It was 1973 when the president of the Ballarat Cricket Association, Rex Hollioake, brought a brand new cricket pitch roller which he had purchased from Melbourne, to the Mentay Factory in Ballarat. Mentay, at this stage, had been repairing many types of rollers some of which were poorly designed. Mentay founder, Maurie Menhennet told Rex that he could build a cricket pitch roller far better than anything Rex could buy. So a dare sparked the development of the Mentay cricket pitch roller.
It was only 7 years later, when Maurie officially won that bet. Mentay's Hydra-Glide walk behind cricket pitch roller won a highly coveted Australian Design Council Award. When interviewed for an article, Ian Johnson, the secretary of the Melbourne Cricket Club at the time, voted the Hyrda-Glide, "the most sophisticated and smoothest roller I have ever experienced and is very easy to handle."
Today Mentay's range of cricket pitch rollers can be seen at most major grounds around Australia including the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the Gabba in Brisbane and Bellerive Oval in Hobart. Mentay’s cricket pitch rollers have also been exported to countries including New Zealand, the Hong Kong Cricket Club in Hong Kong, and as far away as Dubai in the UAE and South Africa. The Mentay 1200 Custom ride-on cricket pitch roller, the newest roller in the product range, was awarded "Product of the Year" in 2012 by Power Magazine.
After all these years, Mentay's reputation remains impeccable.