Dennis Lillee is the biggest name in WA cricket history; a charismatic fast bowling champion who drew people to the sport like no other cricketer, and later spent a decade as WACA president.
Former Test opener Wally Edwards, after four eventful years chairing Cricket Australia and shaping the destiny of world cricket, is the most credentialled cricket administrator produced in the state.
Brian Rakich was a long-term treasurer, chairman and president of the WACA.
Graeme Wood was a Test opener in the toughest era for Test openers, a Sheffield Shield hat-trick captain, and vice-president and chief executive of the WACA.
David Williams was a farsighted WACA chairman whose vision for Twenty20 cricket helped bring about the Big Bash League.
All of them are life members of the WACA; two of them are members of the Gallery of Greats introduced by the WACA to recognise the most significant contributors to the game.
It is hard to imagine a greater collection of heavy hitters brought together by one issue in WA cricket history.
Yet that is what has happened in recent weeks.
That group of five substantial WA cricket identities head a list of experienced, conservative but, above all, concerned members seeking to oust current WACA chair Avril Fahey and her deputy Michael Gannon.
Dennis Lillee is WA’s greatest cricket figure.
The move is unprecedented.
It is about as unlikely as former Labor premiers Geoff Gallop and Alan Carpenter combining to seek Roger Cook’s removal.
The great families have their differences but, no matter the provocation, the most senior members NEVER call for the heads of the current lot.
Until now.
The WACA has existed for 140 years, and experienced periods of considerable turbulence, yet has never once been so fraught that a formal vote of no confidence has been sought to cauterise the wounds afflicting the entire body.
It is the toughest medicine for a bitter ill.
A petition signed by 100 WACA members would trigger a series of motions at the annual general meeting in September that would seek to remove Fahey and Gannon, and release the controversial Healy report into the reasons why five WACA board members resigned suddenly two years ago.
Those departures were chairman Terry Waldron, Wood and his former WA team-mate Mike Veletta, Colleen Hayward and Nicola Brandon.
Former board member and prominent barrister Tom Percy, who has repeatedly called for the report to be released, will also be a petitioner.
An AGM date has not been announced yet but petitions have to be lodged two months before the meeting to ensure they are put on the agenda.
The move is not guaranteed to succeed.
Wally Edwards was Cricket Australia chairman for four years.
The petition organisers have to find 100 current financial members to sign the document, the motions must be presented at the AGM, WACA members would have to vote in favour, and then the targets of the no confidence motions would have to act on them.
The petition is driven by two factors, one to do with the very future of the WACA itself, and the other the farcical and failed bid to suspend director Paul Collins over his intense scrutiny of the contentious multi-million dollar WACA Ground redevelopment.
The WACA spent an estimated $400,000 on legal advice to suspend Collins before discovering, at considerable expense and even greater embarrassment, that it did not have the capacity nor rationale to do so.
Collins’ crime was to seek, repeatedly and perhaps brusquely and with little subtlety, details of the project’s cost blowouts and design compromises.
WACA insiders suggest the project is already $20million over budget, that it is challenged by the surprise discovery that soil remediation costing $12million must be added to the bill, and that apprehension is growing about the potential consequences of seeking more funding to finish the job.
It is notable that the WA Cricket Foundation, the fundraising arm that has brought in about a quarter of the $11million it was tasked to find, has been active in the media in recent weeks as it searches for donations.
Foundation chairman Bob Every revealed recently that Edwards had provided one of the biggest ones.
That is a clear indication that while the Floreat resident might have lost confidence in the people running the WACA, he still has faith in the organisation itself.
This matter is brewing as the WACA prepares to appoint a new chief executive whose first task may be to slash staff numbers in a desperate bid to balance the books.
The shortlist has two names on it with a decision due to be confirmed next month.
It could not be done this month because too many board members were on holiday.
If Fahey and Gannon are forced out over the Collins fiasco, it would be fitting for the remaining board members who voted to remove him to follow suit.
In some ways, it does not matter whether the petition gets its 100 signatures or a majority of the several dozen WACA members who usually attend an AGM actually vote to turf the chair and her 2IC.
The mere fact that cricket identities of the standing and credibility of Lillee and Edwards are prepared to put their names to a no-confidence motion should be sufficient encouragement for the pair to seek the exit door.
They have already lost the room; staying around to rearrange the chairs makes little sense and would do little to rehabilitate their corporate reputations.
Don Bradman famously said that cricketers were “custodians of the game” whose duty it was to ensure that cricket was in good shape when it was passed on to the next generation.
“We are the custodians of the welfare of cricket and must guard its future even more zealously than its present,” were his actual words.
So too the responsibility of the game’s administrators.
No person seeks glory and rewards when they join the ranks of the off-field teams that help keep cricket alive but, as Bradman also said repeatedly, they also need to keep their eye on the ball.
And that means knowing when to duck and knowing when to leave.