Lives in Cricket No 12 - Ric Charlesworth

Sometimes he told me I was arrogant in my attitude and careless with my preparation. … When I was fourteen, I remember my father admonishing me when I played hockey for Western Australia as an Under-16s schoolboy. I had played well the day before, but overconfident and showing off, I was sloppy in my warm-up and preparation. His father’s cricket coaching had ‘probably inhibited my natural development but I learned to concentrate’ and to prepare well for competition: Concentration is critical not only in slow-moving cricket but in the spontaneous physical sports also. Basics are the core of the great player’s game. That is not a bad list to be gleaned from one mentor. There was no easy praise, no undeserved rewards yet I knew he cared … he was the rock in my life although I didn’t really know it till he had gone. The first few months of 1980 brought fierce debate about whether Australian sport should join the boycott of the Moscow Games orchestrated by the United States in protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Although Ric’s ‘Olympic dream … was shattered by political interference,’ the ‘great disappointment of missing Moscow through the actions of wimpish hockey administrators paled into insignificance’ for him in comparison with the unexpected death that ‘rocked me more than any event before or since,’ he wrote in 2001. 22 * * * * * The hockey team’s silver medal in 1976 had left Ric ‘hungry to go one further’ in 1980. He felt the ‘inexperienced and raw team’ from Montreal was ‘mature and ready for the challenge’ under his leadership in Moscow. As he recalls in The Coach : As captain of the men’s hockey team I lobbied strenuously in support of the Australian Olympic Committee’s right to go to Moscow. We athletes received scant financial support from the government and felt little enthusiasm for the political posturing of [Australian prime minister] Fraser and [United 48 1976-1981 22 Ibid ., pp 63-64.