After tough times with injury, former Belmont leg-spinner Toby Gray saw his window of opportunity coming to break into the NSW side.
To give himself every chance to make it, the 21-year-old deferred his studies at the University of Newcastle and moved fulltime to Sydney this season.
The sacrifices and commitment paid off on Tuesday when the Valentine-Eleebana junior made his first-class debut for the Blues in the Sheffield Shield clash against Western Australia at the SCG and took 3-58 off 18 overs.
Gray bowled top-scorer Sam Fanning (61) before later ending the Warriors' innings with the wickets of Charlie Stobo (27) caught and bowled and David Moody (0), caught in close, to be on a hat-trick in the second innings. Western Australia were all out for 233 after winning the toss.
Gray had bowled six overs before lunch for 0-27 as the Warriors went in at 0-91. Off-spinner Chris Green, also on debut, then led the revival with four wickets before Gray knocked over Fanning, who shouldered arms to a sharp-spinning leg-break.
Before play, Test spinner Nathan Lyon, a Northern District clubmate, presented Gray his Blues cap - No.762.
It was a proud moment for Gray's parents, Paul and Kathy, who made the trip from Newcastle to the SCG on Tuesday morning.
"He was pretty excited with his cap presentation," Paul told the Newcastle Herald at the lunch break.
"[Lyon] is one of the Rangers, Toby and [Green] are both from Northern District as well, so it's good they are debuting together. Nathan was having a bit of a chat to him about hooking in and honouring the past wearers of the cap, so it was good.
"It's great to be here and see him get on the big stage.
"It's the first time he's actually played here at the SCG, which is a good challenge for him. So it's understandable he was a bit shaky the first couple of overs."
Gray's maiden wicket came with the third ball of his third spell and he continued to improve his consistency of line and length as the day progressed.
"It's pretty rare that he's nervous but his [Northern District] first-grade captain from last year, Ben Davis, was here and he was chatting to him," Paul said.
"He said, 'mate, you've got to be a bit nervous inside', and he said, 'yeah, a little bit'."
Fellow Newcastle junior Jason Sangha played his part in winless NSW's comeback on day one against the ladder leaders, taking a sharp catch to dismiss former Test opener Cameron Bancroft (39) off Green's bowling.
Green, 29, a well-known T20 performer, had figures of 4-71, while paceman Chris Tremain took 2-29.
Gray's debut came after a change in approach this summer.
He had commuted to play in Sydney the previous three seasons, however, he relocated this campaign and put his studies on hold to focus on cricket.
"He just moved down here at the start of this season to have a red-hot crack at it," Paul said.
"He deferred uni, he was doing surveying at Newcastle uni, but he thought he'd have a crack this season and see how it went.
"But I don't think he would have imagined this two months ago, although he did have a bit of a plan.
"He knew Nathan Lyon probably wouldn't be playing these couple of games, and the other leggie, Tanveer [Sangha], has been out injured for a while, so he had a sniff he could be a chance here."
Paul, who coached his son during his junior days in Newcastle, said Toby had "been working pretty hard" for his opportunity.
"He had a couple of bad years there between 17s and 19s when he had two stress fractures in his back, so he was out of action for a while," he said.
"He missed those couple of nationals, but since then it's been going pretty well.
"Actually it was good to catch up with the medical guys here, Dr [John] Orchard and Angus [Le Lievre], the physio for NSW, they both spent a fair bit of time with Toby over the years.
"The first stress fracture was undiagnosed really, then when he had the second one they realised he'd had one previously. It was hard to say when that was.
"But this year he's been bowling in second XI games and been bowling plenty of overs and not having too many issues with his back, so it's been good."
Gray got the good news on Monday afternoon.
"They had a training session and let him know he was in the starting XI, so he was pretty excited yesterday and he got to sleep on it," Paul said.
"He had a look at the wicket on Sunday and he thought they would play two spinners. I wasn't sure he was just hopeful. But it looks like a pretty interesting SCG deck."
