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The man who quit cricket for 20 years (and came back anyway)

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The Nugget
September 26, 2025

★ Marty Sharples on community and cricket ★

Meet Marty, a cricket tragic with an untamed curiousity

This is the one and only time you will read about cricket in The Nugget.

A special exception has been granted for Marty Sharples.

(His wife and daughter are rolling their eyes right now, BTW.)

Marty’s story is about cricket in the way Field of Dreams is about baseball. It’s a good story that just happens to feature a slow-moving sport.

Marty and I had kids in the same class. He’s one of those people you meet in Castlemaine who is curious, involved in everything, and happened to work for the UN in a previous life.

The first, life-defining focus of his curiosity was cricket.

“I grew up in a country town, Warburton, out in the East. It was one of those towns in the 80s and 90s where you played football in the winter and cricket in the summer and that’s what everyone did,” Marty says.

“That was my life. That’s all I saw, to be honest. We lived on a bush block a long way out of town and I just spent hours mowing and creating a cricket pitch. I had cricket balls in socks hanging off trees all throughout the property that I would just be hitting. It was a total, total obsession.”

The pinnacle was Country Week, an inter-town competition that lasted all summer. Marty made the team.

“It was manna from heaven for a little cricket-obsessed kid. Country Week evokes a certain image in our family, even now. We’re talking about something that happened 35 years ago. But still, the power of it.”

But like many teens, Marty hit a point where cricket stopped being fun. “I probably had delusions of grandeur that I was going to play for Australia. I was the best as a junior, but I wasn’t the best when I became a teenager and then I became not even close to the best.”

Itchy feet are hard to reconcile with a sport that requires vast amounts of patience. By 18 or 19, he’d given it away. He didn’t play cricket again for 20 years.

Marty studied International Development, lived in South-East Asia and the Pacific for nearly 15 years, and worked on big, world-sized problems. Until chronic fatigue syndrome knocked him flat.

"It's a bit of a catchall for 'we can't quite diagnose exactly what is going on.' I was really debilitated."

He wasn't able to work or do the 10,000 things he likes to cram into his daily schedule. So he tried 10,000 treatments, desperate for a cure.

"I travelled to India, I did Ayurvedic medicine, I did loads of different herbal treatments, traditional Western treatments. I was just really manic with the way I did it and it wasn't particularly helpful.

"I've been much healthier for quite a long time now. But in those years, it was very depressing."

He started writing the Neurotics Guide to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome about his experience with the condition. (I love that Marty describes himself as an unrepentant neurotic. We have this in common).

In the end, there was no magic bullet.

"I couldn't sit here and say what fixed it. I simply don't know. It was a cumulative experience over a long period of time. I don't know if it's true, but I did write that returning to cricket was very helpful."

"I sort of came to this conclusion that it's about doing things that have meaning to you."

Like cricket. The sport reappeared in his life when he was living in Cambodia.

"I met these Indian men who were starting the Cambodian Premier League of Cricket. And I was like, 'Oh yeah, I love cricket.'

"So they signed me, by which I mean someone in an Indian restaurant grabbed me and said, 'You're in our team now.' So, I played this bizarre tournament of cricket in Cambodia on these soccer pitches and it was intense. Like, it was full on. It was very hot, 40 degrees, humid, terrible conditions, very aggressive. So, I was kind of like, I don't know about cricket anymore.

"But it sort of sparked something. I just started this imagining..."

After seven years in Cambodia, Marty, his wife Nanda decided to return to Australia and move to the country.

“When we came back, Nanda will tell you that on our first recce in Castlemaine I drove around to every single cricket ground in the region,” Marty says.

Eventually he found Muckleford, with its quaint name, river gums and two ovals. “I was like, this is it. This is exactly what I was imagining.”

It was more than a return to the sport. It was a return to the heart of small-town community.

“Some of my great friends from the club come from farming families out there or in Maldon. I just was astonished by the community-mindedness of people.”

It probably helps that Muckleford has awarded him both the Captain’s and Umpire’s Award.

But for older, wiser Marty, cricket’s value isn’t just in runs scored or trophies won. It’s in the connections it sparks, especially for young people.

“Clearly the science says that by being active, being socially active, being on a team, means you’re not in your own head. You’re not fixating on whatever the current anxiety is.

“Obviously, it’d be great to have more people playing cricket for Muckleford—or anywhere at all, really—but being actively engaged in whatever works for a young person is the No. 1.”

Cricket helped bring Marty back to himself. Now, he hopes it can do the same for the next generation, whether they pick up a bat, a ball, or something else entirely.

  • The Muckleford Cricket Club is welcoming new players of all ages.

  • Marty volunteers off the cricket pitch, too. He's organizing a fundraiser for KOTO, a hospitality training program in Vietnam designed to break the cycle of poverty. Listen to his Marty's interview with Hoàng T Huệ, founder of local restaurant Nem Viet and a KOTO graduate herself.

  • Marty also volunteers at MainFM: broadcasting, stuffing envelopes, cleaning post-flood. His show, Ramble On, airs at 7pm on Wednesdays. You can listen to all the Ramble On episodes on Mixcloud.

  • Listen to our interview with Marty on the Nugget on MainFM.

❀ Run happy ❀

Today, hundreds of people are Runing the Maine.

Many of them are running with memories of local dad, athlete and passionate running coach, Gordy Muir, who died earlier this year.

Gordy was an AFL umpire. He umpired 204 AFL matches, including 22 finals and four consecutive AFL grand finals.

He was also a legendary runner who won races from 400m to 3200m. He was a three-time winner at Stawell, claiming victory in the 1994 Victory 1600m, the 1996 Backmarkers Mile, and the 1997 Backmarkers 3200m. He later went on to coach and mentor many of his own athletes to great success.

Gordy’s wisdom lives on. These are his tips for life and running, as shared by his partner, Lisa. May they carry you through the great race we are all on together:

  • Embrace the hills. When you get to the top, you'll have an incredible view.

  • It's OK to slow down. Sometimes it's about the process and not the end.

  • Shoulders back and head up, always. You will never fall.

  • When things start to get hard, break it down into chunks and you will get there.

  • Take on a challenge and set a goal. You will stay committed.

  • You can always do more than you think.

  • Connect with nature, listen to the birds, find a new creek, explore the trails.

  • Run through to the cones. Keep going, you're nearly there, and do it properly.

  • And if a run doesn't go to plan, don't dwell on it. Think about what you've learned and move forward the next day.

  • Run happy. It's a privilege.

♡˖ EVENTS ˖♡

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Hi! Kindly drop me a line at [email protected] to let me know:

  • all about your upcoming event, and

  • who I should interview next. xx