Jai Lemire \u2013 a name you will hear again.<\/p>\n
Jai Lemire is a 22-year-old cricketer, and someone you could be hearing a bit about over the coming years.<\/p>\n
Hold on.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll tell you why in a minute.<\/p>\n
Coming off a rookie contract with Victoria in 2024-25, he was offered a full contract for this coming 2025-26 summer, and is expected to make his Sheffield Shield debut early this season.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s had a busy off-season, which has seen him captain a tour of England with the Australian Crusaders\u2019 representative side.<\/p>\n
During that tour he made a lot of runs, with a high score of 159 and an average of 83 over 12 innings.<\/p>\n
He also met the Duke of Edinburgh.<\/p>\n
(No. Not that one.)<\/p>\n
He played for the Melbourne Renegades (Academy) side in the Darwin T20 competition in August, a virtual warm-up series for the Big Bash.<\/p>\n
He is currently in Sydney playing warm-up games for Victoria against NSW.<\/p>\n
Jai is a wicket-keeper and a top-order batsman, but it\u2019s hard to know whether he\u2019s a keeper-batter, or a batter-keeper \u2014 such is his talent for both.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s scored numerous centuries for his home club Carlton 1st XI in the Kookaburra Premier competition.<\/p>\n
This included a superb double century (203) last season.<\/p>\n
He is also widely considered the best young keeper in the state.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s even played cricket in the local Bush Bash T20 Series for the Mud Dogs.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m telling you about him because he is the grandson of Laurie and Carol Merritt of Tatura.<\/p>\n
He is the nephew of Garry \u2018Butch\u2019 Merritt (Merritt Funeral Services).<\/p>\n
He is the son of Michelle, who married Matt Lemire from Greensborough.<\/p>\n
Matt\u2019s dad is of French descent, so the surname is pronounced \u2018LaMeer\u2019 and I\u2019ve noticed commentators having trouble with it.<\/p>\n
I also have a personal connection to Jai, because his mum, Michelle, and my son and daughter-in-law have been close friends since high school.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve all been part of the family for a long time.<\/p>\n
I remember the day Jai was born.<\/p>\n
As a result, we\u2019ve all followed his career from the beginning.<\/p>\n
I remember Jai texting my son after a dubious LBW decision in a Victorian 2nd XI game: \u201cWas I out?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
After carefully checking the TV footage \u2014 on slow motion \u2014 the answer was \u201cNo way \u2014 sliding down leg.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mostly though, I\u2019m suggesting you watch out for this young man because I love it when local families \u2018make it\u2019 in the big time.<\/p>\n
Just as we\u2019ve made our claim to Oscar, one day soon we could all be talking about Jai.<\/p>\n
A meaty subject<\/p>\n
This has been a strange week for me.<\/p>\n
I had the flu \u2014 that\u2019s all \u2014 but it came and threw a few heavy punches for too many days.<\/p>\n
And I\u2019ve been wanting to respond to Yvonne, who asked about the disappearance of pickled pork.<\/p>\n
I think I might have an answer.<\/p>\n
For at least two years, the label on that meat included, in large type, at the top, \u2018ROAST\u2019.<\/p>\n
I think I first noticed it during the COVID years.<\/p>\n
I mentioned it to a couple of people at the supermarket, and they looked at me blankly.<\/p>\n
Eventually, I found an email address for head office and sent the following message \u2014 \u201cThe person responsible for labelling your meat should roast some pickled pork and be made to eat it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The labels didn\u2019t change immediately, but eventually ROAST was deleted.<\/p>\n
(Who wants to waste 100,000 perfectly good labels?)<\/p>\n
My butcher now tells me it is \u201cout of fashion\u201d.<\/p>\n
Take care and may it be easy, my friends.<\/p>\n
Marnie<\/p>\n
Email: towntalk@sheppnews.com.au<\/a> <\/p>\n Phone: Text or call 0409 317 187<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jai Lemire \u2013 a name you will hear again. Jai Lemire is a 22-year-old cricketer, and someone you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-129094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}