George Horlin-Smith didn’t think it would get much cooler than playing alongside Joel Selwood and Tom Hawkins. Then came a shock, writes DANIEL CHERNY.
To have played on the same AFL team as Gary Ablett and in an international cricket match against Sachin Tendulkar.
It is an absurd career double, but it is one George Horlin-Smith can claim to have achieved.
Horlin-Smith retired at 27 at the end of 2020 after a decade on an AFL list. A disciplined midfielder, he played 51 matches for Geelong and seven for Gold Coast before calling time on his career, since moving to Sydney to work in a finance division at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Half a lifetime ago, Horlin-Smith had been a gun junior cricketer growing up in Adelaide, captaining Australia’s under-16s team. However he committed to football, and hadn’t played any organised cricket since 2013.
Then last year he got approached by TLA, his former management company, sparking one of the strangest chapters of his life.
He’d been invited to play for an Australian Legends team at the Road Safety World Series in India in September 2022, an exhibition Twenty20 tournament featuring a host of former international cricketers, including all-time legends Brian Lara and Tendulkar.
“TLA had a close affiliation with the league, and were assisting in setting up the teams. The rules stipulated that you (had to) have a cross-coder within the team,” Horlin-Smith says.
“I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the first name that came to mind when they started reaching out to people and seeing who might be interested. Lucky that it fell in my lap.”
Having not had a hit in almost a decade, Horlin-Smith ventured to Sydney’s Centennial Park for what would prove to be a very limited build-up.
“I realised I needed to get some training in. So I went to the nets a few times. I played in an eight-a-side T20 game when I got into bat when scores were level and they bowled a wide down leg side. It probably wasn’t the ideal preparation,” he says.
So having faced one ball in pretty much 10 years, Horlin-Smith joined an Australian squad captained by Shane Watson and featuring Brett Lee, Brad Haddin, Stuart Clark, Brad Hodge and Cameron White, just to name a few.
“I was so far out of my depth. But the guys were brilliant with a little bit of coaching but not taking it too seriously,” Horlin-Smith says.
“I probably didn’t appreciate just how technically skilled a first-class and international cricketer is. So I found that fascinating in terms of bowling accuracy and batting ability.
“Guys talking about what sort of delivery they are going to bowl next, would just execute that ball each time, and batsmen talking about how they could get through the field, and trying to pick balls. I found that really fascinating.
“In Adelaide you sit on your front foot and try to hit the ball down the ground, get over there and it’s turning sideways and I’m getting hit on the pads every third ball, chipping balls to mid-wicket, a bit all over the shop.”
george horlin-smith taking a wicket for australia 😠pic.twitter.com/2DRp20f6ga
While the tournament featured players past their best, that didn’t stop fanfare in India. The stadiums weren’t at capacity but there were still thousands in attendance and no shortage of attention towards the big names.
“There were indoor sparklers. It felt like a festival every time you arrived at a hotel,” Horlin-Smith says, still marvelling at the experience.
As it turned out, Horlin-Smith played just one game, a thriller against Bangladesh at Indore in which Brad Haddin hit 21 runs off the final over to secure victory from the last ball.
Horlin-Smith had briefly been Haddin’s batting partner, bowled by former Bangladeshi Test seamer Abul Hasan for seven from 11 balls.
“I walked out to bat and Brad Haddin’s at the non-striker’s end. I was like, ‘How am I here?’”
The former Cat and Sun did however have a moment of glory, taking the wicket of Nazmus Sadat in a spell of 1-15 from two overs.
“It’s not the nicest viewing wicket. I’m just a very ordinary off-spinner. I bowled a waist high no-ball about two balls beforehand and then this one was as close to another waist high no-ball as you could possibly get and they just flat-batted it to cover.”
Australia eventually lost its semi-final to India, and while Horlin-Smith wasn’t in the XI he came on a sub-fielder while Tendulkar was batting in another surreal turn.
That’s as involved as Horlin-Smith got, but he looks back at the journey with much fondness, and a more than a smattering of bewilderment too.
“Just a great experience with a group of guys that to a large degree I idolised and just enjoyed watching as a kid. So it was an amazing trip,” he says.
“There are still some moments where I’m still unsure how it all came together.”
It is in a similar vein that he reflects on his footy career.
“I’m really proud of being able to represent both Geelong and the Gold Coast. Two really good clubs that are at different stages in their history,” he says.
“I’ll get to tell my kids one day that I ran around with Joel Selwood or Tom Hawkins.”
And Binga, Hadds and Watto.
Daniel Cherny is a Melbourne sportswriter, focusing on AFL and cricket. Having started his career at Back Page Lead, Daniel spent eight years at The Age, during which time he covered Australian Test cricket tours of Bangladesh and the UAE, as well as the 2016 Rio Olympics. He has been recognised for both his AFL and cricket writing, including winning the Clinton Grybas Rising Star Award at the 2019 Australian Football Media Association Awards. He is also a compulsive Simpsons quoter.
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