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Ask anyone in Australia who knows what they are talking about, and they will reliably inform you that playing for England is roughly equivalent to playing second-team club cricket in Australia.
“I actually thought he was a very average bowler,” was one review of former England spinner Monty Panesar’s time with Glenelg Seahorses in Adelaide in 2006. “We were staggered when he got a Test call.”
Sir Andrew Strauss started his career in the second XI at Mosman in Sydney. Ben Duckett, who played a year at Parramatta, also in Sydney, was dropped to the second XI despite having almost 50 games of professional cricket under his belt in the UK. Joe Root? After 13 matches for Prospect District in Adelaide, the selection committee decided they’d seen enough.
“Twos this week, mate.”
That was in 2011, and the following year Root debuted for England. For Duckett, it took him 18 months to go from the second XI to Tests, while Panesar dismissed Sachin Tendulkar on debut, little more than 12 weeks after that spell at Glenelg.
“Most of the top six of England have come over here,” says Sydney Cricket Club opening batter Matt Rodgers. “And it’s not a God-given right that they’re just going to come over and dominate.”
Of England’s Ashes batters this winter, Duckett, Zak Crawley, Ollie Pope, Jacob Bethell, Harry Brook and Jamie Smith have all spent time playing the club game in Sydney in recent years, where the competition is believed to be the strongest in Australia.
“I might be biased,” says Rodgers, “but I would support that Sydney Test Cricket is the best.”
Sydney Test Cricket is not a typo. They call it that.
Australia’s Steve Smith batting for Sutherland in a Sydney Grade Cricket one-day match against Randwick Petersham in 2018 (Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)
Duckett certainly found it tough going.
“I actually got dropped and was playing for the second team by the end of it,” he tells The Athletic. “I had a great time. I just didn’t score many runs. I was maybe 19. I’m not sure it was that useful to me — I didn’t get on that well with the captain.
“They make grade cricket seem more important than Test cricket, and I was a young lad wanting to go to Australia to make some new mates and have a bit of fun, which is what I did. I didn’t necessarily like how serious it was, but I did love going there. I just didn’t perform.”
It is not all sob stories for English cricketers who come out to Australian clubs.
There is a reason it has for so long been a rite of passage for young professionals. A chance for youngsters to leave home, improve their game on the field, make mistakes off it, and do so all while topping up their tan.
In his autobiography, Leading from the Front, former England captain Mike Gatting wrote of his own time in Sydney that, “It was really the best finishing school that any cricketer could want.”
There is no secret about why the top level of club cricket in Australia is stronger than its counterpart in England. The playing population is larger, the season is longer, and the number of professional teams is fewer. Meaning more people, playing more matches, and for fewer spots.
“Experienced first-grade cricketers in Sydney wouldn’t be intimidated by first-class cricketers coming from the UK,” explains David Dawson, a legend of University of New South Wales CC, who played 45 professional matches for Tasmania and New South Wales.
David Dawson playing for New South Wales in 2013 (Graham Denholm/Getty Images)
In England, you can score as many club-cricket runs as you like and your local county side won’t come calling. But in Australia, the top level of the club game is closely tied with the state. Runs for your club could lead to a state second XI game, which could lead to a state match, which could lead to an Australia appearance.
It is long-standing folklore that every batter in Premier Cricket is only ever six consecutive centuries from a Baggy Green. It is why they all take it so seriously — and to allow my prejudices to speak for a second — it is why they are all insane. The dream never dies.
Crawley was one of the English imports to head home from a spell in Sydney with his reputation enhanced. For a season he played at Sydney CC, alongside Rodgers, and also Ben Manenti, who now plays for South Australia and will also be part of the Italy side trying to qualify for the 2027 World Cup.
“Sydney is always searching for the next Zak,” Manenti says.
As a club, Sydney have had a long-standing unofficial connection with Kent in the English county game, and when local prospect Crawley expressed an interest in going out, calls were made and — paying his own way — he joined for the 2017-18 season.
“He was out here to get better at cricket,” Manenti says. “It took us a couple of weeks to get him out for a beer. But I actually ended up learning from him and training with him a lot.”
First Grade 🐯 Team Song after a great semi Final Win
@zakcrawley last one for the Season. pic.twitter.com/vRWkpFdzR0
— Sydney Cricket Club (@SYDCricketClub) February 24, 2019
In a saying as old as time, grade cricketers believe it was better in their day and the new heads disagree. Until, that is, they get older as well. “I’m starting to say that,” Manenti, 28, says with a grimace, as if seeing his father in the mirror for the first time.
One thing that is beyond doubt, however, is that the competition is getting younger, with fewer grizzled vets turning out, in a social shift that is replicated worldwide.
Ben Manenti celebrates a wicket playing for South Australia in the Sheffield Shield this season (Steve Bell/Getty Images)
Crawley, though, had the unusual experience of playing when David Warner and Steve Smith played the full year while they served bans from the Australian team for their role in Sandpaper Gate. That season, 2017-18, was strong.
In a T20 match against Sutherland, Smith’s club, Crawley hit a 42-ball century — the fastest in the history of the competition.
“Shane Watson, Steve Smith and Ben Dwarshuis were all playing for Sutherland,” Manenti recalls. “And Crawley was the best player on the ground. He took the p**s that day.”
Outstanding innings by Zak Crawley…100x off 42 balls v Sutherland in Kingsgrove Sports Twenty20 Cup pic.twitter.com/hkgmsNSTEq
— Michael Haire (@michaelhaire2) December 9, 2018
Brook was playing in Sydney that year as well, alongside Dawson at the University of New South Wales. Dawson is a good example of the range of players who participate. A regular in grade cricket, he was contracted at NSW so, while for others the experience of playing against the best is an anecdote to take with them for the rest of their lives, for Dawson it’s just another Saturday.
“You know they’re talented and might play for Australia,” he says of facing the likes of Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood on their way up. “But at that point, half your mates have played for Australia.”
That range of players in any XI is why English cricketers are so keen to go out and learn. In UK club cricket, the job of an overseas recruit is to be the best player in the team. In Australia, it is to be one of the team. “From my perspective,” Dawson says, “it’s always a fairly even keel of them helping us and us helping them.”
As such, Dawson’s memory of Brook is of a talented player, one who came with big raps having been England Under-19 captain, but not a figure, initially, who was going to stop him in his tracks.
“It’s so difficult to say one way or the other who may or may not become an international star,” he says. “I remember thinking he (Brook) was a bit loose, getting out a few times, but then I remember him saying something to me about how he’s going to lock in and get a hundred. And the next game, he did.”
The other moment that stood out for Dawson when Brook tipped the scale from being just another Englishman to a potential England player?
“He opened the batting against a guy called Stuart Meaker, who played some one-day cricket for England,” he says. “And first ball of the match, he ran down the wicket and hit him over cover up on the hill at Waverley Oval. And I remember thinking, ‘This kid’s got something pretty special’.”
There is a knowing element to all of grade cricket’s prestige. The Grade Cricketer podcast, one of the most popular cricket shows in the world, started as a satirical analysis of the bizarre Alpha, but amateur, environment of the club game in Australia. It took off because people related to it. And people related to it because it was true.
“There’s probably 10 or 12 clubs in Sydney where you’re getting the proper experience,” Manenti says. “Good grounds, good clubs, good training. Like, it used to be the school of hard knocks. I’d sit there as a 16-year-old, watching blokes playing third grade spraying blokes playing first grade. It was awesome.”
For years, Australian grade cricket has been the retreat of choice for English players making their way in the game. And it will continue to be so for years to come.
Archie Vaughan, the 20-year-old son of former England captain Michael, is playing in Sydney this year. He opened the batting for Somerset this season and has a professional 10-wicket haul to his name.
You’ll never guess which team they started him off in when he arrived from the UK…
