The presence of ABC cricket commentator Jim Maxwell and his British colleague, Jonathon Agnew, brought the \u201cfull-house\u201d up at Shindy\u2019s Inn, Louth, on Friday night, December 19.<\/p>\n
The pair were travelling a circuit that also included Orange and Moree in a quest to bring \u201cThe Ashes out West\u201d and raise awareness of Angel Flights. This charity engages volunteers who fly, using their own planes, patients to larger centres for treatment and in some cases, life-saving missions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe love the bush, the heartbeat of our nation, and everywhere we go we are surrounded by people who regard us as family,\u201d Jim said with his typical humility.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that the ABC, through \u2018Landline\u2019 and the \u2018Country Hour\u2019, keeps people in remote locations connected,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
In fact, Jim said it was like a reunion when he visited Orange a few weeks ago, and at the small town on the Darling River last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI met blokes in Orange I had been to school with and played sport against in Sydney over 50 years ago!\u201d<\/p>\n
He related a story of walking into Shindy\u2019s Inn on a typical hot, windy and dust-filled Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n
“One bloke, Bill Moncrieff had flown in from Canberra. He is still playing cricket in the Over 70s and says there are other blokes I\u2019d been to school with as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jim was reluctant to mention a name but when a former teammate walked into the pub, he recalled a fellow saying to him rather irreverently, <\/p>\n
\u201cDavid Benn was the slowest opening bowler ever!\u201d<\/p>\n
David grew up in Hungerford but now lives in Wagga Wagga. He was at school with Jim at Cranbrook. Classic radio voices; classy gentlemen spreading the word for a great cause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The presence of ABC cricket commentator Jim Maxwell and his British colleague, Jonathon Agnew, brought the \u201cfull-house\u201d up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-379349","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\/379349","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=379349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}