In partnership with Toyota.<\/p>\n
Queanbeyan’s all-time leading wicket-taker Darren Southwell has a standard response whenever he is congratulated on his 700-plus senior scalps.<\/p>\n
“People say to me ‘that’s a lot of wickets’, and I say ‘yes, that’s a lot of overs, and a lot of balls’.”<\/p>\n
As of early December, Southwell’s tally stood at a robust 720. That number continues to climb most weekends as the 43-year-old tirelessly steams in with the new ball, like he’s done for the past 25 years.<\/p>\n
The number he can’t quite determine is exactly how many overs he’s bowled in the last quarter of a century.<\/p>\n
“You’ve got seven one-dayers each season, there’s 70 overs, and then the two-dayers, and that’s not counting T20s” Southwell said.<\/p>\n
“That was about 10 seasons in a row where I was pushing over 300 overs in the season.<\/p>\n
“The Test match players would know about it. I’ve always wanted the ball in my hands, you couldn’t stop me bowling.<\/p>\n
“[The captain would say] ‘You need a rest Darren’, but I’ll tell you when I need a rest – I’ll stop when I stop.”<\/p>\n
Even taking a conservative approach to Southwell’s bowling problem, his tally lands somewhere north of 7000 career overs, which would put him up towards 45,000 balls bowled.<\/p>\n
That doesn’t factor in the twice-weekly two-hour net sessions Southwell has prioritised for the majority of his career.<\/p>\n
“It’s training, I didn’t care about batting in the nets I just ran in and bowled,” Southwell said.<\/p>\n
“I want to get my line and length right for the weekend. Sometimes the batters would slog you in the nets, they didn’t always take their training properly.<\/p>\n
“As a bowler I’m thinking that’s okay, because it makes me work on my line and length for the game and that’s all I did for about five seasons when I was about 16 or 17.<\/p>\n
“If they slog me out of the nets, I go get the ball and focus again. They’re just slogging, they’re not using their training session, but I’ll use mine, I’ll go get the ball, have a laugh.”<\/p>\n
It was during those late high school years that Southwell honed his craft. He began as a junior aged 10, and happily admits a burning passion for cricket outweighed his talent at that age.<\/p>\n
But he persisted, learned how to bowl a consistent length that would swing away from the batsman and muscled his way into Queanbeyan’s first grade side in his early 20s.<\/p>\n
Much of his career was spent as a second-grade stalwart, where he took a career-best 9-20 a decade ago, and he’s now the spearhead for Queanbeyan’s all-conquering third-grade outfit which has won 12 of the last 13 one-day premierships.<\/p>\n
Underpinning Southwell’s phenomenal longevity as a fast bowler is a body that continues to hold up to the rigours of his brutal craft.<\/p>\n
“I get the massage gun out every now and then, maybe a heat pack, otherwise I just go for a walk,” Southwell said.<\/p>\n
“The jobs I’ve had have helped, because you’re moving your body, you’re lifting. I was a removalist for about six years and that helped, moving, lifting, getting the core strength.<\/p>\n
“I’ve never gone to the gym in my life. I probably could’ve gone to the gym but I’ve got a mirror at home.”<\/p>\n
A new number has started to materialise in Southwell’s head, a beacon on the horizon which is looking more attainable every season. That of 1000 wickets.<\/p>\n
“If it happens it happens, it’s 280 wickets isn’t it, 10 seasons, so I’ll try to get it before 50,” Southwell said.<\/p>\n
“I’m 43 and there’s a lot of overs in me already. I have to get it before Dad dies.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In partnership with Toyota. Queanbeyan’s all-time leading wicket-taker Darren Southwell has a standard response whenever he is congratulated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-445829","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\/445829","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=445829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}