THE droughtbreaking Destination NSW Home Ground Tour arrived in Tamworth on Saturday complete with a truckload of cricket gadgetry and games for junior cricketers and one of Australia’s great attacking batsmen – Kenneth Doug Walters, MBE.
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Walters, who was born in Dungog, turned 70 yesterday.
After helping out at Taree, the former Test allrounder was in Tamworth over the weekend with the Home Ground Tour, spreading the word about the upcoming World Cup in Australia starting January 27 at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
Walters played 74 Tests, scoring 5357 runs at an average of 48.26 and took 49 wickets at 29.08.
He also played 28 One Day Internationals and 258 first class games, amassing 16,180 runs at 43.84.
A dashing middle order batsman, he shares a few similarities with Tamworth’s new Test bowling star Josh Hazlewood.
While Hazlewood played a number of first grade games at Tamworth’s No. 1 Oval, Walters was a hit there too over the weekend with the many young boys and girls who turned up.
Like Hazlewood, who claimed 5-68 in Brisbane, Walters made his debut at the Gabba in Brisbane, scoring 155 against England in the 1965-66 Ashes series.
“It was good fun,” he recalled on Saturday.
“Josh has been good too. He’s taken another two this morning already,” the Test star said of the “Bendemeer Boy” who followed up his five wicket first innings haul with 2-74 in the second.
“This has been good fun too with all the boys and girls.”
Walters hopes Hazlewood will now go on and cement his place in the Australian team.
He actually made his first class debut for NSW against Queensland in the 1962-63 season and had a highest score of 253 with a 7/63 against South Australia in the 1964-65 season.
In the domestic Sheffield Shield competition, he played 91 matches, scoring 5602 runs at 39.73 and taking 110 wickets at 32.81.
He is also well remembered for scoring a brilliant century in a session at the WACA against England in 1974, where he hooked Bob Willis for six from the last ball of the day to bring up his ton.
Also at the Home Ground Tour on Saturday was Yannick Samarasinghe.
He played in the Australian Under 19s with Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc when Australia won the Junior World Cup under Mitch Marsh’scaptaincy.
“It’s great to see the boys going so well,” Yannick said.
“It was a great tour.
“We had a really good group.”
Unfortunately for Samarasinghe, who sports a breezy afro and is named after brilliant French tennis star Yannick Noah, injury has curtailed his career and he now works for the Elite Sports Group, which is contracted to Destination NSW to run the Home Ground Tour.
Cheryl McCormack is the Destination NSW project director for the Cricket World Cup.
The Home Ground Tour is taking “the excitement of the World Cup to regional NSW”.
“The World Cup will be the fourth biggest sporting event,”she said.
“The first game will be at the SCG on January 27 between South Africa and the West Indies.
“We have three pool games (Australia v Sri Lanka and England v Afghanistan) as well as a quarter final and semi-final.
“People will be surprised by how cheap the tickets are.
“It is family-friendly.”
She said the response in Dubbo, Moree, Armidale, Lismore, Kempsey, Port Macquarie, Taree and now Tamworth has been impressive.
“We are a bit of droughtbreaker. Everywhere we’ve been it’s rained.
“Out at Moree it hadn’t rained for 10 months when we were there.”
