He could bat, he could bowl - Maitland cricket great Mick Hinman

Lucky Clancy. He could be at the footy, the AFL, maybe the netball ...

I went to play golf on Saturday. The competition was four-ball stroke, but as I arrived at the club my partner rang to let me know he had to cancel, which meant I couldn't play.

This, unfortunately, meant I had to head home where, without golf, I no longer had any excuse for any further procrastination on the cleaning out of the shed, and subsequent trip to the dump, that had been requested with increasing regularity by "her indoors".

I part reluctantly with shed contents, so the first step in any clean-out is to go through my stuff and make absolutely certain I'm not about to throw out something important.

More often than not this turns into a nostalgic rummaging and reading through memorabilia... and this became the case on Saturday.

I found a Banjo Paterson book - hence the quote at the top - and also, whilst in the book section, I found 100 Not Out, which is a centennial celebratory history of Maitland District Cricket, 1894-1994, written by Lindsay Wood.

For a sports nut like me the book is a treasure, full of stats and fantastic stories, and, again for me, evocative of wonderful memories.

There was a picture of Northern Suburbs opening bowler, Keith Smith. Smith only had one arm. Still, with that one arm Keith Smith once hit a six, at Robins Oval, that cleared the rotunda!

One of the things that struck me, looking through 100 Not Out, was the way ability seemed to gather in families.

There were the Coffey brothers, the Allens, the Hinmans, the Elliot twins - Colin Elliot at one stage looked like replacing Brian Taber as the Australian wicket-keeper. He was as good as they come.

I'll never forget the day his brother, Allan, and Peter Hinman set a fourth wicket record of 268 runs in 180 minutes.

The reason I remember it so well is because I was next in the batting order and so spent those 180 minutes sitting with my pads on.

When Allan Elliot got out Peter Hinman was on 99, so they sent me out for Peter to get his century. He got out, next ball; we declared, and I headed back to the pavilion ...

The Finch family have been a vital part of the Maitland sporting community.

Sadly, Terry Finch passed this week. Terry was a long time cricketing great from those halcyon days of Maitland cricket and so featured fairly heavily throughout my book: Terry won the first grade aggregate something like four times and also the best batting average.

And then there was Mick Hinman.

I was lucky enough to play with Mick Hinman. He worked at South Maitland Railway and in later years had an accident there and lost his thumb.

I remember a couple of weeks afterwards when he, still with bandages on, scored a hundred without that thumb. I knew how great he was.

I read in my book on Saturday that Hinman had set a record for taking 94 wickets in a season.

I wondered whether this record still held and rang a well-credentialed local cricketing aficionado to inquire: has anybody broken Mick Hinman's 94 wickets in a season record?

The answer was, 'Hinman? Wasn't he a gun batsman?'

He certainly was, but the response indicated that people are largely unaware of what a great bowler he was also. Mick Hinman achieved 500 runs and 50 wickets in five separate seasons!

Did he bowl? He certainly did. Hinman used to open the bowling, as a leg-spinner!

He was so good they'd take the shiny new ball, scrub the shine off one side (there's nothing new about ball tampering ...) and throw it to Hinman to open.

As noted above, he took 94 wickets in a season.

"No wonder he's got a stand named after him," said my expert.

Which brings me nicely to the $1.8 million refurbishment that has been approved for the Mick Hinman Pavilion at Robins Oval/. I think it's wonderful.

It is though, sadly, one of the very few appropriate acknowledgements of our town's rich sporting heritage.

We've recently been given a government grant for a $10 million football stadium; more than that for a regional athletics complex. We have an international level synthetic hockey field and a championship standard indoor swimming pool. This all great, great stuff.

But in applying for these grants you'd have to assume that much is made of Maitland's sporting reputation as a city that produces superb athletes.

I believe that not enough people know who these sportspeople are: we're building stuff on the back of considerable levels of unacknowledged accomplishment.

It's a personal bugbear of mine, but I will continue to bring it up: That there is no Maitland Hall of Fame where our high achievers are celebrated. I mean a physical space with stuff to look at, not some token online compromise - I think it's a dreadful shame.

It should be seen as an opportunity.