It's an honour for me to be here at Manuka Oval, in the presence my distinguished parliamentary colleague, the Minister for Sport and in the presence of so many people who have done so much over the years to promote cricket around Australia and here in the A.C.T to commence the process which will culminate in what we hope is a great game at this oval early in January.
Yes, the tradition of the Prime Minister’s XI goes back to the glory days of Sir Robert Menzies in 1951. Then the tradition fell into abeyance. It was revived by Bob Hawke in 1984 and it’s continued ever since.
It’s lovely to see the photographs of Prime Ministers who have been involved in this. Hawkey doesn’t seem to be up there for some reason – Manuka Oval what are you doing? He was a fine Prime Minister, in many respects – although a political antagonist – and as the reviver of this tradition, along with the founder of this tradition, I expect that next time I come, I’ll see Sir Robert Menzies’ and Bob Hawke’s photographs up there as well.
Unlike Bob Hawke, unlike Sir Robert Menzies, unlike John Winston Howard, I’m not a cricket tragic.
I was taken to the nets along with every other year seven student at St Ignatius College at the end of our first week in 1970. I was given a ball, told to give a couple of balls to a batsman and after my second ball they said, “you’re a rower, mate!” So, I missed out on cricket in my youth.
I came to appreciate watching cricket as a student when I spent some memorable university holidays on The Hill at the Sydney Cricket Ground watching Sheffield Shield games and watching test matches, but I never actually got to play the game until I was at Oxford University.
I was the Secretary of the Queens College Middle Common Room and I discovered that as the Secretary of the Queens College Middle Common Room, I was the ex-officio captain of the Middle Common Room cricket team and I thought, “this is a bit of a burden”, until I discovered that the only way to get a drink in the middle of the afternoon in England in those days was to be involved in a sporting fixture, because the Pavilion Bar was open at a time when the pubs were not.
Funnily enough, during my tenure as the Queens College Middle Common Room cricket captain, it had more games than any other team at the College! I think I was there not as a batsman, not as a bowler, not as a fielder, but probably as a sledger. So, perhaps it was good training for my subsequent life in politics and in the Parliament!
But there is no doubt, cricket is a magnificent game.
It is the team game which most and best lays claim to being our national game. There are no state rivalries, as it were, when it comes to summer sports. So, we are all cricket lovers right around our country and I’m thrilled to be associated with this marvellous tradition.
I’m also delighted to be associated in this particular venture with a very long-standing friend of mine and a great friend of cricket, that's Colonel Cate McGregor.
I've known Cate since student days. Cate and I have been in a few scrapes together over the years and she has, as you know, an interesting personal story but one thing which has been a constant in Cate's life, has been a love of cricket and it was my privilege and honour to be able to invite Cate to assist me with the selection for this Prime Minister's XI. Along with John Inverarity and the other selectors, Cate is going to be putting this team together and I was particularly pleased to be able to accept Cate's recommendation when it came to the captaincy of the team.
The tradition with this particular event is that we field a team of up and comers; we field the cricket legends of the future, but you can only mould and shape the legends of the future if you are using one of the established legends as a mentor and I'm delighted to say that the captain of the Prime Minister's XI this year is Brett Lee.
I've obviously watched Brett's on-field performances for many years and he's done his country proud – on the field and off the field. He's played more than 70 Tests and he's taken more than 300 Test wickets. I think there's only four other Australian bowlers in history who have done so well. Not only has he been a fine cricketer, he's also been a fine human being and a great character: in every sense an adornment to the game. So, it is a real honour to have him as captain.
In more recent times I've got to know Brett a little off the field and he certainly is just as good a bloke to meet as he is to see on the screen and in public. So, Brett, thank you so much for taking on this task.
Australian cricket seems to be in much better shape now than it did just a few weeks ago. There was talk of the old enemy. Well, the old enemy – the traditional rival, I would prefer to say – certainly left Brisbane knowing that it will be a fight, and like everyone else, I'm not just looking forward to the game here at Manuka Oval in January, I'm looking forward to a riveting series of cricket and may the home team win.
[ends]