Cranbourne’s Murray Pratt chalks up game No. 450, opening innings with fellow Eagles legend Peter Kelly, totalling 854 games between them
IT just might be the most experienced opening partnership in the history of cricket.
When Cranbourne Cricket Club legend Murray Pratt strode out to bat in his 450th game on Saturday, his best mate and fellow Eagles doyen Peter Kelly was at the other end.
The wealth of experience between the two men accounted for 854 games — more than double the rest of the players in the team combined (Kelly 404).
And the pair defied the Dingley F Grade bowling attack for 12 overs, reaching 25 before Pratt was caught and bowled after “one held up on me”.
“It was great to be able to go out to bat with him (Kelly),” Pratt said.
“We probably haven’t played or batted together for 10-15 years.
“We were looking good until I got out,” he laughed.
Before going out to bat, the pair was having a competition over whose bat was older, with the consensus that club games record holder Pratt’s white painted SS Jumbo and Kelly’s battered Gray Nicholls probably had about 60 years between them — not nearly as old as the pair’s combined age, which just eclipses 120.
Cranbourne got 131, before Dingley reached 0-16 at stumps, but it’s no longer all about the result and the runs anymore for Pratt, who joined the club as a 15-year-old way back in 1971, after moving to Cranbourne from Jeetho, near Korumburra.
“I went up to senior training, which I thought was the juniors, and told them I was a wicketkeeper,” Pratt recalls.
“They said, ‘great, you can play A grade’, which was first grade back then.”
He can tell you exactly what happened in that game — 46 years ago.
“We played Berwick at Akoonah Park, they made about 200 and we made 11 and 21,” he said.
“I made 0 not out in the first innings batting at the bottom of the order and the captain said I did so well that he wanted me to open in the second innings.
“And, guess what, I made a duck, but I had about 15 bruises from this bloke no one wanted to face.”
He can tell you what happened in just about every game he played, with his two premierships a highlight, and reels of club greats like they played yesterday.
He says Kelly is the most consistent batsman the club had seen, while men like current stars Steve Spoljaric and Matt Chasemore, along with Turf 1 premiership captain Peter Campbell, gun batsmen Mark McNamee and Matty Herrick.
“There’s probably been better batsmen playing for Cranbourne short-term but, over 30-40 years, you’ll never find a more consistent batsman at any club,” he said.
“You only have to look today, he hasn’t picked up a bat for 12 months and he goes out there, gets 30 and looks untroubled.”
The stories come thick and fast. This is a man who knows cricket inside out and bleeds the blue and gold of Cranbourne, having fulfilled every role from president down at the club.
He talks about former Pakistani Test man Duncan Sharpe, who would later go on to be the club’s curator.
“Duncan scored 100 against the Australian touring side back in 1960,” he said.
“I remember his first game at Cranbourne was out at Tooradin and the grass was up to our knees.
“He went out to bat, no gloves, no box and he didn’t hit one ball in the air and made 49.
“It would have been 150 after Christmas.
“And, if he was preparing the wicket with Spolly and Chasemore playing, they’d make a ton every week.”
He remembers facing a 16-year-old Damien Fleming on a wet wicket against Springvale South during the mid-1980s.
“He ran through us and he was lightning,” Pratt said.
“And he had a mate up the other end who was just as quick.”
Among the best stumpers the club has seen, Pratt sits behind the great Polly Waymouth and son David in third on Cranbourne’s stumping list, with 69, to go with 233 catches and 5091 runs.
“Waymouth was George Harvey’s stumper and George took over 1000 wickets for the club.
“He’s got 131 stumpings, but it’s probably nearly double that, because the records weren’t always kept.”
He remembers the tough days, when the club struggle to make ends meet and could hardly field teams and is thankful for the powerhouse it has become at Casey Fields.
“I can’t imagine playing anywhere else. I live here, I’m patriotic, it’s a great club,” he said.
His family, wife Fay and children David, Jo and Megan, are his biggest supporters and he says he couldn’t have done it without them.
Asked how long he had left, he holds up three battered keeper’s fingers and, with his trademark cheeky smile, says “three games”.
But no one who knows the man would believe it.
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