NDCA Life Membership for Tim

Tim Coote received a Life Membership of the Northern District Cricket League at the Northern District Cricket Association Annual Presentation.

The following is a transcript of the speech given by Barham Koondrook A Grade Captain, Tom Guerra, in congratulating Tim. 

Congratulations, Tim. Tim’s cricket career began playing juniors at a young age for the Koondrook Cricket Club. As he progressed into senior cricket, Tim joined the Barham Cricket Club in the Barham Koondrook Association and then the Kerang District Cricket Association. One of Tim’s best on-field achievements goes unnoticed in the record books. As former teammate, Ian McConnell recalls, back in the days of the turf roller being electric with a huge extension cord, one Thursday evening the groundsmen ran over the cord smashing it to pieces. The turf wicket was unplayable and both Barham and Town cricket clubs agreed to play on the Barham synthetic wicket which saw a bustling teenage Tim Coote belt Town all over the park to record his maiden senior cricket century. Being a two-day game, Kerang was due to bat the following week and protested. They were forced to forfeit, resulting in Cootey’s ton being struck from the record books. In Tim’s latter years he captained Barham Koondrook’s B Grade team for four years in two stints, as well as winning two B Grade champion cricketer club awards.

Tim’s contributions to the club off the field far outweigh all the runs and wickets made and taken during his playing career. Since taking over the presidency role in the 2016-17 season, he has done a mountain of work for his club, including managing both Barham and Koondrook pitches, playing the secretary and treasurer roles, being a major player in the development of the Koondrook cricket ground as well as coordinating our Friday night junior cricket competition. This competition has produced many strong cricketers for our club and is still thriving, with four teams of strong numbers, and is in this position purely because of Tim’s dedication to our cricket club and our junior cricketers.  Cricket is a statistic-based sport, but stats don’t show the mountain of work Tim has done.

Congrats Tim and very well deserved.