Ken Hall - Penrith Cricket Club
Penrith Cricket Club | November 03, 2025
The way some players walk – Ron ‘One Short’ Halse and Bob ‘The Greyhound’ Clarence – seems to attract the mischievous attention of teammates and inspires nicknames. Ken Hall’s was ‘Emu’, but it could just as easily have been ‘Cammo’ after the Cammack Award for Outstanding All-rounder, which he won continuously from 1977/78 until 1982/83.
He was one of the renowned Halls ‘team’ from the Hawkesbury District, where he played with the Wilberforce Club. He came to Penrith Club (then Nepean) in 1975/76 and played continuously until 1982/83, featuring in both First Grade Premiership wins in the club’s first decade.
Emu is a legend, and to become a legend entails not just performing but doing it with a certain amount of character. For example, he was running in to bowl at Caringbah when there was a crunching of metal on the street outside. Even from the centre, Emu could see his much-loved Ford was one of three cars that had been sideswiped by a wayward motorist. He dropped the ball, veered off, jumped the fence, ran to his car, observed the damage and, when the police arrived, offered the sergeant his advice on what to do with the motorist.
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He was forthright in team meetings, too, advising others that ‘when I call for a catch get out of my way’. He was tough on young blokes if they were careless, telling them ‘my grandmother could have caught that’, or ‘I catch them with me teeth’. When he was First Grade Captain and someone hadn’t met his high requirements he’d lament, ‘Fair dinkum, I ask the selectors for replacements and they send me Third Graders’.
This extract from a report in The Sun-Herald (1979) captures his competitive nature: ‘Penrith batsman Ken Hall was given out in unusual circumstances by umpire Ian Jones for hitting the ball twice. He miscued a ball off the bat from the bowling of Sutherland’s Graham Barry and then hit it away from the converging field to avoid being run out’.
Ken Hall scored 2842 runs @ 29.00 with 14 scores over 50, best 133* v North Sydney in 1978/79, 103* v Northern District 1980/81. He shared a seventh-wicket First Grade Record Partnership of 96 with Mal Cobcroft. He took 228 wickets @ 18.50 with 11 hauls of five wickets or better, best 8/17 v Manly and 8/69 v Cumberland, both in 1977/78. His best season was 1982/83, scoring 514 runs @39.53, took 33 wickets @ 14.33 and 20 catches.
He was Club Player of the Year in 1977/78 and 1978/79. He was a right-hand batsman and left-arm medium-pace swing bowler. Those bucket hands never dropped a catch they could reach. He also played with Hawkesbury and Bankstown, bowling mainly left-arm orthodox spin with the latter.
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