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Authors: Jock Serong
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innings, I’d carefully defend such a ball. Not this time. I drop onto one knee and sweep across my front pad, making clean contact and whipping it square.
There’s never any time to react at short leg. The best you can hope for is to flinch before the shot’s made, as you see the bat coming round. This fool hasn’t even moved and the sound of ball hitting bone just below his knee is nearly as sweet as the shot itself.
He drops like a shot dog.
It feels just like All Saints v Laverton. Wally calls me through, and we run two as Short Leg clutches his knee, a concerned mob gathering around him. I make sure I saunter, nice and relaxed, back to the crease and then turn to face him. You don’t want to overplay it when you’ve dealt an ace in such a situation, so I just watch him patiently as the skipper calls for a helmet and box and someone else takes his spot. He grimaces all Hollywood and limps off the ground.
For another hour, the empty grandstand echoes sweetly witheach connection of ball and bat. Their attack’s diminished with the opening bowler off the ground, and I can show off all I want. Wally chides me for indulging in what he calls ‘ball-watching’—my habit of remaining in a pose after a perfectly executed shot, showing no interest at all in running. And he’s right: I’m savouring every minute of it. In the distance I can see drivers marooned on Punt Road, windows down, arms hung defeatedly over door sills. They gaze longingly across the ground at us as though we’re splashing in a pool. This is an oasis.
By lunch, Wally’s fifty-two and I’m not far behind him.
The dining room is long and spacious. Everything’s laid on, and they have staff whose only job is to feed hungry people in whites.
I scoff as much deep-fried food as I can. Wally’s loading up on fruit, the very thing we can already get for free. I scan the walls as I eat. Honour boards, black-and-white photographs, serious men. A kind of gravity I’ve never previously associated with the game. People who lived and played cricket and went to war and then died. I can’t equate all that commemoration with the joyful act of smacking a cricket ball.
Wally has his fruit scraps neatly arranged on the side of his plate.
‘Let’s get back into ’em, eh?’ he smiles.
We walk out of the dressing room and down the steps to the ground. I want to savour this moment. I’ve seen footage of Bradman and Ponsford walking together just like Wally and me, padded up and casually trailing our bats.
But as the dining room door closes behind us, it’s clear that something’s changed.
It’s hot, unbearably hot, and as we emerge from the shade of the grandstand the air tastes different. It even smells hot, somewhere between smoke and baking concrete. But something else feels wrong, and it takes a moment or two to work it out.
The light’s changed.
It’s heavier. No longer blinding and reflective, it’s taken on a malevolent hue, a tint towards brown or orange that’s loaded with menace. Wally’s pressing forward through the gate and onto the outfield, swinging his bat now. He hasn’t even noticed. Task driven , a commentator will say years later.
There are no birds. Before lunch, there were seagulls all over deep midwicket, settled on the grass, rising reluctantly for a struck ball. Now they’re gone. So too are the mynas and sparrows in the street.
Within a few deliveries, Wally’s gone too. Uncharacteristically wafting at a wide one, he nicks it through to the keeper and never looks back as he leaves. No doubt he’s satisfied that his half-century brought him the right kind of attention.
The next batsman wanders out, looking, as I did, at the sky. Instead of heading for the striker’s end he ambles up to me, a big grin splitting his features under the cap. He thrusts a hand forward in greeting.
‘Mate! Craig Wearne!’
I don’t know how I didn’t encounter this bear over lunch.
His handshake is overpowering. I look down
There’s never any time to react at short leg. The best you can hope for is to flinch before the shot’s made, as you see the bat coming round. This fool hasn’t even moved and the sound of ball hitting bone just below his knee is nearly as sweet as the shot itself.
He drops like a shot dog.
It feels just like All Saints v Laverton. Wally calls me through, and we run two as Short Leg clutches his knee, a concerned mob gathering around him. I make sure I saunter, nice and relaxed, back to the crease and then turn to face him. You don’t want to overplay it when you’ve dealt an ace in such a situation, so I just watch him patiently as the skipper calls for a helmet and box and someone else takes his spot. He grimaces all Hollywood and limps off the ground.
For another hour, the empty grandstand echoes sweetly witheach connection of ball and bat. Their attack’s diminished with the opening bowler off the ground, and I can show off all I want. Wally chides me for indulging in what he calls ‘ball-watching’—my habit of remaining in a pose after a perfectly executed shot, showing no interest at all in running. And he’s right: I’m savouring every minute of it. In the distance I can see drivers marooned on Punt Road, windows down, arms hung defeatedly over door sills. They gaze longingly across the ground at us as though we’re splashing in a pool. This is an oasis.
By lunch, Wally’s fifty-two and I’m not far behind him.
The dining room is long and spacious. Everything’s laid on, and they have staff whose only job is to feed hungry people in whites.
I scoff as much deep-fried food as I can. Wally’s loading up on fruit, the very thing we can already get for free. I scan the walls as I eat. Honour boards, black-and-white photographs, serious men. A kind of gravity I’ve never previously associated with the game. People who lived and played cricket and went to war and then died. I can’t equate all that commemoration with the joyful act of smacking a cricket ball.
Wally has his fruit scraps neatly arranged on the side of his plate.
‘Let’s get back into ’em, eh?’ he smiles.
We walk out of the dressing room and down the steps to the ground. I want to savour this moment. I’ve seen footage of Bradman and Ponsford walking together just like Wally and me, padded up and casually trailing our bats.
But as the dining room door closes behind us, it’s clear that something’s changed.
It’s hot, unbearably hot, and as we emerge from the shade of the grandstand the air tastes different. It even smells hot, somewhere between smoke and baking concrete. But something else feels wrong, and it takes a moment or two to work it out.
The light’s changed.
It’s heavier. No longer blinding and reflective, it’s taken on a malevolent hue, a tint towards brown or orange that’s loaded with menace. Wally’s pressing forward through the gate and onto the outfield, swinging his bat now. He hasn’t even noticed. Task driven , a commentator will say years later.
There are no birds. Before lunch, there were seagulls all over deep midwicket, settled on the grass, rising reluctantly for a struck ball. Now they’re gone. So too are the mynas and sparrows in the street.
Within a few deliveries, Wally’s gone too. Uncharacteristically wafting at a wide one, he nicks it through to the keeper and never looks back as he leaves. No doubt he’s satisfied that his half-century brought him the right kind of attention.
The next batsman wanders out, looking, as I did, at the sky. Instead of heading for the striker’s end he ambles up to me, a big grin splitting his features under the cap. He thrusts a hand forward in greeting.
‘Mate! Craig Wearne!’
I don’t know how I didn’t encounter this bear over lunch.
His handshake is overpowering. I look down
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