WIND the clock back to 2001 and an 18-year-old Chris Williams was just a lad from Essex looking to enjoy some cricket during the Australian summer.
He is now entrenched as a legend of the Mildura West Cricket Club, with three First Division premierships and three Innes Medals to his name in the Sunraysia Cricket Association.
The man from Hockley said a lot had changed in the 20 years since he arrived in Sunraysia, both on and off-field, but he’s grateful for every opportunity across the two decades, especially for his family of wife Georgina and kids Harry and Emma.
He continues to be an integral member of West’s First XI at 38 as the side looks to return to finals when the new campaign starts today.
Williams fondly remembers his first venture Down Under and admits remaining at the same club wasn’t part of the initial “grand plan”.
“I first came in October of 2001, and there were a couple of choices between going to university in England, or coming to Australia, which is something I’d always wanted to do,” he said.
“My path was through a guy called Lou Marks, who ran an international cricketers’ registry business. He was based in Melbourne, and you literally pay him a fee, send him your cricketing resume and he’d send you four or five options as to clubs who were looking for someone of that quality.
“I think there were a couple in Mildura, a couple in Shepparton and a couple in Melbourne.
“As fate would have it, the Mildura West option was attractive to me because it wasn’t performance-related, there was no pay, even I paid for my first airfares. As a young kid of 18 there wasn’t the pressure to perform to make you justify your reasoning.
“Once I lobbed up you had guys like John Hall, Bill Sauer and Richard Chamberlain who couldn’t do more for you, and then Mark O’Donnell – his professionalism at training back then certainly opened my eyes.”
Returning home after that season, Williams continued to ply his trade within the County Essex cricket system, having been involved in most junior grades on the way up, and even making it to 12th man for the First XI as a teenager.
While he’d grown up and matured be living away, he said he didn’t quite produce the performances he wanted or expected of himself.
There was also another major reason why the lure of returning to Mildura was so appealing.
“We all know the reason I hung around for a bit was Georgina and I became very close and that allowed us to explore options of where we’d settle,” he said.
“We actually tried to apply for a de facto spouse visa in early 2003. My working holiday visa was only a 12-month thing and my understanding was that couldn’t be extended, so second season I came back I had to come on a tourist visa, which I got extended to sixth months for the cricket season.
“Our application got declined because we’d been given some wrong information – the criterion was you had to have been living together for a year, but we’d done six months on and six months off when I went home.
“Once my visa expired I had to leave the country, so Georgina was the one who probably made the most important decision to follow me back to England and we spent about 10 months there from March 2003 to early 2004, and then we applied for that visa and got it granted then, and that’s when we moved here permanently.”
Since that time Williams has gone on to be one of the competition’s best batsmen and a handy wicket-taker, experiencing plenty of team and individual success over that time.
The left-hander admits he’s matured a lot.
“That first year being here it was all very different being away from home, not having that comfort was difficult, but that second year and then the third year I really found that something just clicked in my game,” he said.
“I do remember making a slight technical change to my batting, but nothing that I could have anticipated.
“You get bigger and stronger and you get used to the guys, and I guess the competitiveness and the standard probably brought out what was best in me.
“There have been plenty of enjoyable times, and cricket has obviously changed a lot in the 20 years since I’ve been here.
“There’s a lot more white-ball cricket now than what we did. I’ve obviously seen some really good cricketers that I’ve played against and with here, but I’ve very much enjoyed it and very much looking forward to banking more years on top of that 20.”
