43 Comments
User's avatar
Tim Serjeant's avatar

I’ll make sure he sees this !

Regards

Son of Craig

Expand full comment
Gideon Haigh's avatar

Please do! He should also listen to the podcast where I recite all his Test scores from memory.

Expand full comment
Malcolm Conn's avatar

Alan Hurst!

Expand full comment
Gideon Haigh's avatar

A good old-fashioned slinger. Barry Richards rated him highly.

Expand full comment
El Chopernos's avatar

Funny how some cricketers of the past remain in memory for specific things - Hurst comes to mind for the Bakht run out in '79 and some photography he did for the ChappellG nine slips book cover in '76-77 while being the 12th man.

Expand full comment
Max Bonnell's avatar

I see your Craig Serjeant and raise you a Peter Toohey.

Expand full comment
Gideon Haigh's avatar

Oh my Serjeant and my Toohey long ago!

Expand full comment
Andrew Fraser's avatar

I'll trump you both with Geoff DYmock!

Expand full comment
Gideon Haigh's avatar

Bloody good bowler. Also made a Sheffield Shield century.

Expand full comment
Andrew Fraser's avatar

I realised after I posted it that I was probably a bit flippant. "Mary" DYmock did good things at test level. Possibly Martin Kent, who us Queenslanders loved but never quite cut it at lest level. The World Series stuff mucked around his career as well. But I loved watching him in Sheffield Shield at the Gabba in the 70s.

Expand full comment
Ben Constable's avatar

Reference to Serj brings back deep childhood memories growing up in Perth consumed in cricket. Any day in the summer holidays there was a Shield match at the WACA, my younger brother (then about 8 or 9) and I would catch the 102 MTT bus - Grey Nicholls Record bat, compo ball, styrofoam drink bottle with iced cordial and ham or Vegemite sandwiches - to the ground, with our members’ children’s passes, arriving in time for the players warm up at the nets opposite Gloucester Park then as play commenced starting our own 7 hour cricket match on the hill. Serj was a Shield star in those days in our eyes, playing on a strong team. His off side driving was regal. The sound of a delightfully timed drive echoed in that stadium and drew rousing applause in an era when 7-10,000 regularly attended Shield matches.

Can I say “good old days”?

Expand full comment
Gareth Swarbrick's avatar

Hi. UK subscriber here. I remember watching Craig Sarjeant’s 80+ at Lords in 1977 on the BBC. If my memory is right this was on the Saturday and cricket coverage was part of Grandstand and not continuous. I remember the programme going over to Lords and the commentator (Jim Laker) talking in glowing terms about this new star batsmen of the Australia team. The expectation was that he would get his Lords hundred and further glory would follow!

Expand full comment
Sun Ra's avatar

Hey, I’ve got a "Craig Serjeant” !!!

My parents gave me a Craig Serjeant autograph Gray Nicholls GN100 Scoop for Xmas in 1977 when I was 16. A lovely bat that served me well for 16 years of school and park cricket.

Expand full comment
Javier Cabrera's avatar

Happy Craig Serjeant day 🏏 being from Queensland how could I not mention David Ogilvie another one of the « establishment boys » filling in during the packer years. That Australia vs India 1977/78 series was great series and some very good cricketers emerged.

Expand full comment
El Chopernos's avatar

In India, we had this guy called Sadagoppan Ramesh whose star burnt bright briefly as the century changed. He had footwork born out of the ashes of an incinerated coaching manual, sweater tucked into pants, and a helmet that always seemed a bit too big for his head. Never mind all this as he handled Wasim Waqar Saqlain so adeptly during that home series vs Pak in '99-00. Some of his shots were so nonchalant, we couldn't figure out if he was being serious. And then soon after, even though he seemed to be doing okay, the axe landed on him. Probably my Craig Serjeant.

Cheers on a new beginning!

Expand full comment
Tim F's avatar

Brett Lee’s first test wicket, in his first over!

Expand full comment
Gideon Haigh's avatar

I liked Ramesh, there was a bit about him. But I remember Bing cleaning him up - it was quick.

Expand full comment
Mickey Randall's avatar

Rod McCurdy.

Expand full comment
Gideon Haigh's avatar

Underrated. A shame he went to SA.

Expand full comment
Pete B's avatar

With Pete's notorious bar bills (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-06/australian-man-pays-nearly-$100k-for-a-beer-in-a-manchester-pub/11486800) you may need a few more subscribers. My hero in that era, when I was very young, and just getting into cricket, was Peter Toohey. A man born 40 years too soon.

Expand full comment
Gideon Haigh's avatar

Plus, of course, he worked for Tooheys!

Expand full comment
Tim F's avatar

Gideon, my Craig Serjeant could be Steve Smith. Nope, not that one, Steven Barry Smith, the NSW opener from the 80s. My earliest foray into cricket mania coincided with him making a blistering 263 against Victoria at the MCG that included a 100 in a session. I didn’t know you could even score that much! He followed that up with a ton in an ODI final against NZ at the same ground that was overshadowed by Lance Cairns’ outrageous sixathon. He played 3 tests against the rampant Windies in the ill fated Caribbean tour in 83-84 and then threw his lot in with the South African rebel tours. I was devastated.

Expand full comment
Gideon Haigh's avatar

I saw that ODI hundred too - what a waste. See McCurdy above. Haysman too.

Expand full comment
Tim F's avatar

Cross referencing the discussion yesterday, there seems a dearth of decent literature about the rebel tours unless I’m mistaken? Fascinating period that helped shape the modern game in Oz.

Expand full comment
Max Bonnell's avatar

I bowled to Smith in a grade game the week before he got that hundred against NZ. I got one ball past the bat, well after he had made his hundred, and was very impressed with myself. he was a really good player - the thing I remember most was his placement: he gave the impression that he put every ball exactly where he wanted it.

Expand full comment
CJ's avatar

Bruce Laird for me.

Expand full comment
Tim McMillan's avatar

Fantastic team pic and, cockily, I thought I’d be able to name them all straight off the bat. Not particularly tough, I know, but I was nine year old in Northants, England when it was taken, obsessed with this series and the exotic new names it was introducing. But I fell at the first hurdle:

Unknown, Mann, Dyson, Rixon, Ogilvie, Toohey;

Clark, Cosier, Simpson, Serjeant, Thompson, Hughes

So, who is far left back row? Hurst? Could be Hibbert if it’s Brisbane but then where’s Hurst? And neither Hughes nor Dyson made the XI. Maybe legendary (to me) left-armer JB “Sam” Gannon, who played the middle three tests? But wasn’t he taller? 🤷‍♂️

Is it the SCG? That makes it Gannon with Ogilvie twelfth man.

Answer greatly appreciated!

Expand full comment
Tim McMillan's avatar

OK, I've heard the pod and it's clearly Sydney and it must be Gannnon top left. I got sent down a bit of a rabbit hole but I've got great memories of trying to follow that series in the UK. And now there's a fair bit on YouTube, wonderful stuff.

Expand full comment
Chuck's avatar

Steve Rixon - could not believe that MacLean, Wright, Woolley, Phillips all kept him out of the test team.

Expand full comment
Adrian Keller's avatar

So many memories! 77-78 was my first summer following test cricket…I was fully committed to Simmo and his band of rookies, loyal to ‘the establishment’, emblematic of my deeply conservative outlook as a 10 year old (boy, how things change!)

John Dyson was my favourite player, by some margin…I admired his stubborn grit, qualities I myself was required to harness as a budding opener with limited shots in my arsenal.

Gideon, I completely identify with the joy you felt when waking to hear news on the radio of Serjeant scoring his ton in the Windies. My memory of nervously turning on the radio after Day 1 of the 1981 Headingley test is as vivid today as it was then - when the newsreader announced that Dyson had scored his maiden test century, I was floating on air.

Alas the ending of that epic match was deflating, to say the least!

Expand full comment
Philip Carrigan's avatar

Nice one - read lambs to the slaughter as a boy

My fav at the Same time was Rick Darling

Have great memories of those Aussie teams at the time of WSC

Expand full comment
Gideon Haigh's avatar

Rick's book is great.

Expand full comment