Jack’s at the crease

Andrew Mathieson
JACK Sing rarely ventures to the cricket these days but this moment was worth the wait.
One of Geelong cricket’s last gentlemen stood patiently on the sidelines, then broke out into quiet applause when his record finally tumbled.
A cover drive gave North Geelong veteran Alf Clark the five runs needed a fortnight ago to pass Sing’s 10,251 first-grade runs, a feat that for years in local circles seemed akin to matching Don Bradman’s test batting figures.
For an 85-year-old man who vividly remembers watching the Don from behind the pickets at the MCG when he was a boy, this milestone had been coming for more than 15,000 days.
“I’ve been aware of it for a fair while,” Jack smiles.
“I just look at it this way: when records are made, they are something that is usually broken pretty quickly.
“In this case, it dragged on for quite a bit.”
Jack scored the last of his runs in 1967, ending an astonishing 23-year playing career only punctured by three missing seasons lost to the Second World War.
Perhaps the record withstood the test of time for a reason.
Alf, a one-time Australian under-17s representative, reached the milestone at 42, the same age Jack was when he retired.
“I think he told me he started in 1983 and I finished in 1967,” Jack remembers.
“He probably wasn’t born when I finished.”
A reticent Jack likes to talk down his achievements but it has cricket tragics flicking through the pages of Geelong Cricketers Almanac at the very mention of his name.
“Aggregate runs record,” he laughs, “well, you play long enough, you’re going to make runs, aren’t you?”
Jack’s run-scoring mark may have passed but a remarkable batting average of 50.5 runs and 30 first-
grade centuries still stands in the record books.
So does his five centuries in a year and 944 runs at 118 each during the 1948-1949 season, a performance that brought hundreds of spectators to the grounds to watch the former Geelong West batsman.
Geelong Cricket Association announced Jack a living legend and the captain for the team of the century in 1996-97 after already naming the competition’s best player award the Jack Sing Medal.
“I always thought I was blessed with an ability to concentrate,” Jack says as he considers his success.
“I don’t know about anything else.
“I guess I could bat a bit, too.”
At his Clifton Springs’ home, Jack has a copy of GCA historian Kevin O’Dowd’s almanac sitting on the coffee table. He summons more reasons for his longevity in the game.
“I made a hell of a lot of not-outs,” Jack singles out.
“Look at those dots – they’re all not-outs. It says in the book that I had a tendency to cherish my wicket.”
Proof of this is the fact that 18 of his centuries were unbeaten.
Jack runs his finger down the page at the list of his hundreds, stopping during the golden age between the 1948-1949 and 1953-1954 seasons when he scored 20 of his 30 centuries. The best of the scores was 186 not out.
He inspects an almanac description of his batting.
“Kevin says something here about my dominance,” Jack says, shaking his head.
He looks down the bottom of the long column, which covers the last few years of his time playing the sport.
“When you get down here,” Jack says, pointing to 1963, “I started to get old and there was only one hundred.”
When Jack started playing churches’ cricket at 13, organisers would roll out matting on concrete wickets. Jack reckons the modern game is barely distinguishable to the old days.
Cricket is now brasher. Twenty20 cricket is “shocking”, he says.
Appealing is more intimidating and players are louder.
“You certainly didn’t backchat in my day,” Jack sneers.
“If you opened your mouth, you’d be told by one of the senior blokes in the team to get on the boundary and mind your own business.
“You’d act like a gentleman.”