When Clifton Plummer donned his cricket kit and took the field last week, it was the first time he'd played in five years.
Not because he didn't want to, but because there wasn't a team for him to join.
Despite playing representative cricket for Queensland and then Australia, a move to Canberra meant Plummer's talents took a back seat.
Plummer has a hereditary vision impairment called congenital retinoschisis, where the eye's retina peels off and destroys itself, meaning he has no vision in one eye and is legally blind in the other.
When a cricket ball approaches from six metres away, it appears 60 metres further to Plummer, who picked up the gloves as the wicketkeeper at the recent National Cricket Inclusion Championships.
Until the championships, the ACT never had options for keen players with a vision impairment.
Even now, to make representing Canberra a reality, players from the ACT had to join forces with Tasmania to field a team, forming the only joint team in the competition.
"I moved down to Canberra and there was no cricket team down here, so I stopped playing cricket for a while," Plummer said.
"[It was] challenging, I did miss the game … there was just no social aspect, if there's no social sport."
Now, as one of the older players in the new team, Plummer said it was a good chance to pass on his experience.
"Everyone was quite happy to see us there, everyone was very supportive," he said.
"The hardest thing to teach really is the spirit of playing and the mateship that goes with it. Particularly how important it is to actually be a good sportsman, rather than just win all the time."
A new generation of vision-impaired cricketers
Youngest player on the team,14-year-old Toby Hartshorn, unlike Plummer, won't know what it's like to not play the sport he loves.
He has nystagmus, where his vision is impacted as his eyes move rapidly from side to side.
The Albury local played mainstream cricket from six-years old, but as the game sped up it became too challenging for him to keep playing.
That's when Toby was introduced to blind cricket, only a year before he made his debut in the inaugural team.
"It was amazing to get the opportunity to play at such a young age when other people wouldn't have started until they're about 20," Hartshorn said.
"I felt a bit overwhelmed because I'm 14 and they're like 30 to 40, like they're pretty old, they're almost double my age.
"It's a life changer. I wanted to pursue this all through my life now."
For Toby's Mum, Bonnie, the competition's growth means there are more opportunities for another member of the Hartshorn family.
"I've also got a three-year-old who has the same vision impairment as Toby," Ms Hartshorn said.
"They're also implementing women's cricket in the blind cricket so that's something to look forward to as well."
'Something that we've been dreaming about for so long'
President of Blind Cricket ACT, Jason Schmidt, had been the backbone of the team's campaign for five years.
When the team he'd been so proudly advocating for was finally asked to play, he breathed a sigh of relief.
"It's something that we've been dreaming about for so long, Mr Schmidt said.
"To finally bring all those people together, to bring everything together, was sensational.
"The journey has been fantastic, watching not only the players but the whole tournament just grow and progress over time."
As Plummer and Mr Schmidt stand in the middle of Manuka Oval, they discuss plans for what's next.
"We want to be out here on Manuka Oval one day," Mr Schmidt said.
For Plummer, while playing in front of a stadium crowd would be an experience to remember, he said bringing the game to local grounds was just as important.
"I think we need local cricket, which is challenging getting a lot of blind or visually impaired people out to play cricket regularly," Plummer said.
"But that's what really makes the sport more effective as the grassroots game."
