Lewis Bedford, who played for SUCC in 2017-18, has been elected Captain of the Durham University Cricket Club.
Durham University is an MCC centre of excellence, and its schedule includes first-class matches against county sides at the beginning of each season. Lewis made his first-class debut for Durham in 2019, but the club’s program for 2020 was destroyed by the Covid-19 lockdown. Lewis will now take charge of the club until the end of the 2021 northern summer.
Queen's Birthday 2020 Honours List
The Governor-General is pleased to announce the following awards:
The list of awardees includes three people connected with the University and the Cricket Club, whom we would like to acknowledge.
This includes our Chancellor, who becomes a Companion in the Order of Australia, and two former players who become Members (AM) in the General Division.
Our sincere congratulations to each.
____________________________________________________________________
COMPANION (AC) IN THE GENERAL DIVISION
Ms Belinda Jane HUTCHINSON AM
NSW
For eminent service to business, to tertiary education and scientific research, and through philanthropic endeavours to address social disadvantage.
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MEMBER (AM) IN THE GENERAL DIVISION
Emeritus Professor John William LONGWORTH
Toowong QLD 4066
For significant service to tertiary education, and to the agricultural sciences.
John played for the Club as an opening bowler in the 1960s.
____________________________________________________________________
Mr David John Joseph VAUX
NSW
For significant service to the community through charitable initiatives, and to business.
David played for the Club in the 1980s after playing 1st Grade in Perth. He has been Chairman of the LBW Trust which has a number of our Club players among its members.
____________________________________________________________________
Thanks to James Rodgers and Hartley Anderson
Dear Junior Cricketer,
Great news, the Covid restrictions are beginning to lift slowly. The Sydney University Cricket Club (SUCC) A.W. Green Shield Academy 2020/21 trial dates have been scheduled for Sunday the 21st and 28th June commencing at 9.00am through to 12pm at our Indoor Facilities in the Tag Foundation Grandstand just off Parammatta Road.
Our Director of Cricket Cameron Borgas will be leading the trial program, assisted by Andrew Wilkinson our Green Shield Coach for 2020/21.
On completion of the initial two trial sessions a squad of 30 players will be asked to return for a further two trial days on Sunday 12th and 19th July from 9am - 12pm. Thereafter, the final 15 player Green Shield Squad of 2020/21 will be announced.
We will still be operating under strict Covid-19 regulations and ask all parents to please notify their children of these processes. Emailed communication will be sent out by Anand Karuppiah, our Green Shield Manager, with SUCC, SUSF and CNSW return to sport protocols.
We thank all of you who have registered and apologies for the delay in our trial commencement dates. All Players will be receiving their allocated trial date and time slot from Anand. We ask that you are punctual with your arrival time due to the number restrictions we are controlled by.
All the best in your trials, we look forward to meeting all our new trialists and those of you who have attended previously. Above all enjoy yourselves. Our coaches are here to assist in improving your skills and are all extremely excited to build our new squad.
Good Luck
Keep well and stay safe.
Sydney University Cricket Club
2020 JUNE APPEAL
Dear Alumni, Members and Friends
There was a premature end to the 2019/2020 Season that saw the Club finish with some impressive results. See Appendix 1 below
In a climate of uncertainty about the upcoming season we have been making preparation. The purpose of this missive is to keep you informed as well as to seek your help and involvement.
The Facts
1. Funding from Cricket Australia and Cricket NSW. You will have read about the travails of Cricket Australia and the threat to funding from that source. Funds are channelled to Clubs through Cricket NSW which is reported to be in a stronger position but the eventual grant must be considered as under some threat.
2. Funding from The University of Sydney. The Club receives significant support from the University through Sydney University Sport and Fitness. Salaries of the General Manager and contributions towards Coach funding are included. The University also provides facilities in the form of Ovals, equipment, practice and gymnasiums, as well as running The Elite Athlete Scholarship Program. University funding is also threatened by the impact of the Covid-19 Epidemic.
The Club is budgeting for 2020/2021 and has taken into account a number of scenarios designed to deal with the conditions we may be faced with. It is prudent to ask now for your support in the light of the existing conditions. It is also vital that the excellent work of so many in recent years is allowed to continue without jeopardy, including the major scoreboard replacement capital works project recently approved.
Funding – How we need you to assist.
There is no doubt the impact on our community caused by the pandemic. Some are more seriously impacted than others but one of the results of the lockdown has been that levels of discretionary expenditure have been cut off. We have included a link to funding support and point out that contributions to the University are Tax Deductible.
Donation Payment details:
Please click on the link below and follow the instructions as provided.
• Enter the amount of your donation
• Select “I would like to give to a sporting scholarship or a specific sport”
• Select “Cricket’ from the “Sporting Clubs” section
• Enter your personal details and click next
• Enter your billing details and credit card information, click “I’m not a robot”
and click next
• Review all details then click “submit”
https://secureau.imodules.com/s/965/18form/form.aspx?sid=965&gid=1&pgid=1634&cid=3604
All of us have time to review our positions and send contributions prior to Tuesday 30th June. Club Help- Some other ways to assist SUCC always has a need for volunteers to assist in any way possible. It’s a good way to contribute, be engaged with what’s happening, whether it be:
• At matches, at training, with functions, or socially.
• Assistance at the Canteen at University Oval
• Scoring
• Team Management- with Grade teams, PG’s, AW Green Shield
• It could be with communications social media or website contribution if
that’s your bent.
Appendix 1
Season 2019/2020 Results
First Grade
Winner of Limited Overs Competition (2nd time in 3 years)
Semi Finalist T20 Competition
Finished 2nd in the First Grade Belvedere Cup won by Randwick Petersham.
Third Grade
Winner of the Premiership
Fourth Grade
Winner of the Premiership
Other Highlights
Hayden Kerr announced joint winner of the Bill O’Reilly Medal.
Liam Robertson and Dugald Holloway selected in the First Grade Team of 2019/20.
Liam Robertson – First Grade Captain of the year.
Max Hope – Placed 2nd in the Second Grade Captain of the year.
Henry Clark – Third Grade Captain of the year.
Andrew Wilkinson – Placed 3rd in Fifth Grade Captain of the year.
Spirit of Cricket Award, finished 3rd behind Gordon and Northern District CC.
Senior Administrative Matters
Ed Cowan elected as a Member of NSW Cricket Board
Greg Mail, Appointed as Head of Cricket at Cricket NSW
Ian Moran, Awarded Life Membership of the SCA
The Sydney University Cricket Club sincerely thanks donors for any support that can be offered. We will emerge from this challenging situation stronger and ready to continue our success in the Sydney Grade Competition, producing quality cricketers at the highest level and above all players who compete in the true spirit of the game.
If you require further information, please contact:
Colin Robertson
General Manager - Sydney University Cricket Club
Email: c.robertson@sport.usyd.edu.au
‘This article first appeared in the ‘Southern Highlands Newsletter’ no. 234 July-September 2019 and is reprinted by kind permission’.
DOCTOR W. CAMAC WILKINSON. Victorian polymath: scholar, doctor, politician, cricketer by James Rodgers
On Friday, 16 October 1885, elections for the NSW Legislative Assembly began at 8.00am. The Assembly consisted of 122 Members. Conducting the election continued over the next two weeks in different electorates across NSW. This was the last NSW election in which there was no recognisable party structure. Subsequent governments were largely determined by a coalition of loose factions.
In Glebe there were two polling places - Glebe Town Hall in St John’s Road and the Central Police Court. Only adult male British subjects natural born were eligible to vote. Numbers at the polling places were large early as workers needed to cast their votes before 9.00. The second concentration of voting was during the lunch hour from 1.00.
That day 1,956 men cast their votes. Though voting was not compulsory, 60 per cent of those eligible exercised their right to send two representatives to Parliament for the first time since Glebe was first created as a municipality in 1859.
Four candidates stood in Glebe. They were not chosen by any party. They nominated, volunteers to serve without remuneration, imbued with a sense of duty and obligation and responsibility. They addressed meetings of the citizens in the Glebe Town Hall in the days leading up to the election.
The candidates were a builder, a retired oil colour man (a now obsolete trade indicating someone in paint manufacturing), a journalist and a medical doctor.
One candidate stood out. William Camac Wilkinson was easily the youngest at 28 years of age. He was the only one born in Australia; the only one unmarried; and the only one tertiary educated.
A rigorous and privileged education had left him intellectually precocious. He had been captain of Sydney Grammar School in 1874, matriculating in first place among Grammar students to the University of Sydney. In three years as an undergraduate, he won scholarships, medals and honours in Classics and Natural Science.
Wilkinson had travelled to England to study medicine at the University College of London. He graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine (1882) and a Doctor of Medicine (1884) before postgraduate studies in Europe.
By October 1885, Dr Wilkinson had recently arrived home. He had just taken up appointment at the University of Sydney as a lecturer in Pathology and was living in the family home Hereford House in Glebe Point Road. He was undoubtedly a member of what Manning Clark called “the comfortable classes”, descended from a naval captain in the British East India Company, Captain Henry Richard Wilkinson and son of a NSW District Court Judge, William Hattam Wilkinson (1831-1908) who had emigrated to Australia in 1852.
When the results for Glebe were declared, Wilkinson surprisingly came in first. Others had been favoured. John Meeks was a Glebe alderman, Michael Chapman had been Mayor of Glebe. In a first-past-the-post election, the results were: William Wilkinson 1102, John Meeks 1069, Michael Chapman 815, William Bailey 312. Wilkinson and Meeks were declared elected.
Glebe (‘The Glebe’), once the home of the Wangal clan, was appropriated by Governor Arthur Phillip in 1789. He granted 400 acres to NSW’s first chaplain, Reverend Richard Johnson. In 1885, its leafy surrounds were home to the gentry. The Wilkinson family, resident since the 1870s, was well known.
Dr Wilkinson had certain Victorian values impressed upon him by his family and by his Headmaster at Sydney Grammar, the formidable AB Weigall. He brought his own developed sense of duty and responsibility - talents were to be cultivated for the benefit of others, not yourself. Representation in government was seen as a service. Wealth and position were a means, not an end.
In the Parliament, Wilkinson was a member of various committees and he served diligently.
By the time the Glebe voters went to the polls again on Saturday 5 September 1887 to elect the members of the 13th NSW Parliament, candidates were representing political parties for the first time. Sir Henry Parkes (Free Trade) had been Premier for only a week before the old Parliament was dissolved. The Free Traders were victorious, having secured 79 of the 124 seats.
In Glebe, five candidates stood - four Free Traders and one Protectionist. Glebe remained a two-Member constituency.
Dr Wilkinson had joined the Free Trade Association and held their endorsement. With Michael Chapman, both representing the Free Trade Party, the sitting Members were re-elected. Of those eligible 67 per cent voted.
The result was: William Wilkinson 1332, Michael Chapman 1261, John Meeks 503, William Bailey 384, S.A. Byrne (Protectionist) 225.
Meeks was not happy with the result. He intended petitioning for a scrutiny of his votes which he claimed were very much understated. Nothing came of this.
At the next election, in January 1889, Wilkinson decided not to recontest his seat. He was giving lectures at the University of Sydney, engaged in honorary practice at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. He had founded the District Nursing Association and the Queen Victoria Home for Consumptives. He toured Germany and Austria in 1891 where he met Robert Koch, the German physician who identified the specific causative agents of tuberculosis (consumption). Koch was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1905.
In 1892 Wilkinson married Jessie Jane Cruickshank. A son, Alexander, was born the same year. Alexander became a decorated war hero who played 89 first-class cricket games, mainly in England, until he was 47.
Marriage brought Dr Wilkinson close to politics again. Jessie’s brother was George Alexander Cruickshank (1853-1904), banker and landowner, Member for Inverell in the NSW Parliament for 12 years (1889-1901). In the first Federal Parliament of 1901, he was elected Member for Gwydir in a comprehensive victory for the Protectionist Party.
Wilkinson put himself forward one more time and was elected for Belmore in the Sydney City Council elections of 1902.
In 1908 he represented the Australasian Olympic team’s interests in the London Games Management Committee before moving to London and opening a practice in Harley Street. For most of the rest of his life, he lived in London, increasingly renowned for his treatment and cure of those suffering from tuberculosis. He was one of the first Australians admitted to the Royal College of Physicians. When Jessie died in 1929, he married Dulcie Dey Fry (1893-1972).
If that was all that he ever did, it would have been a fulfilling, generous life.
How many of his students, his patients, his colleagues and his constituents knew that his cricket career provided a fascinating footnote in the history of Australian cricket?
He was a talented sportsman: one of the rugby players at Sydney University in 1875, one of the founders of the University Athletics Club, a batsman of some skill in the University sides of 1874-75, 1875-76 and 1876-77.
As noted earlier, in 1878 he was in England, between finishing his BA at Sydney University and enrolling in medical studies in London.
In that English summer (much diluted by wet weather) the first white Australian cricket team to tour the United Kingdom played 41 games. None of the games are now termed as Test matches. It was a team of only 12 players, captained by Dave Gregory and managed by John Conway. When W.G. Grace “kidnapped” the English born Billy Midwinter early in the tour so that Midwinter could play for Grace’s Gloucestershire, the Australians had only eleven players for their remaining matches.
Consequently Conway (who played ten games for Victoria) and six others played for the Australians at various stages. One of those six was W.C. Wilkinson. A possible connection was Tom Garrett with whom Wilkinson had played for Sydney University as an undergraduate.
Whatever the circumstances of Wilkinson’s appearance for the Australians, against the West of Scotland in Glasgow on 13-14 September, he was caught for a duck, batting at number 10, and may have thought that he would be needed no more. The game finished early on the second day and another game was hastily organised. Wilkinson scored 8 before the Australians had to leave for Sunderland, 210 km away.
They played a two-day game against the Eighteen of Sunderland and collapsed twice (77 and 58) in showery weather to lose by 71 runs. Garrett took 11 for 28 in Sunderland’s first innings. Wilkinson made 2 and 5 not out. His three games for Australia had realised 15 runs and no wickets. On the 1880 tour, he again filled in when the Australians played The Players and made 19 not out.
While studying in London, his cricket ability created interest in Middlesex County. In 1881 he became the first Australian-born to play county cricket. In limited appearances, he headed the Middlesex batting and bowling averages. He made 41 against Yorkshire at Lords (just down the road from where his father had been born 50 years before) against four England Test bowlers. An innings of 52 against Oxford University drew praise for his vigorous hitting. His right arm medium pacers took four wickets.
He appears to have played little cricket over the next decade. Just after his election for Glebe, he opened the batting in the annual Parliament vs Press game at the Domain in February 1886 and made 31 against the Press side captained by the manager of the 1878 team, John Conway. He then played a few games for the Union Club in 1886-87 and in occasional friendly fixtures (v Combined GPS, v Newcastle).
Quite unexpectedly, on 19 April 1896, he resumed his career with Sydney University with whom he’d last played as an undergraduate almost 20 years previously. Again, the connection appears to have been with Tom Garrett, the 37-year-old venerable former Test player who had played with Wilkinson in the 1870s and who had been in the Australian team when Wilkinson filled in during 1878.
These were hard times for the Sydney University club. The undergraduates struggled. Veterans in the 1st Grade side were fading. Five players were unavailable for the final match of the 1895-96 season. So, at 38 years of age, balding, with a luxuriant moustache, Wilkinson went in first with Garrett against Glebe at University Oval. Glebe was in first place, University last and Glebe won the game by 197 runs. Garrett and Wilkinson put on 60 but they had little support. Wilkinson’s 58 was a bright feature of University’s dismal batting.
The next season, 1896-97, Wilkinson was persuaded to play another six games. The University 1st Grade team was top-heavy with players whose golden years were long behind them, even though three of them were former Test players. The younger players achieved little.
In his final 1st Grade game for University, 22 years after his first, Wilkinson scored a memorable 83 not out and University had a rare convincing win by 151 runs.
Again, unexpectedly, when he was in England touring in 1899, he played nine non-1st-class games for MCC. Wilkinson had been a member of MCC for over 50 years. He was summoned again to play one more 1st-class game for Mr Webb’s XI against Oxford University. He was now 41 and his comeback realised just two runs in his two innings.
When he died in London in 1940, aged 88, Wilkinson had lived an exemplary life of generous service. He was a pioneer in medicine. When he was needed, he represented the people of Glebe. He came to the aid of his cricket club and, in a few sodden days in 1878, his countrymen.
It’s been a week of full of awards for our Sydney University Cricketers and what better way to end it than with news of Liam Robertson’s and Duglald Holloway’s selection in the NSW Men’s First Grade Team of the Year 2019/20. Both have performed fantastically throughout the season and it’s a pity they couldn’t have continued to dominate during the finals series.
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