He worked reading gas meters after getting a shotgun up the nostrils at his old job. And for one glorious summer, 207cm paceman Ashley Gilbert came from nowhere to take on cricket’s titans, writes PAUL AMY.
It had been placed in a glass frame and now sits on the desk of his home office.
The blue Victorian Cricket Association cap is a reminder of Gilbert’s one and only season as a first-class cricketer.
Twenty-five years ago, the 207cm fast bowler was reading gas meters for a living and playing District cricket for Carlton when he was called up to play a four-day match for Victoria against the touring England side.
It was at the MCG and he rifled his right-arm pace at Michael Atherton, Nasser Hussain, Graeme Thorpe, Alex Stewart, Graham Hick and Mark Ramprakash.
The game was drawn, with Gilbert helping wicketkeeper Peter Roach hold out the Englishmen on the last day.
He had opened the bowling with Brad Williams in both of England’s innings, for tidy figures of 2-63 off 29 overs and then 2-44 off 13.
Hussain, Hick, Stewart and Ramprakash were his victims.
Ramprakash was also his adversary.
The affable Gilbert admits that after dismissing the Englishman, he gave him some advice on the best way to get back to the changerooms.
“I didn’t know if he’d played at the MCG before and I thought I’d give him some directions,’’ he quips.
Ramprakash didn’t care for them. And on the last day, as Gilbert and Roach staved off defeat, he had the big fellow in his sights. They came together after Gilbert had got out of the way of a Dean Headley bouncer, exchanging hot words until the umpire intervened.
The Herald Sun called it a “slightly comic scene as the 207cm tall Victorian looked down on the 175cm Ramprakash’’.
After stumps, the English press popped questions at him as he headed to the carpark.
The tour match, a Sheffield Shield game against Tasmania and four one-dayers for the Vics made up Gilbert’s season as a first-class cricketer.
It left him with a welter of memories; all because, he says, he was “in the right spot at the right time’’.
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Ashley Gilbert’s cricket began at Lakes Entrance and finished a few years ago at Strathmore, in Melbourne’s north.
Work transfers with the National Bank, cameos at country clubs, a bank holdup, dismissing Adam Gilchrist for a first-ball duck, two creamed Ricky Ponting drives and injuries are elements of his journey.
It is one of the more unusual in Australian cricket.
Gilbert was raised in Lakes Entrance, in east Gippsland, and played junior cricket for Lakes and Wy Yung.
Leaving Year 12 before his final exams, he landed a job with the National Bank but had to move to the Korumburra branch in south Gippsland.
He joined Leongatha Town in the Leongatha association, had three years away from cricket and then popped up briefly at Dalyston in the Wonthaggi association, playing alongside banking colleague Dean Cuman.
Dalyston players of the day still recall the sight of the lanky young fellow delivering the ball from great heights, cypress trees at the bottom end of the ground serving as the sightscreen.
A transfer with the bank had Gilbert packing his bags again, to Wangaratta in the north of the state.
It was, he says, the first steps towards him becoming a big cricketer.
There were about three games left in the season when he landed at “Wang’’.
Gilbert joined a club called College. No one knew much about him.
Picked in C Grade for his first game, he took “9-15 or something and made 80’’.
A few weeks later he was in the club’s A Grade grand final team. He remembers the match for dropping the opposition’s best batter at slip before he had scored. He went on to make 180 not out. His team lost a high-scoring final.
“It was a wonder anyone ever spoke to me again,’’ Gilbert says.
“But Wangaratta cricket was awesome. It was unreal in those days. It had some great cricketers. I was playing Saturdays and Sundays, because there was a 35-over Sunday comp. When I was up there I fell back in love with the game. Best thing I ever did. Met about 1,000 blokes and ended up playing Country Week too.’’
Gilbert dropped that catch in the grand final off the bowling of Barry “Bouncer’’ McCormick, who ahead of the 1992-93 season joined District club North Melbourne.
Seeing McCormick do well, Gilbert decided to make the same move, driving from Wangaratta to Arden St on Thursdays, heading back home, working on Fridays and travelling back on Saturdays for games.
He debuted for North Melbourne in 1994-95, under the captaincy of former league footballer Liam Pickering.
Pickering was introduced to the newcomer at the indoor nets at Arden St. And when he batted, Gilbert let fly with a beamer.
“He nearly knocked my head off! And I thought, ‘What the hell, who is this gigantor?’’ Pickering recalls with a laugh.
They became tight.
Gilbert was unfit and overweight when he arrived in District cricket. But as he put miles into his long legs, he had some good returns for the battling Kangaroos. Early in the 1997-98 season, he also had a falling out with them.
“I got the flick. I was sacked after round two,’’ he says.
“I had a minor disagreement with the chairman of selectors’ son, who was getting a game in the ones ahead of my mate. So I was shown the door.
“But I was no good at the time. I was fat and lazy. I was probably cooked after lunch.’’
Carlton came calling and Ian Wrigglesworth got him a job reading gas meters.
Shortly before his departure from North Melbourne, the Northcote bank where Gilbert was working was held up.
“I had the shotgun up the nostrils,’’ he says.
“I never felt like he was going to shoot me but it wasn’t ideal. I thought, ‘F – k this, I’m out’, so I got out of it (banking). It was a good way for me to get out because I’d had a gutful of it.’’
Reading gas meters was unglamorous work.
But being on his feet all day got him fit. And by the end of his first season with the Blues, his bowling had gained him attention.
Rodney Marsh called and invited him to winter in Adelaide at the Academy.
Gilbert spent four months working on his cricket and another month playing in Brisbane.
In early September, the Academy players lined up against the Australian team preparing to play at the 1998 Commonwealth Games.
Adam Gilchrist and Mark Waugh opened the batting.
“I stuffed that up for everyone,’’ Gilbert says.
“Front-row seats to the greatest batsman in the world, Adam Gilchrist, and I just happened to nick him off first ball.
“We didn’t see him bat. Off he went.’’
He dismissed Steve Waugh too, caught behind.
And the Academy team won the game, helped by runs from Marcus North and Nathan Adcock.
Gilbert says his bounce rather than his pace was his biggest weapon.
“If it was a seaming wicket, I was all right,’’ he says. “When it got flat, I wasn’t much good against good batters.’’
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After his time with Marsh and the Academy crew, Ashley Gilbert looked forward to going back to District cricket.
But his recollection is that he went to state training before returning to Carlton. The Vics had earmarked him for some one-dayers.
His first Mercantile Mutual Cup match was against South Australia; he picked up the wicket of Greg Blewett, “which was bloody nice’’.
December brought the MCG match against England.
Gilbert says it was surreal to come up against players he had watched on television.
To watch them on TV was to think they would be easy to dismiss, he says. But it was different in the middle. Their bats seemed as wide as doors.
By the last day, Gilbert reckons, all of the English players “had the shits with me’’. Off-spinner Robert Croft even bounced him.
The clash with Ramprakash thrust the novice into the headlines.
“England‘s volatile Mark Ramprakash stalked in 25 metres from point to confront towering Victorian pace bowler Ashley Gilbert and discharge a verbal rocket in a last hour of fireworks at the Melbourne Cricket Ground yesterday,’’ reported the great cricket writer Phil Wilkins.
Gilbert recalls: “Apparently (Ramprakash) was trying to get into the changerooms after the game.
“I was all for it until I heard he was a golden gloves at something. I said, ‘Righto, we might just have to back this up a little bit’.’’
Three weeks later, Gilbert was picked to play his first Sheffield Shield match for the Vics, against Tasmania in a match that started on January 1.
“I had to room with ‘Chuck’ (Victorian captain Darren Berry) because they were worried I was going to go out and not come home,’’ he says.
The Tassie team featured Ponting, David Boon, Shaun Young and Jamie Cox.
Ponting was out for nine in the first innings, caught behind off David Saker.
“This is my favourite story and I tell it to anyone who will listen,’’ Gilbert says.
“I was at mid-off when ‘Sakes’ was bowling to Ponting. ‘Sakes’ said to me, ‘Have your hands warm’. He bowled him a half-volley and Ponting just smashed it past me.
“I went and got it and ‘Sakes’ said to me, ‘Now you might want to give yourself another 10m, because this one is going to be even easier to hit’. And he bowled him another one and Ponting smashed it again. If it had hit my hands it would have broken them.
“And then ‘Sakes’ said to me, ‘Now get ready to celebrate’. And he bowled it a yard shorter and a yard quicker and it swung away and nicked him off. It was the best thing of all-time.’’
In a drawn match, Gilbert took 2-58 off 20.4 overs and then 0-38 off 14.
Bowling a short ball to Young “just to have a look’’, he was hit a long way out of the ground.
Gilbert’s father, Bill, had made the trip to Tassie.
“I’ve come a long way to see you get hit that far big fella!’’ Gilbert Senior bellowed as the few spectators at Bellerive Oval tried to find the ball.
The official scorecard lists Gilbert at No. 11 in the batting order.
“Yeah, that’s wrong,’’ he says. “After some searching net sessions, I’d been given the No. 10 spot ahead of Matty Inness!’’
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The match against Tasmania turned out to be his first and last Shield appearance.
And his last match for the Vics was in a one-dayer against Queensland, when Matthew Hayden blitzed 152 not out.
Gilbert’s nine overs went for 68.
“I think I’m the only man who’s played for Victoria and called for a count,’’ he says.
“I was bowling to Hayden and I didn’t think we had enough fielders. I thought someone had snuck off. He kept hitting me everywhere!’’
Towards the end of the season, Gilbert began struggling with stress fractures of the back.
He recovered but ahead of 1999-2000, he developed a bulging disc in his back. He returned at Christmas, then hurt a knee.
“I had surgery and never heard from the Vics again,’’ he says.
“I played one more year at Carlton and I was gone from District cricket by the time I was 30.’’
Gilbert played a season at local level, with Bentleigh, and then retired.
Fourteen years later, keen to “just get out the house’’, he made a comeback with Strathmore.
“I might have only played eight games, because my body was rooted, but it was just awesome to be involved,’’ Gilbert says.
“It was a good decision to go and play, because I got some good mates out it.’’
Gilbert is still attached to Strathmore but he plays golf most Saturdays.
Last week, he hit a hole-in-one at Northern Golf Club in Glenroy – and celebrated heartily.
“Didn’t quite make it home for dinner. Had to get a Uber home,’’ he says with a chuckle.
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“Now and then’’, Ashley Gilbert is asked about his brief first-class career. And he often describes it as “awesome’’.
Sometimes he wishes it had lasted longer.
“But physically I couldn’t get there. And I don’t reckon I was quite good enough,’’ he says.
“I was in the right spot at the right time. I was going well after being in the Cricket Academy all winter and (Damien) Fleming and (Paul) Reiffel were off playing for Australia. So there were a couple of spots available for Victoria and they picked me. Glad they did.’’
The cap in the glass frame on his desk proves it.
Before joining CODE Paul Amy was a sports reporter and editor for Leader Newspapers. He was also a long-time contributor to Inside Football and is the author of Fabulous Fred, the Strife and Times of Fred Cook.
