Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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Post subject: Some first class cricket history in Australia | |
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Thinking about Paul Hibbert, based on something ronrat posted in another thread, brought to mind my favourite Victorian cricketer of that era.
Paul Melville was one of the brightest young stars in the Australian cricketing firmament when he passed away unexpectedly at 21 in late-1978. I watched his career with interest, perhaps because he was the first "up and coming young star" of Australian cricket who was about my age (I thought of him as a kid, even though he was actually a couple of years older than me) and I certainly barracked for him with the same passion that I subsequently put into Peter Daicos (whose career started the season after Paul passed away). When the Vics dropped Paul (really just to make him learn to be a bit more patient), I took it as a personal affront. I expected to see him back, bigger and better than ever and captaining Australia one day. Unfortunately, that wasn't to be.
His first-class record doesn't really say much about the great player he was destined to be. In the following article, Russell Jackson compares him to Glenn Maxwell. That's probably not quite right, though he did have the same "showtime" quality about him. Those of us who had the pleasure of watching Paul play thought of him as being destined to be a bit better than Greg Chappell but not, perhaps, quite as outrageously good as Viv. Anyway, it's a good read and some of you may enjoy it:
http://www.espncricinfo.com/blogs/content/story/768079.html |
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