Veterans: Roger French and Greg Oman are members of the Goulburn Murray team involved in this week’s over-60s cricket carnival.
Five hundred 60-plus-year-old cricketers have descended on Echuca and Moama for the ninth annual staging of the Echuca-Moama over-60s cricket carnival.
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Held in conjunction with Veterans Cricket Victoria and Goulburn Murray Cricket Association there are four interstate teams and 20 Victorian teams involved in three days of preliminary rounds before the finals are held on Thursday.
Echuca South, Rochester, Elmore, Colbinabbin, Bunnaloo, Nathalia, Cohuna, Tongala, Gunbower, Girgarre, Kyabram, Cooma, Gunbower — along with Echuca and Moama — will host the four divisions of the carnival.
Eighty-year-old wicket-keeper Wavell McPherson is one of the original participants in the tournament and its oldest participant.
Still got it: Eighty-year-old wicket keeper Wavell McPherson is the oldest participant of the 500-strong contingent of Victorian veteran cricketers involved in this week’s Echuca-Moama carnival. There are also four interstate teams in the region for the event this week.
Mr McPherson is a farmer from Brim, in Victoria’s Wimmera region, and was sprightly behind the stumps in the match against Geelong on Sunday, at Bamawm.
He was part of a match hailed as the World’s Oldest Age Cricket Match in Melbourne in December last year, which was a tribute to the octogenarians who continue to participate in Veterans Cricket Victoria competitions.
Mr McPherson is playing alongside a pair of Echuca 60-plus-year-olds and another veteran from Rochester. Unfortunately the carnival is over for another of the Moama-based members of the team, which is known as Goulburn Murray, but to those involved is simply a Victorian Country reserves side.
Greg Oman, 62, and Roger French, 62 next month, were in the team with Mr McPherson, along with Rochester’s Peter Lawford.
Well-known Echuca tomato grower Jim Gelch and retired Echuca optometrist David Wilson are both members of the Victorian Country’s first 11.
Ready: Wavell McPherson.
Murray River Council Mayor, and veteran cricketer, Chris Bilkey is the man on the sidelines and will not be a part of the carnival this week.
“We had a training run on Saturday and I tweaked my calf bowling in the nets,” he said.
Mr Bilkey said that was the reason the squads were so big, explaining there were more than 30 members of the Goulburn Murray team.
Seventy-nine-year-old John Hind, from Wodonga, said he had played alongside Wayville in that octogenarians match late last year.
“I won’t be 80 until December, but they needed a few numbers to get the match off the ground. I told my grandkids it was a ‘little ironic’ that I was too young to officially get a game,” he said.
Inside Friday’s Riv Herald we will have a tribute to some of the stars from the carnival and details of the winning teams from the carnival.
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