Number 19

A sign of hope amongst the hopeless.

#19: BRUCE LESLIE – 7/74 vs Moonee Valley. 1stXI. 1991/92

We’re going back a long way here but this was a day that sort of gave me some hope that we weren’t absolute trash. In my first few seasons of senior cricket, wins were VERY, VERY hard to come by, particularly against Moonee Valley. They had an exceptional team of talented, experienced cricketers (including Mr. Ian Denny) who toyed with us in those early years. We weren’t even semi-competitive against them. But this day at Lionheart belonged to Bruce as he “bamboozled them with science”. Bruce was a left arm spinner who had pterygiums, and as he would always tell me, “All good cricketers have them.” I still don’t know whether he was serious about that or not? But it was such a buzz watching a teammate take 7 wickets against the top team. If my memory serves me correctly, we bowled Moonee Valley out for 250-odd and I was so excited the following week thinking we could actually beat the top team. I think we fell 120 runs short. And so on it went, I’d get home, parents would ask, “How’d you go?” With the inevitable response,
“Lost again.”

But Brucey’s day out was a ray of sunshine in a pretty dark year.