Green Shield Trials 2022/23
(Sydney Metropolitan Players Only)
Please note our trial applications are now closed as of the 8th February 2022.
With thanks
Anand Karuppiah
Green Shield Manager
Email: anandkaruppiah2020@gmail.com
AMY RIDLEY CARRIES THE LEGACY … THROUGH GOALBALL!
There was no ticker-tape parade to welcome back our highly successful Olympians and Paralympians. Covid saw to that! However, there was a LIGHT SHOW - https://www.nsw.gov.au/whats-happening/celebrate-tokyo-2020 which was streamed live on Sunday, 5 September, 2021. As photos and videos of their activities were beamed in Aussie Green and Gold on the Opera House, there suddenly appeared “Amy Ridley Women’s Goalball”
Ridley is a name strongly associated with the Sydney University Cricket Club. So, is there some connection between Amy Ridley and the legendary Ridleys who played with, and who contributed in so many other ways to, the SUCC?
I learnt that Goalball - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goalball is a game invented by Austrians and Germans as a sport for visually impaired returning soldiers after World War II. I then found a 2 minute YouTube video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bZ51jzmbAQ and became fascinated by the sport, and quickly realised why I had never heard about it. It is the only sport played in the Paralympic Games that has no other ‘equivalent’ Olympic sport. Then, I found the connection with the Ridleys of the SUCC – Amy is indeed the daughter of Andrew, the niece of Nicholas, and the granddaughter of Damon.
However, Amy Ridley is blind.
Nevertheless, Amy has shown extraordinary resilience throughout her life. Year after year she was the top student at Turramurra High School and she is now studying Law and Economics at Macquarie University. She is an exceptional athlete who, in 2017, discovered her ideal sport, goalball. She has been greatly encouraged by her mother, Meredith, and her brothers, and, in a special way, by her father, Andrew.
Amy, the youngest of the Australian Women’s Goalball team in Tokyo, represented NSW as a junior at the Australian Goalball Championships, and the Pacific School Games, and was a member of the Australian Team that won the silver medal at the Youth World Championships in 2019. At the Tokyo Paralympics the team lost their first two matches, but narrowly beat Canada 4-3 in the next round. This was the first Australian Paralympic win since Atlanta 1996! Following their decisive win against the World Champion Russians, they made the quarter finals for the first time ever, but were beaten by Turkey, the subsequent Paralympian Champions.
Amy Ridley playing at the 2019 IBSA Goalball Youth World Championships in Penrith, Australia
When she returned to Australia, Amy said “The best part of the Paralympics was being among so many disabled athletes, and admiring and being inspired by how much they were achieving.”
Andrew Ridley, a dynamic left-hand batsman, followed his father, former 1st Grade captain, Damon Ridley, into 1st Grade in 1989-90. Andrew eventually scored 2160 runs in 1st Grade and 5679 runs for the Club in all grades. His younger brother, Nicholas, scored 5229 runs for the Club. Damon, Andrew and Nicholas between them scored 13,344 runs for Sydney University, a record without parallel. Nicholas’ academic record at Sydney University was simply remarkable. 23 High Distinctions, first class honours, the University Medal.
Andrew captained the Australian Universities of 1991, graduated with 1st Class Honours in Organic Chemistry and was awarded the Bradman scholarship for 1993 and studied at Exeter College Oxford. While at Oxford, he played twenty 1st class games, scoring 857 runs including a majestic 155 at Lords for Oxford University against the University of Cambridge.
Returning to Sydney, Andrew captained SUCC’s 2nd Grade and was Club Captain when the Club won its historic first Club Championship in 1999-2000, an achievement which gave him enduring satisfaction.
Since retirement from playing, Andrew has gained cricket and AFL coaching certificates, then he started coaching goalball. He is now the Australian Men’s Head Coach, with the mission to develop the men’s squad for the 2032 Brisbane Paralympics. Andrew admits: “a lot of my coaching references cricket.” And to exemplify, he explains that he gets his players to ‘listen’ to the ball from the time it is released. This is the same skill which Andrew honed-in ‘watching’ the ball from the bowler’s hand. “Stability, balance and alignment” are skills preached in cricket which Andrew has used in his coaching of the visually impaired.
He explains further: “The visually impaired talent pool isn't big to start with, and then it is split between the likes of Blind Cricket, Blind Tennis, Blind Football and the other Paralympic Sports. Goalball takes a certain type of person who is happy to play reverse dodgeball with a 1.25Kg ball that is hurled at you from around 10 metres away at 60Kph. When Amy throws a ball at me at 20Kph, which is about half pace for her, it hurts!”
“These other visually impaired sports have obvious connections with mainstream sports who are more and more realising the value of being seen to be inclusive. Couple this with the fact that Australia’s employment rate for people with disability is just 47%, which is in line with the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander employment rate of 46%, and with goalball being unfunded, then you can see how easily talented sports people can be drawn to the sports backed by the likes of Cricket Australia and Tennis Australia.
“Paralympics Australia funding is limited to high performing teams, hence the Australian Men's Goalball program in particular is stuck in the vicious cycle of lack of funding inhibiting any ability to prove that they are worthy of being funded. Having said that, I think I can make a difference with my coaching and with a new generation of players who will start to develop over the next couple of years - that is why I put my hand up to be Australian Men's Head Coach.“
For players, by far the main cost is in travelling to national camps and to competitions, and traditionally the expenses of coaches, physios and support staff costs are met by the players, so costs for each player are over $10,000 annually – not including trips to ophthalmologists, and surgeries (for example, Amy on average requires at least two eye operations per year).
Perhaps because he was extensively involved with the SUCC, he realised that to have success, sporting teams need support in many ways, including strong management, scholarships to players, and an adequate funding base, so Andrew is actively seeking sponsorship for all aspects of the Australian Men’s Goalball Team. “Visually impaired people have to climb their own personal mountains of hardship, so besides assisting my goalballers through coaching and mentoring, I am trying to help them become successful individuals, and as proud to pull on an Australian goalball shirt as Australian cricketers are proud to pull on the ‘baggy green’ ”.
Andrew is a fine example of a servant leader who puts his players and their welfare well ahead of his own.
Amy Ridley is an inspirational young woman who deserves any success that will undoubtedly attend her.
The Ridley legacy of excellence is in the safest of hands.
James Rodgers
By James Rodgers
(1 of 2 Medical Student Tales)
GL Saunders (SUCC 1 st Grade cap no179) is a minor footnote in SUCC’s sweeping history. He appears once and then virtually disappears, for ever.
He played his one game in 1st Grade in January 1919, one of 23 players who took the field with
University’s 1st Grade during the 1918-19 season; one of six who played their only game in 1 st Grade in that season. On 6 January 1919 (exactly 103 years ago today as I write), the world was still dizzy with elation following the Armistice in November 1918 which signalled the end of the dismal days of fighting in the Great War. Seventeen University cricketers never returned; six of the seventeen were still students when they enlisted.
George Lord Saunders (MB, ChM 1921) was a Medical student who fielded on the rain-affected first day while Glebe piled up 3 for 128. He wasn’t needed to bowl although University’s captain, Les Best, summoned seven others to the bowling crease. On the second day, the Australian Test player, Warren Bardsley, dominated and carried his bat for 138 out of 253. ‘Tim’ Yates recorded his best 1 st Grade figures with 5 for 35. Saunders had been one of two changes in the University side forced on the University selectors by the vacation. Jack Clemenger and University’s leading bowler, Ted Trennery, were both on holidays and Saunders and TP Flattery were called into the side. Flattery was a graduate of Waverley College and a future barrister and lecturer in Roman Law at the University.
Left hander Jim Bogle, a 25 year old Medical student, opened when University went in to bat. He top scored with 34 and Saunders, batting at number 11, was left 0 not out when the innings came to a sorry end. When University followed on, there was another collapse which left them 5 for 53. Curiously, Bogle didn’t bat again. His fellow Med student, Saunders, wasn’t required. The 1918-19 1 st Grade side finished a creditable seventh in the competition with six wins and six losses and two remarkable ties. In round 3, both Balmain and University had scored 327. In round 10, Waverley was 9 for 138 chasing 148. A series of nervous singles and wild swipes into the outfield concluded when University’s Jimmy Sullivan caught a ‘skier’ as Balmain’s Sheppard tried to hit University’s Charlie Lawes out of the ground. The University side was held together mainly by the batting of Jim Bogle who had an ‘annus mirabilis’ which he never repeated. In 1 st Grade, he scored an extraordinary 1090 runs at 83.8 with six centuries.
The next in aggregate was Les Donovan’s 433. Bogle’s 1090 was the first occasion when a University 1 st Grader had scored over 1000 for the season and it was to be the only time when Bogle himself ever approached anything like it. It took another 88 years before Greg Mail’s 1225 runs in 2006-07 broke this record. Since then, Damien Mortimer, Nick Larkin and Greg Mail, twice more, have surpassed Bogle’s old record and Greg Mail’s 1242 in 2009-10 is the current 1 st Grade record for SUCC. When Bogle, on the strength of his consistent and outstanding run-scoring, was selected for NSW a few weeks later in January 1919, he scored 145 on debut as NSW chased down 387 to defeat Victoria. He was not often available for NSW because of his medical studies but when he was called up again in the next season for the game against South Australia in Adelaide, he was dropped first ball and then ground out an extraordinary200.
The remarkable thing about Bogle’s 1090 was how much it stood out in his Grade career. In the other six seasons in which he played 1 st Grsde (for Glebe and University), he averaged a moderate 25.
The two unlikely teammates, George Saunders and Jim Bogle, were a year apart in the Faculty of Medicine. While Bogle was creating records almost every week on the cricket fields, Saunders returned to his studies and never played 1 st Grade again. And that’s where he disappears from sight. We know that his father, George, and mother, Grace, were married in 1893 and lived around Newcastle. We know that George had two brothers, Frank who served in the Flying Corps in the Great War and Charles. And that his sister Aimee lived until 1972.
But many questions remain unanswered.
Where did George go to school?
What sort of cricketer was he?
What sort of character was he?
What did he do after graduating in 1921?
If any of our readers have any ideas, I would be most grateful to hear from you about the Medical student who played one 1 st Grade game and who never scored a run or took a wicket.
By James Rodgers
Bernard Russell FRENCH, DSO, OBE
Bernard Russell French was born into Sydney Patrician classes. His father, Sir John Russell French, 1847-1921, was General Manager of the Bank of NSW. BR French was educated at Sydney Grammar School and, from 1904, at the University of Sydney while resident at St Paul’s College, studying Arts and Law(BA 1907, LLB 1910). At school, he had been a 150 yard runner but he had failed to gain a position in the school 1 st XI which was exceptionally strong. He batted and bowled steadily in the school’s 2nd XI and passed in Latin, French, Algebra and Trigonometry in the Senior Examinations of 1903. During the Great War, he enlisted in London while he was holidaying there in 1914 and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Munster Fusiliers and was twice mentioned in despatches and twice decorated (DSO, Silver Medal of the Crown of Italy). An account of his time at Gallipoli, Salonika, Palestine and France is preserved in a series of detailed letters that he wrote to his father (“My dear Father”).
Similarly, his time in Southern Arabia and West Africa was the basis for a series of published letters that he wrote to the Editor of The Sydneian, the Sydney Grammar magazine. Resuming civilian life, he lived for another 48 years after the War ended. It is, however, his one match in 1st Grade for SUCC that forms the basis for this story. In January 1909, the University selectors had to contend with the usual difficulties that their sides encountered during University vacation. There were absentees due to the vacation and others who took a rest “earned after successfully getting through exams.” The lower grades were particularly affected. In this round, 2nd Grade narrowly avoided outright defeat. 3 rd Grade lost conclusively on the first day. In 1st Grade, against Waverley, there were five changes from the team that had played the previous match (in Round 5 as University had a bye in Round 6).
OB Williams replaced James Hughes as an opening batsman. William Makin replaced Roy Minnett, the future Test player. Hector Clayton came in for NG Ducker. Eric Fisher replaced the leg spinner George Willcocks who had started the season in 2 nd Grade where he took 12 wickets in the first game and then took 17 wickets in four games in 1 st Grade. And French was selected in place of AL Butler who had played the last of his two 1 st Grade games. Williams began promisingly with 44 but he ran out Eric McElhone, soon to become one of University’s NSW players. The other four replacements managed only 23 runs between them and University tumbled to 178 all out. Batting last, French made 3 before giving Addison, a straight medium fast bowler, his fourth wicket for the innings. Waverley were 0 for 100 by stumps. The Australian player, 38 year old Syd Gregory, who eventually played 58 Tests for Australia, and NSW batsman, Alick Mackenzie, who had played the first of his 48 games for NSW 21 years before this season, had experienced few difficulties.
On the second day, Waverley, now in second place in the 1 st Grade competition, were ruthless against an inexperienced attack. University batted again, 207 runs behind but time prevented any further result. Games on either side of this round show how much University missed its regular players. In Round 5, Willcocks’ 6 for 95 was instrumental in University’s victory against Norths by only 24 runs. In Round 8, Minnett took 6 for 36 as Gordon was dismissed for 102. French had been playing for the Club since 1907-08 and he had scored valuable runs and taken consistent wickets with his medium pacers in 2 nd Grade. He served on the Committee of the Club and played for the Veterans’ XI after graduation. He was not without ability or experience, aged 24 at the time of this match. On the second day, he took the wickets of both veteran openers (although Mackenzie scored 165) and later in the innings, he bowled Lloyd for 0. French bowled steadily, finishing with 3 for 82 in such an imposing total. The main bowlers suffered. Stack 3 for 92, Makin 0 for 61 and Matthews 1 for 98 made little impression.
For the next round against Gordon at the SCG, Ducker, Minnett and Willcocks returned to 1 st Grade and HH Massie, son of the Australian player of the same name, made his debut after a century in 2 nd Grade. French returned to his studies, to St Paul’s and to 2nd Grade where he bowled without significant success.
By September 1914, he had enlisted in London.
In 1928, he married Margot Blomfield. They were to raise two daughters and a son.
On 10 February 1966, he died at Edgeworth, Gloucester.
He remained largely forgotten even by those who had played in his one 1st Grade match and who lived as long or even longer. Eric McElhone, the last of that side to die, aged 94 in 1981, had an exceptionally sharp mind and clear memory. Even he couldn’t remember the medium pacer who had dismissed a Test batsman and a NSW player in his only 1st Grade match.
Acknowledgements to Jim Cattlin for his research into the Sydney Grammar School records.
On 23 December, Mrs Iris L'Estrange died aged 99.
She was the widow of Dr Jim L'Estrange who played for the Club in the 1930s and whose family gave the Jim L'Estrange award which is presented at our annual dinner. Jim and Iris' sons, Michael and Jimmy, played 1st grade in the 1970s. The family has also significantly supported the SUCC Foundation.
John Tomko, former SUCC 1st Grader (1955-1957) died this week.
John was the father of former 1st Grade captain, Craig Tomko.
A comprehensive obituary will appear on the SUCC website in the next few weeks.
1st Grade vs Hawkesbury at University Oval (50 Overs)
Sydney University 9/293 (50.0)
J Gauci 105 (128)
L Neil-Smith 2-18 (10.0)
DEF
Hawkesbury 202 (46.5)
P Moore 47 (79)
P Moore 4-41 (8.0)
Round 6 saw the student’s take on Hawkesbury at Uni No.1. With the Big Bash commencing mid-week, we welcomed back Lawrence Neil-Smith to the side who is currently in Sydney with the Sixers squad.
Once again TC won the toss, bringing his winning streak to ten consecutive tosses. We batted first and got off to a steady start making it through the first ten overs with the score at 50 for no loss. Charlie Dummer and Jordan Gauci continued throughout the middle overs picking up the scoring rate throughout the innings until eventually Charlie was dismissed for 90 with the score at 185. Gauci continued to work hard through the middle overs ticking the scoreboard over and was complemented nicely by Liam Robertson who struck 37 off 24 balls to really boost the innings going into the last ten overs. Gauci brought up his first hundred for the club and soon after was dismissed for 105 off 128. Some strong running between wickets from Dugald Holloway (12 off 8) in the final few overs helped boost the score to 293.
Following the interval LNS took the new ball and put on a display, taking a wicket in his first over and then continuing to finish with figures of 2 for 18 from his ten overs. LNS was the pick of the bowlers showing what a player he has become, bowling with great skill, discipline and pace, a real level above. The other bowlers also did a job with Maladay (2/44 off 7), Holloway (2/63 off 10), Malone (2/37 off 10) and McElduff (1/40 off 10) combining to dismiss the Hawks for 202 in the 47th over.
Overall, a solid performance across the board with plenty of room for improvement saw the team continue the momentum which has been built over the last few weeks. We now sit in 10th place, six points outside the top 6 and with a great opportunity coming up against North Sydney to go into the Christmas break in a solid position.
Ryan McElduff
2nd Grade vs Hawkesbury at Owen Earle Oval (50 Overs)
Sydney University 9/206 (50.0)
R Wikramanayake 111 (119)
S Anandarajah 5-16 (9.0)
DEF
Hawkesbury 133 (40.0)
K Vicary 42 (65)
B Roughan 4-30 (10.0
Coming off a tough loss to Sutherland, the 2s boys looked to get back into their winning form against a strong hawkesbury side. The day began on a damp Owen Earl outfield with a slippery game of nash, with the A’s taking on the Z’s.
The A’s looked to show some fight early but it was no match for the class of Kieran Tate who led the Z’s to a comfortable victory with an early run through that set the tone for the rest of the match. The students lost the toss and were sent in to have a bat on a Bensons Lane green top. Wickets fell early and the Hawkesbury seamers looked to be right on top of the Uni batsmen.
Enter, run machine Ravi Wikramanayake (111), who held his nerve in the early overs of the game and went on to build a mature innings which saw him reach his first 2nd grade hundred. This set the platform for the books to launch in the latter half of the innings. Wikramanayake who combined with Kieran Tate (21) applied the pressure on the Hawkesbury bowling attack to get the students into a good position going into the last over of the innings. Henry Clark (13*) then produced some serious ball striking, hitting a 6 and a 4 to close out the Sydney Uni batting innings.
The students found themselves with 206 on the board, although it was under par they were confident in defending it. Charlie Cassell (2/32) began the proceedings for the dents, picking up right where he left off, dismissing both opening batsmen within the first 10 overs. Cassell and Tate (1/24) both got the students off to a great start with 2 brilliant spells of fast bowling. Off the back of 2 early wickets the hawks looked to build and were building a steady 2nd wicket partnership, however ‘Resident Yogi’ Max Hope (2/32) and Henry Clark (0/21) put together a strong couple of overs to break the partnership and put the students right back in the contest.
Spin twins Hope and Sanjay Anandarajah (5/16) then combined to put the pressure on the Hawks in a crucial time of the game and broke the 3rd wicket partnership, this put the Uni boys into a strong position to close out the game.
A clinical performance in the field and with the ball saw the students bowl out the hosts for 133 and saw the 2s win by 73 runs.
Sanjay Anandarajah