LIAM DURKIN
CRICKET
CLV By LIAM DURKIN FOR Andrew Philip, cricket has always been a game of patience. The Moe legend recently notched up an incredible milestone, surpassing 10,000 first grade runs for the Lions. The right hander officially made it to five figures during the Round 5 game against Churchill in Cricket Latrobe Valley Premier A action last month. His seventh run in the Lions first innings got him to 10,000, as he eventually made it to 71 – his 55th half century. He has 23 A Grade centuries for his club. Alan Rankin, the man generally regarded as the greatest batsman in Gippsland cricket history, scored 27. Such numbers are hard to ignore, although the man himself insists he isn’t counting. “I’ve never been one to put too much focus on stats like that, they’re nice, and I’m quite proud of 10,000 of them, but I’d be much happier making a duck and getting the win,” Andrew Philip said. “No doubt early days it was hugely important to me to go out there and score runs, my happiness was based around how many runs I got on the weekend, but as you get older you realise your life doesn’t change a hell of a lot whether you get runs or not, so you just take the good with the bad.” Still, to score 10,000 runs has elevated Philip high above most contemporaries, and to the top of the Lions’ all time run scoring list in their near 150-year history. Philip has been a mark of consistency coming in at first drop for the best part of 20 years, regularly ending each season with at least 500 runs to his name. He attributes this to a few key learnings passed down from his father Alan (a noted cricketer himself), whom he credits helping shape his technique. “He (dad) gave me some really good instructions on some really basic things,” Andrew said. “I remember I just couldn’t buy a run for the first few seasons, we were up at Thorpdale, he kind of just mentioned in passing, ‘if it’s full and you think it might hit the stumps, you step forward, if it’s going to go over the stumps, you step back’. “That had a profound impact on the way I went about things, it was something so simple but no one had ever explained that to me, that’s probably the first thing I say now when I’m one-on-one with a young batsman at the club.” The stride forward has become a feature of Philip’s batting, giving not the faintest gap between bat and pad. If ever a defence appears impenetrable, it is Philip when he is set on staying in. As far as old school approaches go, Philip may well be the greatest advocate. “I absolutely take my time getting myself in,” he said. “I’m not concerned about run rate, I’m not concerned about how many overs remaining in the day, I think my focus is getting myself in and understanding how the pitch is playing, getting through the new ball, that’s the danger period when it’s moving, and just getting to a point where you feel like the bowlers can no longer get you out, you’re now in a position where you’re only getting yourself out. “If I can get to that point and let concentration take over, (then) I’m free to expand and play some shots. “I don’t subscribe to having all the shots in the book, I don’t think I have all the shots in the book, but I think the ones I do have I do well, I stay in my lane and it’s worked out alright for me.” Runs have led to team success, with Philip playing in an astonishing nine first grade premierships with Moe. Included in this is the famed ‘eight-in-a-row’ between 2005/06 and 2012/13, as well as a more recent triumph in 2021/22. Philip has played a key role in all of them, captaining a few, and recalls tussles against Latrobe in the late 2010s as highlights. “We had a few (Grand Finals) against Latrobe consecutively, I just recall that era playing cricket against Latrobe was just incredibly competitive,” he said. “They were a team we really looked up to. Guys like Anthony Bloomfield, Kris Wells, they always had a couple of fast bowlers, they’d always wrangle a fast bowler from the Traralgon league (old Traralgon District Cricket Association) or from around the place. Hugely competitive players and even during the year you knew you were playing against Latrobe just by the feel of it, it felt different playing against them, they were always up for the challenge.” Despite having hit most bowlers to the fence, Philip pointed to Bloomfield as one who has had his measure from time to time. “I’m not a free flowing batsman by any means, I get tied down like anyone else,” he said. “Guys I’ve struggled with over the time would be Anthony Bloomfield, he just puts it on a line he knows I’m going to struggle to get runs off, left arm over or around, he’s got some balls he just chucks across, just bowls to the keeper a lot and then he’s got a quicker in-swinging yorker, he’s someone even to this day I struggle to put away.” Philip also labelled former journeyman express bowler Chris ‘Tassie’ Johnson, and current CATS quick Callum Stewart as two he has also had battles with, as well as (and perhaps interestingly) former Jeeralang-Boolarra swing bowler Stan Urbanic. “Tassie Johnson is a very difficult bowler, bowls a really straight line from the umpire’s eye right down the middle of the pitch so you have to be really on your game to make sure you don’t get your front foot over,” Philip said. “Callum Stewart’s in a similar vein, trying to attack the pads. Even someone like Stan Urbanic from Boolarra who just wobbled the ball, he’s had me caught on a number of occasions just drawing me into a shot that was probably a little too wide of off stump to be going at, but that slow outswinger just draws you in, then he’s got a pretty handy selection of slower balls as well, probably those four guys are the ones that really make me knuckle down.” Understandably, anyone who scores more than 500 runs most seasons is going to court some attention from other clubs, although to Philip’s extraordinary credit, he has remained loyal to Moe all the way through. “For a while there you’d get a good dozen phone calls in the offseason, usually from the same clubs having a poke around wondering what’s going on, but I never really got to a point where there was any kind of offer, didn’t really ever let it get to that point, probably rather not know what was on the table,” he said. “No intentions of leaving the Moe Cricket Club, I think after you start having that premiership run that we had, you feel like you’re part of something quite big and there is a legacy involved there. “I grew up at this club, my old man played in a couple of premierships in the 80’s, my mum’s got quite a lot to do with the club as well, she’s been on the committee, has been secretary, is a life member, along with my old man and myself, my kids are part of the club now, they are playing in the Woolworths Program … well and truly imbedded in this club and never really entertained playing cricket elsewhere.” Philip did have an opportunity to play Victorian Premier Cricket when he was younger, but said the lifestyle just didn’t add up. “I had an opportunity to go downtown in between the second and third premierships, I would have been about 19/20, coming toward the end of our season, we were about to enter a finals campaign, I got asked to play for Dandenong,” he recalled. “I wasn’t really tempted to go down there, by that time I had a fulltime job in Moe, wasn’t too keen on travelling up regularly to do it, wasn’t part of the plan, didn’t work out that way, would have been nice to test myself at that level to see if you were good enough, but I’ll never know.” Perhaps fittingly, he has carried the Lions logo on his chest this whole time, and in the vast majority of cases, it has been a lion-hearted innings from Philip that has been the reason behind a Moe victory. It seems there could be a few more runs to come yet. “I’ll play A Grade cricket as long as I’m good enough, as long as I can, and lower grades if it comes to that point,” Philip said. “I take a lot out of cricket, I probably see cricket differently to most people, cricket has been good to me and I’ll be giving back for the rest of my life. “I’m proud of the fact I’ve made as many runs as I have, 10,000 runs I can appreciate that’s a lot of runs and it takes a lot of commitment, patience and a good understanding of your game.” With next year commemorating 100 years of the Yallourn District Cricket Association/Central Gippsland Cricket Association and Cricket Latrobe Valley, a team of the century is set to be selected. The name Andrew Philip will surely be in the conversation.
