Three Armstrong Creek cricketers combined for a grand total of 553 runs between them on Saturday December 14 and broke all sorts of records along the way.
C2 Grade captain Tim Hester smacked a scarcely believable 277 from 192 deliveries while teammate Trevor Piera joined in with 127 from 67 as the Titans amassed an eye watering 4/505 against Collendina.
And to top it all off, A Grade opener Clay Mulgrew made 149 from 142 balls against Jan Juc.
Hester and Piera added 304 for the third wicket, smashing the previous club record of 208. Hester’s 277 bettered the previous club best of 175, ironically made by Piera. And 508 is the club’s highest ever total.
“I knew 175 was his top score and that was the club’s top score and the boys all started clapping and I’m like, what the hell is that?,” Hester said.
“Then he said ‘you just got past me, you *****’. So it was good to be out in the middle with him and bit of an embrace in the middle of the wicket. Then you get the 200, then you get the 250 and then you know, it was all just fun.”
Hester contemplated retiring once he passed 100.
“It was 25 overs or so and I was thinking ‘do I walk off here’ because we had 40 overs left,” he said.
“We declared a couple of weeks ago after 40 overs against Queenscliff. We made 350 and had them 6 for 50 so it did cross my mind. I was a tad selfish on the weekend because this will probably be my last year at 52 years old.”
Hester said Piera came in at a good time.
“He opens his stance right up, left-hander and everything goes to midwicket, doesn’t matter where they bowl it,” he said.
“When he came in it was great for me because I was absolutely knackered. There were some monster hits.”
Hester fell just 11 runs short of the highest ever BPCA innings, 288 made by Jan Juc’s David Norman.
“We’d always come up against him (Norman) and go blow for blow and he was a great bloke to play cricket against,” Hester said.
“I had that in the back of my mind after someone pointed it out, but then at some point you just see every ball and I think I was caught on the fence straight back over the umpire’s head, trying to hit a flat six through the goals and Garry Wingrave took a good catch.”
