Against Noorat on Saturday, Keane passed the club’s record games tally set by Colin Venn – who stopped playing cricket regularly more than a decade prior – notching up his 287th appearance for the club in a career spanning 24 years.

But Keane said the day “didn’t quite go to plan”.

“I was run out for a duck, which wasn’t ideal, but the main thing was we had a win,” he said.

“It was just a bit of a mix-up. I ended up flat on my face halfway down the pitch. But I was happy with the bowling.”

He finished the match with 2-28 to his name as Terang restricted Noorat to 7-169, before posting 9-185 in reply.

The 45 year-old considered himself lucky to have not had many major injuries over the years, with a sound body pivotal to the longevity of his career.

After playing junior cricket with Terang, Keane took a break from the sport for a handful of years, turning his attention to other pursuits like tennis and squash.

A knee operation when he was 20 put him out of action for a while, but when he returned to cricket, he went about setting up the most enduring career in the club’s history.

He has played all his cricket with Terang, bar a stint in England when he was 30, when he played with Pickering in a Yorkshire league.

“That was probably the best cricket experience I had, playing over there,” Keane said.

“We didn’t set the world on fire, but we did okay. It improved my cricket a bit, playing at a higher level.”

After going through the heartbreak of five losing grand finals with Terang, Keane was there as the team finally broke its 33-year drought in 2006/07 and got to taste ultimate success again in the back-to-back flags of 2009/10 and 2010/11.

He has played 278 of his matches in division one, taking out 14 club and four association cricketer of the year awards along the way.

In a sign of his ongoing potency as an all-rounder, Keane finished runner-up in the South West Cricket award last summer.

He has made 7314 runs over his career at an average of 27.2, taking 594 wickets and 145 catches.

Terang captain Brett Hunger said Keane was an integral part of the club and had been a “big influence” on his career.

“He’s been a great servant of the club for a long time,” Hunger said.

“I don’t think there will be anyone who’s done what he has done with his batting, bowling and just being the all-round clubperson he is.

“He’s really well-liked by everyone at the club … he’s a really good person. You need people like that for clubs to exist.”