CRICKET
By LIAM DURKIN
IT’S a question sure to be pondered in countless clubrooms over countless beers.
Has there been one absolute standout cricketer to grace the Gippsland fields?
Bradman’s name goes hand-in-hand with standalone quality. His record places him so far ahead of whoever the second-best might be, that no one even bothers comparing him.
The same cannot be said of local cricket however.
What predicates greatness?
If the greatest player is the one who has achieved the highest, then Morwell’s Peter Siddle has no competition.
Statistically, his more than 200 Test wickets outdoes Bairnsdale pair Cameron White and Sophie Molineux.
White and Molineux have both captained Australia however. Does that therefore carry extra weight?
White also has two One Day International hundreds to his name, at a healthy average of 33.96 for a middle order dasher.
Batting is generally considered a harder skill than bowling. So does that also place White closer to Siddle than one first might have thought?
Should timing also come into the equation?
White was introduced as a leg-spinning option at a time when Australia was looking for the next Shane Warne.
Siddle came in during a transition phase in Australia’s fast bowling stocks, following the retirement of Glenn McGrath and when Brett Lee was coming toward the end.
Would Siddle have played much Test cricket if he was born a few years earlier? Indeed would he play much if he was around the current Test squad with Cummins, Hazelwood and Starc at the front of the queue?
Many great Gippsland cricketers could have surely scaled higher levels, had it not been for circumstance.
There’s only 11 spots in a cricket team after all – fewer when you break it down to each discipline.
Brad Knowles (from Yinnar) had Mitchell Johnson to compete with at Western Australia. Sale’s Ian Wrigglesworth (who was spotted at the Moe races last Sunday) had Merv Hughes at the Vics. Warragul’s Mark Ridgeway had to lie about his age when he moved to Tasmania at 33.
Warragul’s Bob Baldry opened the batting for Victoria, around the same time Trafalgar’s Alan Rankin was still piling on local runs in the mid-1970s.
Rankin has some 60 centuries to his name at club and representative level. Modern day Moe great Andrew Philip has close to 30 at club level.
Like many before and the many to come, work, family and travel has meant they never relocated to the city permanently, paving the way for what may have been a professional career.
Rankin had cows to milk. Steve Spoljaric has greyhounds to train.
While not originally from Gippsland, ‘Spolly’, who is now playing for Longford in Sale-Maffra after a stint with Bundalaguah, is often spoken about whenever tongues talk of ‘truly great cricketers’.
Spoljaric, closing in on his 50th birthday, did most of his damage around Dandenong.
“He just looks like a player you see on TV,” is how one local cricketer once described him.
Kent Hammond and Adrian Burgiel, both part of the fabled Gormandale teams of the 2010s, are also held in very high regard.
“Adrian Burgiel was a star, mate,” former Victorian batter Warren Ayres told the Herald Sun in 2024.
“He wasn’t at Dandenong very long but he could have been very good.”
Burgiel himself rated Hammond, Wrigglesworth, Nathan King, Stuart Anderson and Neil Tatterson as his top five Gippsland cricketers.
Tatterson might just be the answer. In all my years covering and speaking on local cricket, Tatterson’s name is usually always one people mention.
