But in Dubbo, all three grades are being held together by a core group of players closing in on raising the bat for their half-century.

As the modern game struggles to fill its membership card from junior ranks, the old guard has been called back to the crease.

Don Skinner, who until a couple of years ago was still in first grade for Newtown, is the city’s oldest player at 55 while Macquarie’s Dave Murray is proving a run machine in second grade at the age of 53.

For Skinner, who started in 1964, his earliest memories were as a nine-year-old playing against 12-year-olds in Singleton.

Forty-six years later and he is still playing second grade, although he drops himself into the slips cordon and tends not to chase too many balls around the boundary.

“I have three boys that are playing (Steve, Mat and Tom) and they are the reason I am still going,” he said.

“I have another grade to go through before I give it away though.

“I’ve made some great mates through cricket, not only at Newtown but also at the other clubs.”

Some of the elder statesmen of the game are still capable of competing in the top grade, including Rugby club’s Wayne Munro who is still terrorising bowlers in the Whitney Cup while the first grade competition’s leading run-scorer John Colwell is closing in on 40.

The three guys who posed for our photo - Al Horrocks, Mick Haley and Steve Wheeler - have more than 140 years of combined life experience, of which more than 100 have been spent playing the game they love.

Horrocks, 48, is a second-grader and a life member of Rugby Cricket Club and only stopped playing first grade a year or so ago.

“At the end of every season I think about not playing again but Wayne Munro and Don Skinner are running around and it makes me want to play again,” Horrocks said.

“It’s about mateship really. I get to go out and play sport and spend a few hours a day with good blokes.

“I’ve been playing since I was little. When I came to Dubbo I played for Apex Cricket Club in the old Clegg Shield. A lot of people used to think the Clegg Shield was for the has-beens and guys with little talent but a lot of Clegg Shield players are still running around today.”

Mick Haley played his early cricket in Forbes and Condobolin and rejoined the ranks at Newtown a couple of years ago while coaching his son Mitch in the juniors.

“It’s just good fun,” Mick said.

“It’s actually funny being one of the older guys. There tends to be a bit of sledging out there between us and the young kids. They’re pretty good at it too.”

Wheeler, another life member of Rugby, remembers the days when he was a youngster being coached by first graders.

“Things have changed a bit since I was a kid,” he said.

“I started when I was nine years old and ever since, for six months of the year, I have played cricket.

“At one stage I had a break from it all but after about six weeks I realised I had no mates outside of cricket and I went back.

“It’s good just getting out there with your mates every week and testing yourself against the other teams.”

A generational change in attitude towards winning is also a reason for the junior player drain.

In an age where success has become expected of the Australian side, a lot of the juniors expect to win all the time as well.

“Things are very much win, win, win these days,”Horrocks said.

“The media and the public expects Australia to win and that filters down.

“One of the reasons I enjoy my cricket is because our guys are out there just to have fun,” he said.

“The thing for guys at Rugby like myself, ‘Munners’ and ‘Tubby’ Wheeler is that we do more than play. We are on committees and would do anything to stop the club from failing.

“If it means spending six hours in the sun on a Saturday, then so be it.”