All eyes will be on champion batter Ricky Damiano in the Subbies grand final between Brighton and Caulfield, writes PAUL AMY.
Almost 10 years ago, when he was coaching Caulfield, Shaun Richardson called his captain, Ricky Damiano, the Bradman of Victorian Sub-District cricket.
This was the context.
Caulfield bowled out its opponent, Mt Waverley, for 112 and went to stumps on day one at 2-137 off 32 overs, first innings points already in the bag.
Damiano had batted cautiously for 30 minutes, then launched at the bowlers, scoring 68 off 51 balls.
The innings prompted Richardson to tell the local press the next day: “He’s Bradman at our level. He deadset is.’’
By that stage Damiano had hit eight VSDCA centuries.
Nine years later, his tally is up to 21, the most in the long history of Subbies after he assumed the record from the legendary Val Holten two years ago.
The right-hander made 10 tons at Caulfield before returning to his junior club, Brighton, where he has scored 11 more.
This weekend, Caulfield and Brighton will play off in the grand final at Caulfield Park – and when he’s at the wicket not an eye will leave Ricky Damiano as he tries to bring the Tonners, in their 180th year of cricket, their first flag in 20 years.
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“He’s due for a few runs, Rick,’’ Brighton president Bernard Mutimer was saying last week.
Mutimer was discussing the Tonners’ prospects of beating minor premier Kew at Victoria Park.
Damiano, he said, would have to play a significant innings for Brighton to win the semi-final.
He did just that.
Dropping from No.3 to 5 in the order, Damiano went in with the score at 3-81 and hit 72 off 84 balls.
By the time he was out, Brighton had gone past 200, and a blast of 48 not out off 45 balls from Jack Rutter took the total to 7-268. Kew was bowled out the next day for 202.
Damiano agrees he had been “due’’. He had not reached 50 since his hand of 126 against Port Melbourne before Christmas.
“I’d been pretty poor,’’ he says.
The grand final will be Damiano’s fourth in Subbies.
He played in three at Caulfield, for one flag, won over Oakleigh in 2011-12.
The defeats came against Malvern in 2013-14 – when, to the shock of his teammates, he dashed off late on day one to act as a groomsman at a wedding – and against the Oaks in 2015-16.
It turned out the loss to Oakleigh was his last match for Caulfield. He made three in that grand final. First-season all-rounder Jacob Thorne made a fighting 86 as Oakleigh won a absorbing final by nine runs.
Richardson recalls that Damiano had walked out to bat “the most determined man you’ve ever seen’’ – and walked off a “shattered’’ figure.
He’d had a thin season – his aggregate of 299 included his only finals century, 129 against Hoppers Crossing – and decided to return to Brighton.
“That game (the grand final) was symbolic, because it was like the arrival of Thorne and the departure of Rick,’’ Richardson says.
“It was like a changing of the guard. Thorne took over as captain and the club’s won all these flags.’’
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While he has scored many runs in Subbies, Ricky Damiano scored many fewer than he would have liked in Victorian Premier Cricket.
As a wicketkeeper-batter, he played in the 2006-07 premiership for Dandenong, which he had joined from Brighton. His glovework was good, but his batting was often a disappointment: teammates lost count of the number of times he would classily and stylishly get to 15 or 20, then go out.
In 88 matches for Dandenong he struck two half-centuries and averaged 16.01.
Damiano says there’s a simple reason for that. He didn’t know how to bat.
“I went to Premier Cricket when I was very young,’’ he says. “I was keeping in the ones at the age of 16 and batting sort of No.7, 8, 9. Even No.10 at times.
“So I didn’t learn how to bat and make runs against senior cricketers before I went to Premier Cricket and even when I was there. I didn’t know how to make a score. I went to Subbies and found out how to actually pace an innings, bat for long periods of time.’’
He left Dandy to join Caulfield in 2009-10, starting out in Subbies with successive ducks, but going on to a handy 352 runs at 29.3 in his first season.
In 2010-11 Damiano went back to Premier Cricket, playing for Frankston Peninsula.
That season Frankston-Peninsula met Dandenong in what was possibly the greatest grand final in the competition’s history.
Damiano opened the batting for the Heat and scored 47 and 27 against an attack of Peter Siddle and Darren and James Pattinson. He met their pace with thrilling shots off the back foot.
But, after being dropped from the firsts and asked to captain the seconds, he left the Heat three games into the following season.
Damiano says he enjoyed playing under Nick Jewell at Frankston Peninsula but ultimately he thought he was wasting his time.
He returned to Caulfield and to Subbies, with the bang of a run aggregate of 669, an average of 83.6 and unbeaten centuries against Moorabbin (102 not out), Bayswater (106 not out) and Ormond (100 not out).
Caulfield won the premiership.
In the next three seasons he amassed almost 2000 runs.
As he did, Richardson saw a player “on another level’’.
“Even when he didn’t get hundreds he would make beautiful little 30s and 40s,’’ he says.
“He was a beautiful player to watch. Scored all around the wicket. Front foot, back foot.’’
He says the 2011-12 season, when Damiano and Peter Cross flattened a succession of bowling attacks, was “the best ticket in town for a while’’.
Damiano’s return to Brighton as captain in 2016-17 has brought him many runs and more centuries.
He cracked four tons in 2019-20, and the following season passed Holten’s Sub-District record of 19 centuries.
Damiano doesn’t see it as exceptional as others do.
“I say this a lot: when you play in a competition for a very long time, and you are good enough to be playing at that level, you should have a pretty good record,’’ he says.
“I think my records shows that.’’
A few years ago Damiano had a T20 stint with Greenvale Kangaroos, when Peter Di Venuto was the Roos’ director of cricket.
The story went that Di Ventuo looked up Damiano’s Subbies record, saw that he’d made just over 300 runs in 2017-18 and bluntly told him he should be doing a lot better.
Damiano has no memory of such a conversation.
But since then he has totted up at least 500 runs per season.
Damiano says he’s got better with age.
“Yeah, definitely. I think it’s the same with a lot of players. ‘Ayresy’ (Warren Ayres, his Dandenong coach) was someone I grew up idolising and I had a lot of conversations with him and he said when you get to 30 you become a better player.
“I think you understand how to play the game properly. I never knew how to play it properly until I got close to 30, how to pace an innings, getting momentum, how to relax, those sorts of things. I’ve found that nice mix.’’
Ayres, he says, is the best player he’s seen.
No one comes close: “I’ve watched some pretty special players who have gone pretty high in cricket, but no one is like him.’’
Ayres says Damiano was an outstanding young cricketer, an excellent wicketkeeper and talented batter.
He says he even thought of him as a potential first-class player.
“But he took too long to get his batting up to scratch,’’ Ayres says. “And probably in District cricket he never got it there. It only came later, after he matured, that he was able to turn good shots into big scores. And that’s where he’s at now.’’
He recalls a batter with “effortless power, all the shots and a great striker of the ball’’.
Ayres has the most centuries in Premier Cricket (41).
His former wicketkeeper has the most in Sub-District cricket.
Ayres played at Dandenong until he was 43.
Damiano turns 36 next month. He says his body “isn’t going really well’’ and he’s only “50-50’’ about playing next season.
“If I do, it will be at Brighton,’’ he says.
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Ricky Damiano admits he has a “massive soft spot’’ for Caulfield.
“My times there were always fantastic,’’ he says.
There was talk he might even return there this season, but in the end he stayed at the Tonners.
Under the coaching of Lachie Graf and the captaincy of four-time Val Holten Medal champion Jacob Thorne, the Fielders have remained in the high rungs of the ladder.
This will be their 11th grand final in 20 years; there is a copper bottom to their consistency.
Damiano says the Tonners will be “underdogs’’, but they have a quiet confidence they can win the final.
“I think we match up really well against them,’’ he says.
At the start of the season Damiano handed over the captaincy to another Dandenong premiership player, all-rounder Peter Cassidy, Sub-District’s most accurate bowler, a medium-pacer with a penchant for hitting pads.
“He’s been exceptional in the role,’’ Damiano says.
As for Shaun Richardson, as a past premiership captain and coach and president, he’s pining for another Caulfield premiership this weekend.
But, whisper it, he will not complain if Ricky Damiano gets a few runs.
RICKY DAMIANO BY THE TON
AT CAULFIELD
143 v Kingston Saints 2013/2014
133 v Roxburgh Park/Broadmeadows 2012/2013
129 v Hoppers Crossing 2015/2016
117 v Ormond 2013/2014
113 v Brighton 2013/2014
110 v Moorabbin 2014/2015
106* v Bayswater 2011/2012
102* v Moorabbin 2011/2012
100* v Ormond 2011/2012
100* v Melton 2012/2013
AT BRIGHTON
144 v Coburg 2019/2020
143* v Oakleigh 2018/2019
136 v Plenty Valley 2019/2020
127 v Noble Park 2020/2021
126 v Port Melbourne 2022/2023
125 v Werribee 2018/2019
124 v St Bernard’s 2016/2017
112 v Ormond 2019/2020
110* v Elsternwick 2020/2021
101 v Brunswick 2019/2020
100 v Box Hill 2017/2018