About Les Innes

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Les Innes was a gifted local sportsman who died through Leukemia at the tragically early age of 36.

Like his friend Brian Weightman, a football team-mate at Imperials and a great cricketing rival at Mildura East, Les was small of stature, big on talent and highly competitive, and he had a ready wit and a strong sense of fun.

An attacking left-hand bat at number three or four in the order, Les also bowled crafty spinners, and could wear the keeping gloves very competently if required. He had many golden summers, and his most prolific season for West was in 1967-68, when he made over five hundred runs and claimed fifty wickets in First Division cricket. 

His oldest son Ken, who was just 13 when Les passed away, became a second-generation legend at Mildura West Cricket Club and a multiple premiership player at Imps, while Ken’s son Mathew played as an opening bat for Victoria and for Footscray Edgewater in Melbourne Premier Cricket. Some good genes there.

A great clubman and regular winner of West’s First Division Batting Average, on his death in 1973 Les became the first Life Member inducted by the Mildura West CC in the ‘modern era’ following the formation of the SCA in 1964.

In March of 1974, the inaugural winner of the Les Innes Medal was Settlers’ opening bowler Keith Robertson, and tonight’s winner, like all those before him, should feel honoured to receive an award that commemorates Les Innes’s name.