at nine for 270. ‘It was a good innings in a memorable game,’ Ric recalled thirty years later. Memorable finally because South Australia were bowled out for 164, with Clark taking six for 47, to give Western Australia victory by 49 runs. Wisden thought his innings ‘match-winning’ on one page and ‘cautious’ on another. Less than a week later, Ric’s contribution of a single to a total of 215 in a Gillette Cup semi-final at the WACA ground was significant only because one run proved to be the winning margin against Victoria. At the time, probably his team-mates felt Hughes’ 69, Serjeant’s 49 and Wood’s 35 (run out) were more important. Not much could be claimed for Charlesworth’s eight runs in the final in Hobart, lost to Tasmania by 47 runs. But his second innings 68 was top score in his team’s draw against Victoria in a Shield match at the MCG in January. At the end of that month he made only three and 25 at Devonport, where Tasmania scored six for 359 to win, after Western Australia had declared at five for 232 in the second innings. Not only did the defeat in Tasmania make it impossible for Western Australia to recapture the Shield, it also made for a bitter-sweet end to the career of the state’s most revered captain. John Inverarity scored 124 not out in the first innings, but it was to be his last for Western Australia. His teaching career was taking him to South Australia, where he would play, and in one season captain, with distinction until the end of the 1984/85 season. His absence enabled Charlesworth to captain his side for the first time 40 1976-1981