By The Crowd
May 17th 2008 @ 5:34am
Trumper stands tallest in SCG name game
Former Australian captain Steve Waugh and his twin brother Mark will have to wait a little longer to have a stand named after them on their home ground.
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The SCG Trust has decided that its new stand, currently under construction in the old “Hill” area, will be named after a cricketer, bypassing calls for a Sydney Swans AFL player to have the honour.
But the Waughs are also out of contention because the trust has decided the player needs to have been retired for at least 10 years.
Steve Waugh retired in 2004, leaving Test immortal Victor Trumper as the likely favourite.
The stand will be named after a member of the NSW team of the century, announced last year, which narrows the field down to nine: Richie Benaud, Alan Davidson, Ray Lindwall, Charlie Macartney, Arthur Morris, Billy Murdoch, Bob Simpson, Victor Trumper and Charles Turner.
Waugh, Bradman and O’Reilly were also in the team, but the latter two already have stands named in their honour. A statue of Benaud was unveiled at the back of the pavilion in January this year, and Davidson has a room named after him in the Bradman Stand.
History-loving trust chairman Rod Cavalier gave a hint of his thinking when he said: “the evidence of our own eyes is not the end of the matter”.
“The trust will be attempting to make a selection based on the esteem of a player by his contemporaries, his standing in the annals of the game, his contribution to the game beyond the field of play, his wider contribution to sport and society.”
Trumper, who was born within walking distance of the ground in 1877, the year Test cricket began, played the last of his 48 Tests at the SCG in 1912, making 50 in his farewell innings.
Before Bradman’s emergence he was widely regarded as Australia’s greatest cricketer.
He was so revered throughout the cricket world that news of his premature death from kidney failure in 1915 drove World War I news from the front pages of newspaper in both England and Australia.
He has one other claim. Trumper was among the organisers and supporters of the first rugby league match, which was played at the SCG in 1908.
The name of the new stand will be announced next month.
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