By Russell Bennett
Every cricket club has players who are the heart and soul type – those blokes who’d bleed for the name on the crest of their shirts, those who pour countless hours of blood, sweat and tears into the clubs they call home.
Emerald’s Clinton Marsh is one such player, but his commitment to the club is at another level entirely.
Having debuted for the Bombers in the Under 12s as a five-year-old, ‘Marshy’ is still going strong three decades later. He turns 35 in February and plans on playing for the Bombers until his body physically won’t let him anymore.
He’s never played for another club – he’s never even really thought about it.
On Saturday, batting at number nine for the Bombers in the Premier side’s chase of Upper Beaconsfield’s 326, Marsh did what he’s done so often before – stood up for his club, with a stirring 109.
It was his second ton for the Bombers (after a 113 in District seven years ago) and took the side to within sight of victory before he was ultimately run out in the 67th over.
Emerald is still searching for its first win of the new season and is the red-hot favourite to be relegated back to District after the 2017/18 campaign.
But no one in Bombers colours has their head in the sand. They know where they’re at.
“The main goal of every game is to get the win,” Marsh said.
“I didn’t start out on Saturday making sure I got a hundred – it was to do what we could to try and sneak a win. We knew if we batted the 80 overs we’d get enough runs to win, and we would have won if we batted out the overs.
“For us it’s not really about the talent or the people within the side – it’s executing. We’ve got people who can bat, but we’re just not doing it for long enough.
“If you play the top sides – the likes of Tooradin, Kooweerup and Pakenham – they’ll play 140 good overs out of 160. They’ll have 20 bad overs, whereas we’ll play 60 good overs and 100 bad ones. That’s the difference – they just play better cricket for longer and that’s what happened last week.”
By his own admission, Marsh prefers to bat after tea during two-dayers. If he’s not needed until then it means the Bombers’ batsmen have set a platform for him and some of the side’s other shot-makers to launch from in the final stages.
“The runs do come easier the older the ball gets and the longer everyone is out in the field,” he said.
“Anyone who chances their arm a bit like I do you get a bit more luck, I’d say.
“I think I inside edged my first ball past the stumps and then I just said let’s keep looking at it over by over. The ball then started coming out of the middle. We didn’t change the momentum or anything but if you start spreading the field a bit the runs come that little bit easier and there’s plenty of gaps to get your ones or twos, and if you have a bad ball you hit it. Other than that, I was just trying to have some fun out there.”
There were stages during the Bombers’ Round 4 game against the Maroons where they were playing strong, positive cricket – but those stages weren’t consistent enough, and didn’t last for long enough.
“When you look back at it, we were 2/0 and fought back to be 4/100 at tea and then we lost three quick ones again,” Marsh said.
“In the space of the first over of the game and the first four overs after tea we lost the game but between that we made 2/100 before tea and then after it we put on 150. It’s just small periods of games where we either lose confidence or belief.”
Marsh has been involved in the game his whole life. He knows where the real battle is waged.
“I think most of the game is played upstairs (in your mind),” he said.
“When you’re going well you tend to keep batting well, and when you’re not batting well you tend to think about not batting well. We’re a fairly young side and we’re playing some pretty seasoned teams. When you look at Kooweerup some of those boys have four or five flags each, so not only have they played a lot of senior cricket they’ve played a lot of high-pressure cricket too.
“We’re pretty young generally, and when we’ve got some of those boys coming in early when we’re in trouble it’s hard to get the confidence up, but if the boys can work hard enough for long enough it’ll turn around. It’s about the boys really believing that – not just hearing it.”
There wouldn’t be too many players in the competition who’ve rolled the arm over more than Marsh, or spent more hours out in the baking heat for their clubs.
And he’s in no hurry to put an end to that, either.
“I still love it,” he said.
“You get a lot of footballers say it in interviews – you get a real buzz when you play alongside a young player coming through and you see them start to develop. You keep playing for those reasons.
“I’m a very competitive person and I want to make sure we do stay in Premier because I think that’s the best thing for everyone’s cricket.
“There are some things that might be unachievable this year but we know we can start winning games, and once you start winning games you get confidence from that.
“It’s a familiar situation to us, this one, but it’s a credit to the guys – they keep backing up, they keep wanting to play.
“The easy thing to do would be to throw in the towel and go to another club or stop playing cricket and you’ll see that slide that happens to a few clubs where they not only go down a grade but down to the next one again. That could be the easy option but these guys aren’t taking it. Hopefully they get some real reward for their loyalty.”
