Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

22 So close for Victoria after moving across from his native New Zealand. His success for his adopted state was not immediate, and it was to be two more years before he played his first Sheffield Shield match for them. 12 ) Thematch at Launceston ended as a drawon 16 February. Not even Ponsford had done enough to earn selection for Victoria’s next Shield match a week later in Adelaide (even though batsmen of the class of R.L.Park and Jack Ryder were unavailable), so despite his success at Launceston Rimington’s omission from that team was hardly a surprise. And it was essentially the same team that travelled on from Adelaide to Perth for Victoria’s last first-class match of the season, against Western Australia - then, like Tasmania, one of the Cinderella states of Australian cricket. Once again Rimington was not chosen to replace those who couldn’t make both legs of the journey - and neither was Ponsford. Never again did Rimington’s performances at club level bring him close to selection for a second first-class match. He had to be content with a final career average of 91. His club career seems to have lasted nearly another 25 years, for we read of an ‘S.Rimington’ playing sub-district cricket for Kew in the 1942/43 season, and playing for the Hawthorn-East Melbourne third eleven in December 1945. Eventually his playing career came to an end, but he lived on. And on: having been born on 22 January 1892 at Kew (Melbourne), he eventually died there on 23 November 1991, just 60 days short of becoming the first Australian first-class cricketer to reach 100 years of age. 13 The tributes from his large family (two children, eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren) that appeared in The Age show us that he was a caring, devoted, and much-loved family man. One tribute in particular stands out, allowing us to create at the last an evocative picture of the man, as well as showing that, to his family at least, his life in cricket was not forgotten - as well as giving us a clue as to how he probably spent his long years in retirement: ‘RIMINGTON, Stanley Garnet - You played the cricket fields, you fished the streams, you lived among the flowers, you enjoyed your family, and now you have rejoined your sweetheart Grace.’ The final two Much less biographical information is available for the other two cricketers with a 90 in their only match; in truth, almost nothing is known of them, and in one case we only have one name by which to try to identify him. This was Salim , who top-scored with 92 at number eight for United Provinces against Bengal at Varanasi (Benares) in a Ranji Trophy match in January 1942. In those days the Ranji Trophy was contested on a knock-out basis 12 Fans of Plasticine-based animation will doubtless be delighted to learn that in Tasmania’s first innings the bowling attack was opened by Wallace and Grimmett: debutant Percival Wallace delivered the first over, and Clarrie Grimmett the second. 13 In due course that distinction fell to Ted Martin of Western Australia, who reached the landmark in September 2002.