Just ten years ago Newlyn Cricket Club, based among the old potato paddocks and new vineyards outside of Creswick, was on its last legs.
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Playing in the Daylesford Cricket Association, the players and executive watched as opposing teams began disappearing one by one, knowing their own days were numbered if dramatic changes weren't made.
Declining populations and lack of player interest and availability was killing the game in the area.
"We were a member of the Daylesford Cricket Association, a good little community league," says long-serving club president Craig Slater.
"It went as far as Blackwood and Trentham, out to Smeaton and Hepburn, Newlyn and Daylesford, Korweinguboora and Ballan. That folded 10 seasons ago, and we were the only team left standing. Two teams transferred out, and the league fell over," he says.
In the 1950s and 60s the league in the area was strong enough to be called the Newlyn Cricket Association; teams like Clunes were part of the league. But as sides started to move to other associations and Ballarat cricket increased in importance, Newlyn faced demise.
"In the 90s, we won a a premiership then went into recess for two years," Mr Slater says, "but we got it up and going again."
One path Newlyn chose to revive themselves was by leading the way for women cricketers to have a game.
"We had a lady, a player's wife, who played in a premiership side years and years ago," Mr Slater says.
"She played all season, filled in and everything - and wasn't allowed to play in the finals. The league knocked her out. She held her own, she played all year - and the league said no. But it was a different time, a different era. They'd get strung up now if they took that approach."
Club secretary-treasurer Shannen Slater says persistence in asking for grants has finally paid off, as has Hepburn Shire's help.
"Council helped us out massively with a new cricket pitch, because the old one was worn out," she says.
"We've also got a new watering system out there. I came to the club about 10 years ago, and since then I've been putting applications in, but because we didn't have women's or junior team, we didn't tick the boxes."
Despite the council assistance, there was still an insurmountable hurdle - the lack of a league to play in.
"We couldn't afford the finances for the Ballarat Cricket Association;" Mr Slater says. "If we'd gone in there on our own, in two years we'd have been broke."
Instead, Newlyn saved itself, joining the BCA by becoming part of Ballarat's Coronet City CC, a club formed of a merger between Wendouree City and Coronet-Invermay. Craig Slater says Newlyn exists within the greater club mantle, and members are grateful for the opportunity to have survived.
"There's no plan B for us," Mr Slater says.
"We don't have any other grades if we get into strife. The Friday night ringaround (goes like this): 'If you're upright and breathing and a registered cricketer, you're gonna play.' We've got some people who may not even realise they're registered."
Club captain Ben Dimond is a local potato farmer, and so proud of Newlyn CC's new nets he takes his red-mud-clustered boots off before walking on the artificial turf.
"We've got a good group of us who play together at the moment, so the ringaround is not as bad as it was - but we're not getting any younger."
Craig Slater says younger players are the key to the club's - any club's - future. The construction of permanent nets at the Newlyn Recreation Reserve, made possible by a federal-local government partnership grant, are a big step in the right direction, he says.
"The old nets (made of welded steel frames wheeled out onto the sports ground) were a bit flimsy for children to be around," he says.
"The wind used to blow them over, the run up to the pitch used to get destroyed so we'd have to rotate the ends all the time, and when footy preseason started it was all a bit much. We've been trying to get nets over all that time. Money was tight, and being a small club was always hard."
The two new nets have one side available for community use, while the other has a gate which can be locked, preserving a wicket for the club. Recreation Reserve president Kevin Clohesy says the nets are the result of a great deal of planning.
"It's been in the community plan for a long time, in the master plan for the committee of management here for a long time," he says. "Now they're here. It's worked out really, really well."