By Marcus Uhe
Clinton Ayres and the Cranbourne Cricket Club will forever be linked.
Ayres is considered a great Clubman at Cranbourne; someone always willing to go the extra mile and do the often unwanted tasks, a person that every organisation needs to hold them together.
For as much as he has given the club, however – 200 senior games, committee service, captaincy duties, coaching tenures, premiership success – the club may have provided more in return.
While at Cranbourne, Ayres met his wife, Megan – the daughter of club legend, Murray Pratt – created life-long friendships with the likes of Cam Kelly, Matt Moore, Chris George and Steve Miller, and discovered a passion for coaching junior cricketers.
Taking to it naturally, his first season saw him steward his team to the brink of premiership glory, before taking an even stronger vested interest when his nephew, Sahin, first began to ply his trade as a junior.
“I coached him from U13s through to 17s and now he’s got a passion for coaching too,” Ayres said.
“When my youngest nephew played, Sahin and I coached together.
“We had a team that had two kids that could bowl properly and the rest pretty much threw the ball.
“By the end of the year, all the kids bowled properly and one of the other coaches commented ‘it’s amazing what you’ve done with these kids’.
“That positive sort of thing when you see those kids is the real joy of coaching juniors.”
The now 45-year-old played his 200th game for the Eagles on Saturday, typically tidy behind the stumps and finishing as the last man standing with the bat.
There were signs and artwork around the ground celebrating his milestone, with members of his family making the trip to honour the much-loved ‘Clinka’, and his wife and daughter donning playing replica Ayres playing shirts.
Many of those he’s coached over the years have become teammates in some capacity during Ayres’ near 20 years at Cranbourne, returning to Melbourne and joining the club after a stint in Queensland when he joined the Armed Forces in his 20s.
There’s not much he hasn’t done during his time at the Eagles, becoming just the eighth player to reach the 200 game milestone and citing the Turf 3 premiership back in 2010/11 as one of his major highlights.
His father-in-law currently holds the record for senior games played at Cranbourne with 454 caps, having begun his senior career as a teenager – giving him a massive head start over his future son-in-law.
Ayres laughed when asked if Pratt’s record was in his sights, and despite his daughter Grace being just three-years-old, she already forms part of his goals for the future.
“I know my daughter’s only three but that would be a goal, to play a game of cricket with her if she does play cricket,” he said.
“I know it’s a long way down the track but it’s in the back of your mind.
“She loves going to the cricket club; the people there, she’s only three but the guys there all say hello to her and play with her.
“Wicketkeeping, if I want to keep playing, is probably one of the first things I’d have to stop doing.
“I’d like to play as long as I can.”
