Ian Tinetti watches the wind in his willows as Newstead\u2019s opening batters prepare to take on Hepburn in the hamlet of Shepherds Flat. His self-made cricket ground is about the only thing that is flat in Victoria\u2019s Central Highlands and, on a chilly November afternoon, the adjacent grove of English Willow makes it feel even more like the Yorkshire Dales.<\/p>\n
Visiting this Field of Dreams-like shrine to the game is like uncovering the interconnected layers of a Russian doll \u2013 bat making, the Hepburn area\u2019s Swiss-Italian heritage, the history of Victorian cricket and Australian rules football, and also, appropriately, doll collecting.<\/p>\n
Cricket Willow\u2019s origin can be traced back to an idle exchange during the 1902 Ashes Test at the MCG, when umpire Robert Crockett said to England captain Archie MacLaren that Australia did not cultivate its own bat willow.<\/p>\n
Six months later, several Salix alba Caerulea cuttings arrived in a thermos. Only one survived the long sea journey, and Crockett rushed it to Shepherds Flat, where it was nurtured by his brother James on the family property.<\/p>\n
From this single cutting grew thousands of trees, and the grove still stands on what is now Tinetti land, in a gully paddock referred to by the family as \u201cCrocketts\u201d.<\/p>\n
The first Australian bats<\/p>\n
When this original willow reached maturity, the Crocketts got busy making bats. Seven of Don Bradman\u2019s Invincibles, who toured England in 1948 without losing a match, wielded Crockett willow.<\/p>\n
Slazenger Dunlop bought the family business in the 1960s, and the demand for bat willow meant the trees were almost harvested out at Shepherds Flat. Enter Aquilino Tinetti, an employee and neighbour of the Crocketts, and a diminutive but prolific wicketkeeper-batter.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis ability to be such a good cricketer fit right in with our neighbours,\u201d says Ian Tinetti. \u201cThey loved dad, and he made sure the willow survived.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ian grew up connected to Crockett willow, and it followed him when he went to Melbourne to study engineering, and to the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was the only bloke there with a bat,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Like his father and grandfather, Aquilino was still running dairy cattle when Ian returned from duty, but the death of a neighbour in a farming accident threw the family a financial googly.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter four generations milking cows they said, \u2018we can\u2019t pick your milk up anymore\u2019,\u201d says Trish Tanetti, Ian\u2019s wife of 49 years. \u201cWe had no income, with four kids under five, and three oldies to look after.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ian placed an ad in the Daylesford Advocate as a handyman, but rang and cancelled it the following week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve had to look for a day of work since,\u201d he says. \u201cIn the old days, they were all handy, and we built pretty much everything you see around here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cricket\u2019s Field of Dreams<\/p>\n
The prompt for Cricket Willow came during family movie night, while watching Kevin Costner build baseball\u2019s Field of Dreams.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was one of our daughters, Fiona, who said, \u2018why don\u2019t you do something like him?\u2019 And we started the next day,\u201d says Ian.<\/p>\n
Gradually, the family\u2019s rocky slope of a front paddock was transformed into a velvety outfield. The main building was modelled on the old Shepherds Flat general store, with a willow frame, and the milking shed became a bat-making workshop.<\/p>\n
Cricket Willow was opened in 1999, in time for Ian\u2019s 50th birthday, and has been filling up with miscellaneous \u2013 mostly cricketing \u2013 items ever since.<\/p>\n
Ian cites \u201cpure pig headedness\u201d as what drove him to create Cricket Willow, but family friend and fellow Swiss-Italian-Australian Paul Righetti is a little more expansive.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou get to your mid-life and you think, \u2018What\u2019s the juice of life? What\u2019s it all about?\u2019,\u201d Righetti says, while watching daughter Eve play for Newstead. \u201cIan\u2019s probably thought, \u2018I\u2019ve got the skills, I\u2019ve got the land and I love cricket. Why not build a cricket ground?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The world according to Tinetti<\/p>\n
The Friday following Newstead\u2019s battle with Hepburn and the fickle Central Highlands weather, a tour bus arrives at Cricket Willow from Melbourne in glorious sunshine.<\/p>\n
The Tinettis welcome the Keilor Life Activities Club, and several un-affiliated visitors from as far afield as Townsville and Adelaide.<\/p>\n
Ian explains how the art of bat making was revived in Shepherds Flat by \u201cpod shavers\u201d Lachlan Fisher and Julian Millichamp, and how this is the only place in the world where you can witness the process \u201cfrom bud to bat\u201d.<\/p>\n
He decries the digital domination of modern society, the growing gap between the city and the bush, and tells of the floods and fires which have battered but not beaten the family over six generations.<\/p>\n
Then it\u2019s up the hill to the Cricket Gallery, which houses an eclectic collection of items celebrating what the area owes to forestry, farming and the Swiss-Italian migrants who arrived in the 1850s.<\/p>\n
After the bus departs, the stragglers jump the pickets and wander across the lush outfield, playing classic cover drives to mock half volleys.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s such a stunning setting,\u201d says Bob Dawson, who is on his fourth visit. \u201cThey host functions here and, with all the history, I really don\u2019t know whether there\u2019d be anything else like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Will Cricket Willow bat on?<\/p>\n
Up on the property\u2019s helipad after the group have left, with his back to the Wombat State Forest, Ian points across to Mount Franklin and describes how the Swiss-Italians referred to it as a pimple on a cow\u2019s backside compared to the Alps.<\/p>\n
Bob Dawson, Carl Hansen, Daryl Rooks and Greg Polson on the oval at Cricket Willow, with Mount Franklin in the background.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut this area reminded them a bit of home, they all had little farmlets, and it was almost like each hill had a different Swiss-Italian family identity,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
These days, the families are fracturing as young people move away, and the conversation turns to the fate of Cricket Willow. The four Tinetti children are scattered between Geelong and Bendigo, working \u201cprofessionally\u201d, and on rearing the next generation.<\/p>\n
\u201cSteve Waugh was in a few weeks back and we were talking about what\u2019s going to happen,\u201d says Ian. \u201cI probably think none of the kids will come back, and the dream that\u2019s in our heads is that somebody might one day come and take it on, but I just don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the link to the past that\u2019s important. So much is lost when that\u2019s broken.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the Sunday morning before the opening Ashes Test, Ian and Trish are preparing to drive to Tullamarine Airport, nursing hip and knee injuries, respectively.\u2028<\/p>\n
The official reason for the journey is a family reunion in Perth for Ian\u2019s 100-year-old uncle Maurice Pedretti. Unsurprisingly, the family have also found a way for Ian to bear witness to what would transpire at Perth Stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other blokes will be down amongst it, but I\u2019ll be by myself, up the top of the stand somewhere,\u201d says Ian. \u201cIt\u2019s really like a religion for me so, I just like to sit, and watch the cricket.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ian Tinetti watches the wind in his willows as Newstead\u2019s opening batters prepare to take on Hepburn in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-310348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310348","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=310348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}