By Bruce Holloway
Club cricket can be a minefield of obsessions, frustrations, disappointments and incomparable madness, on an ever-changing landscape.
There's the scrubby wicket with improbable boundaries, partially-sighted umpires who can't quite remember the lbw law, the communal box, the Thursday scramble to cobble a team together, the scorebook with dyslectic spelling, and the haphazard statistical records.
It has largely dropped off the mediascape these days and is mostly just the domain of the cricket tragic. However, within the club premier universe, you can still find more drama than an episode of Shortland St (as well as excruciating tedium, to be fair).
At its best, club cricket throws up some astonishing achievements and deeds of derring-do which underline the sport's reputation for being a metaphor for life.
It's in that spirit that we offer a salute to the unofficial five best innings of Auckland premier club cricket.
While cricket is a team game, it is perhaps unique in that at its very heart, it is the battle between an individual - the batsman - and the rest of the other team. It's 11 v one, and this feature is essentially a celebration of "the one" in premier club cricket.
There was no formal criteria invoked in trying to identify the top five Auckland premier cricket individual innings. It evolved as a purely subjective exercise based on many, many phone calls and conversations with the elephants (those who never forget) of club cricket. Though it also owes just as much to those clubs and contacts who "never got back" with details of their own potential nominations.
There is of course a huge credibility risk associated with such an exercise and no doubt the sins of omission will quickly be highlighted in unsolicited correspondence or social media trolling.
But let's give it a crack anyway.
In most instances, you need to have been emotionally involved to remember the great club cricket innings from the distant past.
But in Alan Albertson's case, the experience was so painful, it was impossible to forget.
When Albertson was approached to reflect on a memorable mid-1980s innings for University v Ellerslie, his immediate response was: "I hope that's not the one where I spent a hour with my head down a drain throwing up after having my box split in half by Devon Malcolm."
Er, yes, that one.
Opposing Ellerslie team captain Bill Fowler considered it the finest innings he had seen in Auckland premier club cricket. And Fowler, also Auckland's stand-in captain of the era when Jeff Crowe was unavailable, should know.
"If I was on Mastermind, my specialist subject would be club cricket in the 1980s," Fowler said. "In those days, everyone played for their club. Every team would have a number of players with first-class experience, while you could have 10-12 who had played for New Zealand in action around the clubs as well."
Ellerslie won the Auckland premier club title in the summer of 1986-87, but because they had such a slick bowling attack, most of their games were low-scoring matches.
"I don't think anybody scored 150 in my lifetime," Fowler said, in lamenting he couldn't really nominate anyone from his own club. "With a bowling attack of Sean Tracy, Devon Malcolm, Steve Scott and Martin Bradley, we seldom had big scores to chase.
"Which was part of what made Albertson's innings so memorable."
University lost the toss and were inserted. The University pitch hadn't had much work put into it in those days. It was greenish, and on that day bordered on unplayable.
Albertson, a right-handed opening bat or No 3 who had come north from Christchurch a couple of seasons earlier, was struck early by Ellerslie pro Malcolm, who was one of the fastest bowlers in world cricket, and later played 40 tests for England.
Fowler: "After he was hit, he was lying on the ground twitching. Sean Tracy rushed up from fine leg and screamed at him, 'get up, you wimp'. Albie pretty much ended up crawling off the pitch.
"I don't know what it was about club cricket at the time that it was always thought so hilarious when someone got hit like that."
Here, Albertson takes up the story.
"Ellerslie were always a cocky bunch, but a very good team even before they stuck Devon Malcolm in there.
"He was very fast, and early on, he squared me up and split my box from top to bottom.
"On the way back to the pavilion, I was completely nauseous. Somebody found an open grate over a drain and I spent about an hour with my head down it throwing up while they ran a tap over me.
"But when we were seven down, I went back in. I was pretty determined to make amends. For some reason, Malcolm had decided he wanted to stick one through my head this time - but hooking and cutting was actually a damned sight easier."
Albertson shared Fowler's observation about the changed composition of club teams from his day.
"When I made my premier debut [in Christchurch] as a 16-year-old, the bowling attack I faced consisted of Richard Hadlee, Dayle Hadlee and Alan Hounsell."
Albertson went on to score three centuries that summer, a great effort in a tough Auckland premier competition, though never managed first-class honours.
"One of the selectors of the time, Warren Stott, was of the view that you needed to be able to run a marathon to play for Auckland. That was just not me, and I retired a couple of seasons after that."
Test opener Jeet Raval notched a cricketing feat unlikely to ever be repeated - if only because of the extremely tricky logistical detail involved.
Raval scored a century for two different teams on the same day, crowned by him scoring the winning runs and racking up 101 not out for Suburbs New Lynn against Parnell at Orakei Domain.
Earlier that Sunday, Raval had also scored 102 for the Auckland Second XI, on the second day of a three-day match against Northern Districts at Mountfort Park - and with the Twenty20 final not starting until 5.30pm, he then made a frantic drive from Manurewa to Orakei, effectively changing into his club gear at the lights, or when traffic was at a standstill.
"Luckily we were fielding when I got there a couple of minutes after the start," Raval said.
Raval was unaware he had scored a century - off 57 balls - until he had left the pitch.
"I didn't know I was on 97, and when I hit the final ball for a boundary, I thought the cheering was because we had won.
"But when I left the wicket, I discovered I had also scored a century, my one and only in one-dayers or T20s.
"This innings was really special for me. To score a 100 in any final is always special, but more than that, it meant a lot to do so for a club that is very dear to me.
"Also, I had just been left out of the Auckland Aces in one-day competition and I felt I had a point to prove that I could play a role in T20 and one-day cricket.
"It was the starting point of a purple patch for me in the Plunket Shield season, which ended up with national selection."
Cameron Speedy only once cracked a century in five seasons of Auckland premier club cricket, spread over more than a decade.
But when he did, it came in singularly challenging circumstances at Lloyd Elsmore Park.
Speedy, now a 44-year-old freight forwarding director, was 19 as his Papatoetoe team successfully chased a powerful Howick Pakuranga team in pursuit of first innings points.
Batting at No 3, he was on 40 when - helmetless - he was crunched hard on the head by short ball from Aussie Paul Baird.
"The ball bounced all the way to midwicket," recalled Papatoetoe captain of the day, Neil Ronaldson.
"Helmets had been in for a while, but Cam hardly ever wore one. He had a very good eye and loved the pull shot.
"He came off and lay down for a couple of hours, but then went back - with a helmet - and punched on for his first and only hundred - one of the great Papatoetoe knocks.
"Cam was a funny mix. He always looked a million dollars but somehow this was the only time he really set the world on fire."
Speedy has vivid memories: "Howick Pakuranga were a pretty good team - Brian Barrett, Kerry Walmsley, Brooke Walker, Stu Roberts, Rowan Armour, Mark O'Meagher. They were all seasoned players, I was in my first season and it was a fast track, though the bounce was true.
"I was 6 foot 2, and every ball was short. I had long hair back then and got sledged just about every time I went to the crease. 'He's got band practice, he won't be here long - not like his hair.'
"My partner Peter Boyd had been hit on the head a few overs earlier and his helmet had shattered.
"In those days, helmets were very awkward to wear, the visors were hard to peer out of and the perspex reduced vision.
"I had been given a helmet - one of those ones with the Graham Gooch ear pieces - a year before at an Auckland under-18 trial - but I'd never really got used to it and didn't like wearing it.
"I'd started off with a helmet but we'd seen the quicks off. After 20 overs, I was on 40, so ditched the helmet, figuring I didn't really need it.
"I charged down the wicket but Baird saw me coming and dropped it short and hit me. I remember going down and then stumbling off. There was no concussion test back then, I just sat in a chair with ice and a towel.
"But wickets kept falling, and at seven down, Roly [Ronaldson] said 'are you right to go? Put your pads back on'.
"I somehow worked my way into the 90s. [Legspinner] Brooke Walker came on and I pulled him to midwicket for six for my century.
"I think we were all out for 190, nobody else got any runs. I look back on that innings pretty fondly."
Parnell Cricket Club can reflect on a pantheon of illustrious achievements and innings of merit, as you might expect of a club with records going back to 1886.
For starters, The Peaches can point to double centuries from Ross Morgan, Merv Wallace, Terry Jarvis and Graham Vivian in the 1950s and '60s – or Ned Sale from the early 1900s.
But asked to nominate the best single innings for the club, long-time Parnell club newsletter editor and life member Bryan Haggitt called it for Ben Horne – better known as the Auckland Aces wicketkeeper - just last summer.
Haggitt, who was recognised as New Zealand Cricket's Volunteer of the Year in 2015-16, argued it was more important to celebrate club cricket achievements by the current batch of players than the heroes from yesteryear.
"Ben got us through with one of the best club cricket innings I can recall," Haggitt said.
Horne, batting at No 4, was in sensational form as he scored 136 of the 258 required to win the preliminary semifinal of the Jeff Crowe (one-day) Cup against a powerful Takapuna team at Onewa Domain.
The importance of his innings was placed into wider perspective when Parnell proceeded to then beat Howick Pakuranga at Lloyd Elsmore Park and tuck away Suburbs New Lynn in the final at Eden Park Outer Oval.
Horne smashed 17 fours and one six to nurse his team to victory alongside Nikith Perera – a 16-year-old on debut – who joined him at 233-8 to share in the winning 36-run partnership.
"To get past Takapuna, somebody needed to step up that day," Horne said.
"I'm a bit of a maths guy and I figured the short square boundaries at Onewa Domain would come into play when they weren't using their best bowlers.
"I had one decent partnership with [skipper] Brad Rodden and there were a few cameos.
"But by the time we were eight down, it was in the balance, and heading for the second-to-last over, I was not willing to let Nik face, and decided to finish it myself.
"I flicked one over the keeper for four, then took a single for the win.
"It was probably my proudest cricketing moment. It is certainly the most emotional I have ever felt after a cricket match."
Richard Reid was a barrel-chested, pugnacious opening batsman best known for playing nine one-dayers for New Zealand in the late 1980s.
But in some quadrants of Auckland, he is also vividly remembered for a double century which assisted his North Shore team to the premier two-day title in 1987-88.
Reid certainly remembers it.
"You don't score 200 very often," he said. "I'd just been dropped by Auckland – undeservedly I thought, as a scapegoat for a loss against Central Districts – and this was the very next innings I played.
"We [Shore] batted and I scored my runs in the first two sessions. The first 100 was pretty normal – off about 120 balls but then I accelerated and the second hundred came off 30-40 balls.
"There was a slight suggestion I nicked it on 35 and Ian Donnelly [Suburbs-New Lynn bowler and Auckland cricket identity] had plenty to say about me not walking.
"Club cricket was different in those days. I'm not saying we were better than the current lot, but the nature of teams – where first-class players and international players would play - made for better games.
"I was satisfied. I was about 30, a good player, and it was a very enjoyable season. North Shore haven't won the championship since."
Andrew Eade, captain of Suburbs New Lynn that day, has less pleasant memories.
"That innings has scarred me for life," he said. "It was the most impressive hitting I have ever seen.
"In something like seven overs, Reid went from 100 to 200. I had no shame as captain. Every fielder was on the boundary but still the runs flowed."
The slaughter mercifully ended on the first ball after tea when Reid was caught at slip.
Reid stopped playing club cricket in 1993-94 in Wellington – though in 2004, he made a comeback in Canterbury aged 46 "to prove a point that old, fat bastards could still play" and duly scored 57 for Old Collegians against Burnside.
But his 210 will live longer in the memory - and he doesn't mind rubbing it in.
"Is Ian Donnelly still alive? Tell him I did nick it on 35."
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