Celebrating 175 years - Melbourne Cricket Club

SPORTS HERITAGE
Neil Harvey to join
sporting greats at the MCG
A
bronze statue of Australian cricket
great Neil Harvey will grace the Yarra
Park/MCG precinct before the end of
the year as the latest addition to the
prestigious Avenue of Legends project
sponsored by Australia Post.
Harvey will be in the safe hands of sculptor
Louis Laumen whose handiwork has been so
admired in the Tattersall’s Parade of
Champions statues ringing the MCG.
The Australia Post Avenue of Legends will see
a minimum of five statues placed in Yarra Park,
extending from the MCC members’ entrance up
an avenue towards Wellington Parade.
The first statue – that of cricketer Shane
Warne – was unveiled before the 2011 Boxing
Day Test, while a bronze sculpture of six-time
Melbourne premiership coach Norm Smith
was completed by Lis Johnson in September
last year.
Neil Harvey is one of the finest batsmen to
have played for Australia. In 79 Tests, starting
with a century on debut during Bradman’s
“Invincibles” tour of England in 1948,
the left-hander scored 6149 runs at 48.41,
with 21 centuries.
In 2000 he was inducted into the Australian
Cricket Hall of Fame and was also selected in
Australia’s Test Team of the 20th Century.
MCC Library cricket guru Ray Webster first
saw Harvey as a 10-year-old schoolboy and
was smitten.
“He was the No. 1 batsman in the world for
a decade and certainly belongs in that short list
of great players below Bradman,” said Ray.
“I saw him again against Peter May’s team
in 1958/59 at the MCG when he made 167.
He always had all the time in the world to play
his shots and was simply beautiful to watch.”
Louis Laumen was busy viewing “props”
when we spoke with him in February. He was
most impressed with a pair of boots from the
era (“It’s so important to get the detail right”)
and was searching for a pair of pleated,
high-waisted creams, a full-cut shirt, a jumper
typical of the fifties and a bat, perhaps one of
Harvey’s from the MCC collection.
He was also recruiting “life models”, men of
about 5ft 7in with the physique of Harvey so
that he can dress them and reconstruct the
approved pose. “That way I can see how the
clothing folds and so on as the shot is played,”
Neil Harvey’s classic batting style
he explained. “I take photos of the model and
then work from that.”
Louis expects to start on the Harvey statue
in May after he finishes another laudable
assignment – a statue of our first Olympic
champion, Edwin Flack, for Melbourne
Grammar School. His MCG work will be
unveiled in December.
Bert’s baggy green now at the MCG
The MCC added to its magnificent
collection of baggy green caps worn
by Australia’s Test cricketers in January
when it secured a cap worn by freakish
left-arm bowler Bert Ironmonger.
Ironmonger, who took 74 wickets at
17.79 in 14 Tests between 1928 and 1933,
was the fourth-oldest cricketer to make
his Test debut, first breaking into the
national team at the ripe old age of 45
years and 237 days.
He also played in the infamous
Bodyline series in 1932/33, took a
hat-trick for Victoria against England in
1925 and was selected in the MCC Team
of the Century in 1999.
Cecily Reeves, a cricketer herself in the
1940s and a passionate follower of
the game, donated the cap to the
museum in the name of the
Hamilton family, in memory of
her father Walter Hamilton.
In the 1930s, Ironmonger
had given his baggy green
cap to Walter, who was a
trainer at the St Kilda cricket
and football clubs for 25 years.
Hamilton handed it on to his son
Lawrence in the 1950s, but Lawrence’s
interest in cricket was minimal so he
passed it on to his sister’s husband, the
cricket-mad Walter Reeves.
“Walter played district cricket for
Essendon,” said his widow Cecily when she
visited the MCG to donate the cap.
“He only wore the cap once. He
put it on one day in a match
against Footscray. He made a
duck, so he never wore it again!”
The donation is another
opportunity to remind our
Australian cricketers that there is
no better place to secure such a
treasured memento, and display it for
future generations, than to donate it to the
club’s collection.
“We are delighted that an important
piece of Australian cricket history has
joined our collection,” said MCC curator
Helen Walpole. “We would love to hear
from other Australian cricketers or their
descendants who may have these
treasured baggy green caps and other
objects stored away.”
Footnote: While a fine bowler,
Ironmonger was pedestrian in the field
and as for his batting, A.G. Moyes coined
one of the great putdowns when he
noted: “He went to the wicket mostly as a
gesture to convention.”
Cecily Reeves (second from right), who has
donated Bert Ironmonger’s baggy green cap to
the MCC, with daughters Colette, Alison
and Judy.
March 2013
MCC NEWS
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