Comets, World Cups and diamonds in the sky: Brad Haddin and Ian McNamee reflect on Cricket ACT centenary

And there he was. Dean Jones at mid-on. Walking this way.

"Wow, Dean Jones," Canberra's 20-year-old wicketkeeper thought. "Everyone idolised Dean Jones in my era, how he changed one-day cricket and the energy he played with."

What was he going to say? Play straight? Maybe even wish the Comets rookie some good luck?

"You don't deserve to be on the same field as me," Jones said.

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Welcome to the contest, Brad.

Haddin had walked onto that field at 3-28. By the time he left, he'd scored 89 - sharing a 174-run stand with Peter Solway - to set up Canberra's first win and claim man of the match honours. For the record, Jones made 64 that day.

Odds that yarn will be told again at Cricket ACT's centenary gala on Saturday night? The governing body will reveal men's and women's teams of the century and celebrate the game's biggest moments in Canberra - of which the Comets, the little battler that could, provided plenty.

"I remember talking to him years later, I coached with him in the Pakistan league, and I said 'Jonesy, do you remember saying that to me?'," Haddin said.

"He goes 'Yeah, that's probably something I would have said to you young kids'. It was a very special time to get the first win. That was probably my fondest memory of the Comets.

"We weren't meant to really compete at all that year, and we beat Victoria. We put on a pretty decent partnership with Peter Solway, which was a special one for Canberra cricket, knowing his standing in the game there.

"He was a big part of my development as a cricketer so to be able to do that there and get the Canberra Comets their first victory in the, what was it then, the Mercantile Mutual Cup, that was a pretty special moment on many a level."

Of those, there have been plenty.

Like the centuries Usman Khawaja, Travis Head, Joe Burns and Kurtis Patterson scored when the floodgates finally opened after a dry summer for Australia's batters during Manuka Oval's first Test match in the summer of 2019.

But you know that story, maybe even better than the one where Don Bradman takes guard and tips his baggy green to the roar of the crowd during his final game of cricket for the Prime Minister's XI in 1963, the fixture that for so long was Canberra's jewel in the crown.

It was home to names like Lillee, Thomson, Chappell, Hughes and Matthews, who got the better of Michael Holding, Joel Garner and the all-conquering West Indies in 1984. But the one that mattered most was that of an uncapped batter from Tasmania named David Boon, who scored 134 in a Test audition against the calypso kings.

Never in Tim Paine's wildest dreams would he have believed he would captain Australia when he took his place behind the stumps for the Prime Minister's XI in 2006. Phil Jaques scored a century, Shaun Tait was doing wild things. Nobody can be sure just how much a drubbing at the hands of the Prime Minister's XI meant to England that day, but for the sake of the centenary let's say it handed Ricky Ponting the Ashes.

Chris Gayle smashed 215 from just 147 balls in the 2015 World Cup, while Brett Lee brought down the curtain on his career in a Big Bash League final in Canberra, the city that would one day be the Twenty20 competition's saviour during a pandemic that saw games shifted on a whim to avoid lockdowns and border restrictions. Even Merv Hughes was a Comet.

Beth Mooney scored one of the greatest Twenty20 hundreds of all time during an Ashes match at Manuka Oval. Turns out it wasn't even the best of the night once England's Danni Wyatt had right of reply.

Nathan Lyon, Michael Bevan, and Jason Behrendorff reached international honours via Canberra. The names of Brownyn Calver, DB Robin and John Gallop are enshrined on Cricket ACT medals and premiership trophies.

You've heard all of those names. But what about Charles Morrison, a foundation member of the ACT Cricket Umpires Association, and Ray Hatch? Mark Vergano, Kevin McCarty and Marjorie Moore?

"A lot of these people have just been forgotten," Cricket ACT life member and former chairman Ian McNamee said. "Those early blokes did so much for all of cricket, but particularly junior cricket. I'm probably talking too much."

Yet he never could. Fitting 100 years' worth of names into 1000-odd words of copy is simply impossible. For every name and every yarn told, there are countless left unsaid.

"I've been involved with cricket here for two thirds of the 100 years," McNamee said.

Long enough to have played cricket for Turner as a 16-year-old with a fellow named Bob Hawke.

"Nobody knew who Bob Hawke was then either, by the way," McNamee grinned. "He was a very quiet bloke, he was unassuming, and certainly not the Bob Hawke we got to know and love later."

Hawke was the political power broker behind the return of the Prime Minister's XI after almost 20 years in the wilderness. It was one of McNamee's highlights - but for every one, there has been a heartbreak.

The Comets being booted from the national one-day competition was "a kick in the guts". The ACT was at times on the verge of gaining full membership status only for plans to fall over. There was the Big Bash expansion dream that never was.

If anyone needs a reminder of McNamee's lasting legacy, just look up at Manuka Oval to the "diamonds in the sky".

The lights at Manuka Oval have been the catalyst for more top-level cricket to be played in Canberra since they were installed in 2013, with McNamee a driving force in the bid to secure government funding.

"Julia Gillard's announcement that the federal government would invest into lights, that was the catalyst to put lights on the agenda again. From there, the ACT government took over and the lights were up in eight months," McNamee said.

"She actually announced the day the lights went on, that there was one bloke in the room who 'can now leave me alone'. People came from everywhere after the speeches finished because they'd realised I'd been a bloody pest."

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