Lives in Cricket No 12 - Ric Charlesworth

players gain Australian experience in the WACA competition, notably Alec Stewart, who played for Midland-Guildford for eight seasons before appearing for England. Making something of a mockery of the distinctive status that had required its players to be undergraduates or graduates, University had included, at different times, a number of professionals who had played international cricket for England. The trend had started as early as 1977/78 with Chris Tavaré, who shared accommodation with Ric during his season’s stay. It was another fifteen years before Mark Ealham began a more consistent trend. Two years later Mark Ramprakash began the 1996/97 season with an innings of 120 that in 2009 remained a club record for a batsman on debut. Ed Smith followed in 1999/2000. In 2001/02 Owais Shah scored 636 runs (at 42.40), taking eleventh place on the club’s all-time list of seasons’ aggregates. But in the following summer both he and Smith had to settle for second grade because Ramprakash had returned for another season. In 2003/04 it was Ian Bell’s term to gain Australian experience with University. 42 While the WACA insisted that only one English professional could play first grade at a time, University itself showed at least some concern for tradition and decorum by refusing to consider any of the imports for its ‘team of the century’. Ric Charlesworth was included in that notional best team, ahead of three-Test player Wally Edwards, as opening batsman with Graeme Wood, at times his real partner for the state team. Yet if Perth, in so many ways – including sport – was much more connected to the outside world, many of its citizens continued to display the ugly side of parochialism. When we met in late April, Ric and I shared our exasperation at the continuing flood of letters to The West Australian newspaper, and of callers to talk-back radio stations, enraged at the supposed threat posed by minuscule numbers of refugees arriving in leaking boats in the state’s north, after fleeing desperate circumstances in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and elsewhere. Inevitable targets of the racist abuse included the relatively new federal ALP government that had softened the harsh conditions of detention imposed by their conservative predecessors and administered by Philip Ruddock, the contemporary Ric had regarded as further left than himself during his decade in Parliament. 92 Epilogue 42 ‘University Cricket Club records, to end of 2004-05 season’, PDF.