ABOUT 10 years before he became an Australian fast bowler, Shane Harwood was in the first official cricket match on Shepherds Flat's Field of Dreams - the playing field carefully crafted into a paddock, just like the American baseball equivalent in the 1989 film.
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His was not a dream day, coming back from injury and not bowling full pace and going out for a duck with the bat.
Other now legendary names in action were the likes of Harwood's Brown Hill teammate Dean Romeril, who hit 60-odd and one of the biggest sixes at Cricket Willow to this day.
A Cricket Willow invitational team featured Keiran Nihill, who crafted a successful career in Bendigo cricket and football, and Steve Travaglia, who became a leading light in the Roll the Dice horse syndicate.
Wayne Morgan and Denis O'Connor, both in the twilight of their careers, chalked up half-centuries.
The picturesque field, tucked away in the Hepburn Shire, has become home to rich sporting memories and dreams in the region in the 25 years since that first match on January 31, 1999.
Cricket Willow's Adrian Tinetti said there were some pretty good names, emerging and well-established, who helped create history that day.
The move was ambitious and remains so in what has become an increasingly competitive sporting landscape for hosting duties and in modern facility demands.
The Tinetti family had been watching the movie Field of Dreams when they first had the idea to develop a sporting arena at their home.
Mark Waddington, then with Brown Hill, had been helping the Tinettis with business planning and helped to make the Cricket Willow oval a reality. Waddington later went on to be a key driver for St Patrick's College in major capital projects, including the OCA Pavilion and the Jo Walter Field.
"There was a lot of hard work to convert the front paddock into a cricket ground - it's still hard work and we're still going strong for maintaining it for events and cricket games," Tinetti said.
Interruptions with the COVID-19 pandemic have largely slowed down the action.
That cricket launched an impressive roll call in Ballarat Cricket Association Twenty20 Cup finals, typically held on Australia Day, annual fixtures for the Victorian and South Australian cricket umpires' hit-out and a stop for the Great Victorian Bike Ride.
Cricket Willow also became the setting for the Run for the Willow, featuring the Victorian Athletic League's Daylesford Gift, for 15 years. Maryborough might have it's bagpipes at the end of the straight, but this Gift quickly became known for the Tinetti family's Swiss-Italian style hospitality and picnic-filled amphitheatre.
Gift winners claimed a VAL sash and took home a Cricket Willow bat as their prize.
There has been something magical about watching sport in this field.
Cricket's influence on the area dates back further than a century when English captain Archie MacLaren had been telling Test umpire Bob Crockett in 1902 he was surprised Australia did not produce its own willow for bats.
They established a plantation in Shepherd Flat and the Crockett Cricket Bat Company, which was sold in the 1950s to sporting brand Slazenger.
Most willows were felled, except for a few saved on the Tinetti property where bat making long continued to today, where a bat making museum and demonstrations remain.
The Tinetti family created a Cricket Willow scholarship for a Ballarat player to take their cricket to the next level in the United Kingdom with a South Yorkshire club in premier division. This sent more than a dozen emerging talent from the region to an English summer.
This too faded due to the pandemic but a flicker of the dream remains.
Tinetti and his parents were in England for the 2023 Ashes series and popped in to catch up with some old Yorkshire friends who were keen to host Ballarat players once more.
This all goes to show it can be interesting what dreams can serve up from a seemingly hidden gem and plenty of hard work.
