Oval Named After Legendary Bowler

20150708 Cricket Oval ceremony — Eddie Gilbert’s son Eddie Barney with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Police Commissioner Ian Stewart at the re-naming ceremony on July 8 (Photo: Premier’s Office)

July 13, 2015

A cricket oval near Ipswich has been named after legendary Cherbourg cricketer Eddie Gilbert after a two-year campaign by local residents.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk officially unveiled the new sign on the 100-year-old oval during NAIDOC Week.

The Wolston Park Oval, the home of the Wolston Park and Centenary Cricket Club and the Queensland Police Cricket Club, will now be known as the Eddie Gilbert Memorial Field.

The land belongs to the Queensland Police and will form part of a future Police Academy.

Goodna resident Keiron Butler spearheaded the campaign to have the oval renamed.

He was joined by Cr Paul Tully, from Ipswich City Council, and the local media after the idea started to become bogged down in red tape.

Gilbert, who was born at Durundur but lived at Cherbourg from the age of three, was an outstanding fast bowler.

He took 87 wickets in 23 first-class matches for Queensland at an average of 29.98. But his career prospects were hampered by racism. He had to seek permission to leave the mission whenever he had to play, and he was often chaperoned during his travels.

Famously, Gilbert once bowled Donald Bradman for a duck.

There is little doubt Gilbert would have been picked to play for Australia – Bradman said he was the fastest bowler he had ever faced – if his skin had been a different colour.

Tragically, Gilbert suffered from mental illness later in life and lived from 1948 to his death at age 72 in 1978 at the Wolston Park Mental Hospital.

It has been reported that Gilbert often sat at a hospital window watching the cricketers playing on the nearby oval.

Premier Palaszczuk said the re-naming of the oval was a very important day.

“It says something important when the community gets behind a person to make sure that their contribution is not lost, and is not forgotten,” she said.

She said Eddie Gilbert was “one of those people who made an outstanding contribution … he took on the famous Bradman, and his bowling skills were second to none!”

Gilbert’s son Eddie Barney and his family were present at the opening ceremony.

After the ceremony concluded, an U15s cricket match between visiting players from the Desert Cubs Cricket Academy (from the United Arab Emirates) and a local Wolston Park and Centenary Cricket Club XI resumed on the renamed oval.