A tap on the shoulder and Guest joins the firsts
LUKE Guest thought he was invited to the MCG just to bowl the Victorian Sheffield Shield side into form.
But it was a tap on the shoulder from Geelong skipper Eamonn Vines that passed on the news that the Jan Juc bowler would be making his Geelong first XI debut in this weekend’s Twenty20 double header.
“A few of us went up to Melbourne to bowl to the Vics, to fill in the numbers, and he was there,” the 22-year-old said.
“He just said, ‘Congratulations’, and I said, ‘For what?’
“And he said, ‘You’re playing firsts this week’.
“I rang the old man straight away, then my mum.”
Last summer, Guest compiled 24 wickets at 26.17 across the second and third XIs, which also included a hat-trick against Casey-South Melbourne.
While he fell short of a callup towards the end of last season, the medium-fast paceman said he was now ready to make his Premier Cricket debut in a T20 against Prahran today.
“To be honest, I was looking at it pretty closely but I didn’t think it would happen this early,” he said.
“The last couple of games last year I thought I was a bit stiff not to get a cheap call up, just an experience game.
“But it was just a goal, a pretty far away goal to be honest. I thought I was going to play a few more games in the seconds and have to perform a bit better.”
After playing all his junior cricket at Jan Juc, Guest moved to Highton to get senior experience on turf.
Now, four-and-a-half years after lining up first for the Cats in their fourth XI, Guest could be taking the new pill for Geelong’s ones.
“I hope I do get it, just get that first ball out of the way and work into it from there,” he said. “I’m so excited, just for it to actually be happening.”
Geelong plays Prahran at Toorak Park today and Footscray at Kardinia Park tomorrow.