Lion Krig hailed after cracking 400 games
EAST Belmont veteran Michael Krig has been described as a club “staple” after notching his 400th game.
Krig, who first played for the Lions in 1986, made 18 as the East Belmont sixths defeated St Joseph’s by two wickets last week.
The milestone man has spent most of his time at Winter Reserve in the fourth XI side, where he has played in multiple premierships alongside fellow Lions great Troy Smith.
Smith said Krig would go down as one of the greats of the East Belmont Cricket Club.
“He has always been that sort of bloke who would go out of his way to welcome new players and to work on the development of young guys,” he said.
“More so recently he has intentionally put himself down into the lowest grade just to really assist with the development of these 14, 15-year-old kids.
“Outside a couple of years where he took up the option to assist some other GCA clubs, he has always been that permanent fixture at East Belmont ... he is a staple of the club and over the years he has been a real mentor.”
Krig is East Belmont’s alltime greatest runscorer and will soon overtake the Caulfields (Peter on 403 and Dennis on 402) to sit behind only Peter Ramia on the club’s alltime games record list.
Smith said while Krig had slowed down a little in recent years, he would be remembered as a unique cricketer.
“He is not the most elegant of cricketers in terms of his style, because he is a baseballer as well so he has brought that into his cricket,” he said.
“His catching is like a baseball glove, so we call him Croc, because he uses those kind of crocodile hands, although they are probably the safest hands we have ever seen.
“But he has just had this knack of being able to defend when he needs to and then opens the shoulders when he has to, and he has always been that rock at the top of the order and back when I was captain we came up against a number of really good first XI bowlers who were dropping through the grades and he would just take to them.”