Julien Wiener wields more magic on the cricket field

Published: 23 April 2021

Last updated: 4 March 2024

ASHLEY BROWNE: Australia’s only Jewish test cricketer has coached his club Prahran to its first title in the Victorian Premier Cricket league HAVING LONG ESTABLISHED HIMSELF as arguably Australia’s greatest Jewish athlete, Julien Wiener now has claims to becoming one of our community’s greatest sporting coaches. On Saturday, Wiener coached Prahran to the premiership in the Victorian Premier Cricket competition, the highest level of the game in Victoria and the final step in the pathway to first-class cricket. Prahran made 5/261 and restricted Dandenong to 8/237 to win the club’s first premiership in 38 years. Wiener cut his cricketing teeth with Prahran in the mid 1970s having joined the club from Maccabi-Ajax. From there he graduated to the Victorian Sheffield team as an opening batsman in 1977 and two years after that he played the first of his six Test and seven one-day international matches for Australia. He is Australia’s only Jewish Test cricketer in and he also represented Australia at the Maccabiah Games on several occasions. It wasn't Wiener’s first Victorian cricket premiership. He was captain-coach of Northcote’s 1987 premiership team, but as he told Plus 61J Media, helping deliver a long overdue premiership to his first cricketing love was one of his biggest thrills over nearly 50 years of involvement at the top level of the sport. “A premiership at any club is something that can’t take away from you and I’ll have a connection with Northcote forever. “But the Prahran Cricket Club has been a big part of my life. It’s the club I started with and will probably finish with and has been amazingly supportive of me, so in terms of the circle, it’s almost closed. But I’m so fortunate to help be able to bring the players and club so much joy,” he said. Wiener said it was a difficult season to navigate, what with the delayed start because of COVID, while the elimination of red-ball cricket meant the entire season comprised of one-day, 50-over games. “One of the messages we constantly passed on to the players was to be grateful and happy to be playing cricket because in so many places elsewhere in the world, it wasn't life as normal. “We were fortunate enough to be playing the game we love and having fun, although it is more fun when the results are going well,” he said. What he wouldn't be drawn on is the comparison between success as a player and coach. “I find it hard to rate these things. But what I do know and what I saw on Saturday was an amazing amount of genuine joy at the club. Community sport is driven by those moments. You can’t replace them and to see the pleasure and joy on so many peoples’ faces, that's the thing I remember.” Meanwhile, Australia’s other representative Jewish men’s cricketer, Michael Klinger, is in the process of moving to Sydney to take up a position with Cricket NSW as the head of male cricket. He spent the last two summers as coach of the Melbourne Renegades in the Big Bash competition, following his retirement as one of Australian domestic cricket’s most prolific run scorers over nearly two decades. Photo: The Prahran team celebrates its victory, with Wiener, bottom, fourth from the left