THE NICKNAME

"Nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive".
~ Thomas Chandler Haliburton (17 December,1796 – 27 August, 1865) Canadian Author


It has often been said that nicknames are fascinating things. Some accurately convey something about the bearer. Others are a quirk of fate or nature which reveal little about the person. Then there is the third kind – those that are downright misleading.

It is the latter kind that seemingly has somehow inspired my new nickname that has been bestowed on me by Strachany my erstwhile teammate from South Yarra CC. I have been dubbed “VB” which for those of you who live in other countries stands for “Vic Bitter” a very popular beer that Australians (particularly Victorians) love to numb themselves with.

What is wrong with that I can hear you saying?

Well, VB may be an appropriate nickname for someone who loves partaking in copious quantities of the amber stuff, but in my case being a non drinker, it is somewhat of a misnomer.

I pondered this anomalous turn of events after we held our fielding training session a couple of weekends back. After training we had a BBQ with beers all round. As the lads stood in a large circle chomping on their bangas, I could not help but notice that not only every single one of them had a beer in their hand to wet their whistle, but I was the only one who was empty handed and not imbibing.

There has got to be some irony in that somewhere.

I suppose if I become very bitter, perhaps the nickname “Vic Bitter” may become a more descriptive metaphor – but until then, it will just have to go down as one of the more unusual nomenclatures to be festooned upon me.

It was American essayist, philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson who said “no orator can top the one who can give good nicknames”. Thanks Strachany, I owe you one!

See you all soon,
Vic Nicholas
Melbourne

Lost and Found

"Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time"
~Voltaire (1694 – 1778) French Enlightenment writer, essayist, and philosopher.

Over the last month or so I have been training with the guys from the club at official training on Thursday nights at an indoor net in Clayton and Sunday afternoons in in a more unofficial capacity - but still club sanctioned - training at Melbourne High Schools nets. It has been wonderful getting in so much practice in and I can feel my game improving faster than I initially anticipated which brings me to that word:

Expectation.

Both from others and from myself.

The idea of having a social hit on the weekend has changed as my mindset has altered its thought processes wanting to make a contribution to the team effort. This subtle change has come about due to my realization that I would not be as deficient as I first thought I would be.

So now, on top of my usual training, I have booked in additional training for an hour at noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays with a bowling machine at the Indoor nets in Hawthorn. This will be for the next three weeks and thereafter I will probably have an hour with the bowling machine each Friday afternoon to get my eye in for the weekend.

Yesterday was my first session with old Happy from the club feeding the balls into the machine as well as passing on encouragement and useful technical advice. It was alot of fun pitting my skills against a machine that never gets tired and is far more accurate than your average club bowler.

I also brought my movie camera and tripod to film my session so I could watch myself batting and to make technical adjustments as necessary. I had never seen myself bat and it was quite fascinating watching myself and noticing some minor technical deficiencies - but more importantly, over the course of less than five minutes batting, I auto corrected myself and then for the rest of the tape my bat was nice and straight and my footwork quite good.

Some things that did stand out were that I looked very, very solid on the back foot - whether defending against the short ball or playing back foot drives, cuts and the occasional pull shot. When we pushed the machine to bowl a much fuller length, I found that getting on the front foot to fast bowling exposed some glaring technical short comings that I had never really noticed before -but was there plain to see on the tape.

While I find it easy enough to take a big stride down the pitch to defend against a spinner, to a fast bowler I tend to play from the crease. This can be dangerous and the only thing that probably saved me from strife in the past was the fact that I always bat a foot out of my crease to fast bowlers which negates to a certain degree LBW's.

In any case, I have resolved to iron out this deficiency in my technique over the next few weeks. I also want to regain my old ability to pounce on any loose balls short outside off stump. If I can consistently get my cut shot to work every time as well as my square drive and cover drive off the back foot - I will be able to keep the score board moving along. I can still play all these shots rather well, but I do play and miss outside off stump more than what I used to.

I am very confident with this specialized work load of multiple sessions with a bowling machine before the season start proper, I should be in reasonable shape by the first game of the season.

I have been thinking in recent weeks about the kind of role I would like to play in my team this summer. When I first started out as a ten year old, I played as a very patient and careful batsman with hardly any full blooded strokes that involved any kind of risk. I could grind out innings on demand, but I must have been rather boring to watch. In any case, I was effective in my role and as I opened the batting in my first few seasons, I at least gave the batting some spine - though that was not at the fore-front of mind to be honest as I was more concerned in not disappointing my brother by getting out for a low score rather than actually having some great team plan in mind.

At some point of time in my second season, after a string of good scores where I was feeling good about myself, a bloke by the name of Richard Owen who was a father of one of my teammates David Owen - told me to play more shots as my slow batting could bog down the whole team. I also had copped a ribbing from time to time by other kids in the team who felt that I was batting for myself rather than the team. This was somewhat unfair as every time I top scored (which was alot) - we won. We were successful and premiership contenders - and my solid starts at the top of the order was surely a key component of that. Also, which twelve year old is 100% team oriented in their every waking thought? At that age when you are batting, about the only thing that is going through your head is - "don't get out".

In any case, the following week, I went out and blazed my thirty not out in double quick time. Keep in mind a batsman in Under 12's those days had to retire once they reached thirty. While it was never explained why, I always understood it that it was to give all the other kids a go rather than a couple of kids putting on a century open stand and nobody else batting.

Thereafter that season I started playing more and more big shots which was not a bad thing as I was still playing technically correct. By my first year of Under 16's practically all the guys in my team could smash a six clean out of the ground. Naturally, with testosterone running high, I wanted to be able to do this too. Retrospectively, I now know that this was never my game - I am a touch player who strokes effortless boundaries and I should have stayed the way I was...but alas, I succumbed to the temptation of trying to whack sixes every ball.

I then proceeded to spend the next two years playing cow shots at training to every ball I faced - and there was no-one there to correct me. My coach in my first year of Under 16's was a quiet man who managed the team - he didn't coach it. In my second year of Under 16's we didn't have a coach at all - so this madness went unchecked, with the net result that my formerly almost pristine technique was drastically altered.

I had no idea those days as to what "trigger movements" were/are. I just trained without any thought as to what I was trying to accomplish. Infact, I accomplished nothing other than going backwards.

Through repetition the brain and the body combine to create a synergy of movement in response to a familiar situation. If you play correctly constantly at training and train as you would wish to play in a match - your trigger movements will be honed to follow your brains instinctive commands. If you thrash about at training like a lunatic as I did for two years - your trigger movements are thrown out of synchronization. So when you get into a match situation, no matter how hard you try and correct yourself and play to your technical strengths - you can't - because your built in computer inside your head is spitting out the faulty data that you fed into it in the first place.

Practice does not make perfect, but perfect practice does make perfect. All sporting superstars in their chosen craft would tell you that is exactly how it works. I am now in the process of recalibrating myself and my batting and rediscovering what is already within me - but has been dormant for many years.

It is all very challenging, but I am having a fantastic time doing it.

Vic Nicholas
Melbourne

My Equipment

"It matters little how much equipment we use; it matters much that we be masters of all we do use"

~ Sam Abell (1945- American Photographer)

I recently wrote about my cricket bats that I will be using this summer, so I think it only fair that I also detail the other equipment that I will be using this season.

Starting from the top - my helmet. It is a Gray Nicolls Warrior Helmet. As far as helmets go, it looks pretty good, but then they all seem to be variations of a theme and may very well be manufactured in the same factory in India as all the other brands are. I removed the steel grill that comes standard with it as it is a bit naff and I replaced it with an Albion Titanium Ti 22 Contour Faceguard which is heaps lighter and looks much cooler. To make it look even more wicked, I spray painted the faceguard black - which looks so much better than its' original grey colour. The helmet cost fifty dollars and the titanium Ti 22 Contour faceguard cost seventy five dollars directly from Albion.

As a point of comparison, my first helmet I ever owned was bought by my parents when I was about thirteen years old and it was a Duncan Fearnley. It cost my parents about seventy odd dollars back in about 1982. Given the Gray Nicolls helmet is better lined and lighter, it is remarkable how much more expensive equipment was back then in a cost comparison analysis. To put it into perspective, your average median house price in Melbourne those days was $40,800 where as now (2009) it is $451,000 - ie; around eleven times higher. The average wage has not risen eleven fold in that time, but it has probably increased at least four fold. So a seventy dollar helmet back in 1982 would be equivalent to paying two hundred and eighty dollars now.

Having said all that, I must say that I have never been hit on the head while playing cricket no matter how fast the bowling was that I faced, however, it is flirting with trouble to bat without a helmet because when you least expect it - whack, you are nursing a mouth full of loose teeth or worse.

I purchased a Gray Nicolls forearm guard - but I don't even bother wearing it to be honest. I am as likely to be hit on the forearm as I am to be struck by lightning. However, if we ever play against a team with a freakishly fast bowler who extracts vicious bounce off docile turf wickets - I may reconsider and wear it. Until that time it will sit in my kit bag. It cost me the princely sum of twenty dollars.

My two next bits of equipment I didn't photograph. My batting inners are rather unexciting, but for those of you who really must know, they are Gray Nicolls fingerless inners. I have never worn inners in my life, but there must be some logical reason why the professionals wear them - it certainly isn't to keep their hands warm!

The second piece of un-photographed equipment is what is euphemistically called a "protector" or colloquially a "box". It is a Gray Nicolls box - but no, I am not taking a picture of it as some things should always be sacred.

My batting gloves are very very cool looking, being the Puma Ballistic 3000 and the Puma Iridium 3000. Both sets of gloves offer wonderful protection, yet are light as well. here is what they look like:

To get into cost comparisons again with the early 1980's when I was tearing it up on suburban grounds in Melbourne's Northen Suburbs, the crème de la crème batting gloves were the Saint Peter pillow style gloves that test batsmen like Tony Grieg, Rod Marsh, Mike Brearley etc wore.

Whatever happened to SP?

A handful of lucky blokes at my club had them and they retailed at around seventy dollars a pair back then. Again, that is the equivalent of batting gloves costing two hundred and eighty dollars now - an absurd amount. My new sensational batting gloves cost me fifty five and forty five dollars respectively. They are better and lighter than those SP gloves from twenty five years ago, and way, way cheaper!

My thigh pad is a Puma Iridium range thigh pad and is sensational. Again, I rarely get hit on the thigh pad, but I still have painful memories of being hit there as a kid and it hurt like hell. Anyone who has ever been hit there without wearing a thigh pad knows exactly what I am talking about!

Recently at training I missed a ball on my body from a really fast bowler from our club and hit me on my thigh pad and I didn't feel a thing. So it is not only light - but it does its' job sensationally well.

My pads are from the Puma range as well and are the Iridium Force range. They are nice and light, are comfortable and look great. They remind me of the Saint Peter pads from twenty five years ago which were the top end pads in those days with their lightness. They used to cost about ninety dollars - about three hundred and sixty dollars in today's dollars. These Puma pads cost me all of thirty nine dollars.

Top of the range cricket bats in the early 1980's cost about three hundred dollars - which translates to about twelve hundred dollars in today's money. A top of the range bat these days would cost about seven hundred dollars - still rather expensive for the average suburban cricketer - but nowhere near the pain we had to endure all those years ago.

So it is quite remarkable that over the years cricket equipment has actually become comparatively cheaper in direct inverted proportion to society which has seen the cost of living rise. It makes me appreciate the sacrifices my immigrant parents made for me all the more for purchasing all that equipment for me back when I was a young lad for what must have been a small fortune for a blue collar working class family. They didn't even understand the game - but they knew that I loved it and they did not want me to miss out on experiences.

Mum and dad - I just want to say I love you and thanks for everything

More soon!

Vic Nicholas

Melbourne

My Brothers Keeper

A brother shares childhood memories and grown-up dreams.
~Author Unknown

Like most kids all over the world – I first learnt my cricket in the backyard playing with my older brother. My brother is nearly nine years older than me and it was my considerable luck that my brother also happened to be a cricket nut.

My brother was an opening bowler for the Second XI at our local suburban cricket club Moomba Park CC. He bowled a lively fast medium on the coir matting that cricket was played on out in the suburbs those days and was very accurate pitching the ball on a good off stump line. On our backyard pitch – which was not the full twenty two yards, but more like sixteen – my brother was lightning fast and probably approached the equivalent of someone bowling 90+ miles per hour at the batsman’s end.

This short pitch coupled with my brothers’ speed was to prove beneficial long term toward molding my technique against fast bowling. My trigger movements were learnt right there in that small backyard all those years ago.

We started out playing with a tennis ball when I was eight years old. I must confess that I initially showed no interest in cricket at all and I was pressed into service by an overbearing brother who would yell at me whenever I would plead that I didn’t want to play anymore. It just seemed like hour after hour of torture as my brother would rack up triple century after triple century. When it came to my turn to bat, I would get out after a few balls and I would have to commence the grind of bowling all over again for what seemed like an eternity.

After two years of this punishment, I started to actually become somewhat competitive by the age of ten. Though my by now nineteen year old brother was still able to overpower me when he fully concentrated, never the less, this constant playing in our backyard honed my skill in facing fast bowling and my game improved incrementally.

By this stage we discovered the joy of taping the tennis ball with electrical tape which made the ball even faster and swing through the air to make batting even more challenging. The sideways movement was counter balanced by the fact that the bounce was not as pronounced as playing with an un-taped tennis ball. The tape also added another dimension to our backyard games – pain. If the ball hit me on the thigh or face, it now had the capacity to leave me with a sharp stinging sensation. This also played a part in sharpening my reflexes as it became imperative to avoid being hit by my brothers’ brutal bouncers and throat balls.

Rather than ducking underneath bouncers, I learned to sway out of harms way instead. This was due to the fact that the pitch was much shorter than a usual pitch where the bowler has to dig the ball in short to get it head high thus giving the batsman time to read the length and duck. On our backyard pitch, ducking was out of the question, with balls short of a length fizzing past my face, I found it far more prudent to keep my eye on the ball, drop my arms to get my bat and my hands out of the way and sway backwards from the waste up.

Extremely awkward to be sure, but very effective none the less.

Our backyard had a kind of concrete footpath that ran along the side of the house that was roughly the same width as a pitch, but as mentioned previously, much shorter than a standard pitch. The batsman’s end had the garage side door as the automatic wicket keeper and the rest of the garage was an automatic slips cordon if the ball hit the wall higher than two feet off the ground. The full length of the garage was about standard length, thus replicating a slips cordon.

On the batsman’s leg side was the alcove with the wide stair case that led to the back door. This area was two runs. The offside wire fence which protected the vegetable patch was two runs for cut shots and cover drives and the back fence was four runs. Over the fence was six, but unlike regular backyard cricket etiquette since time immemorial, it was not automatically out. The downside though was that I had to jump the fence and fetch the ball. Looking back, it is quite remarkable that our neighbours never complained about me constantly jumping over the fence.

The configuration of our backyard shaped the batsman I was to become in a number of ways. Firstly, it favoured shots square of the wicket either to off or leg as they were easy pickings without fear of getting out – even for miss-hits. Straight drives were profitable too – because they offered the only possibility of scoring a four. However, the on drive was a complete waste of time as it would merely bounce against the house wall and there were no runs to be had there.

It only occurred to me since I have started playing again that I never learnt to effectively play an on drive. I trace the origins of that to my backyard all those years ago. On the plus side, due to the fear of being out as automatically caught in the slips cordon for an otherwise well executed cut shot, I learnt to play my cut shots rather square and down. Constantly playing against fast bowling also meant that my back foot game, whether cutting, pulling or hooking was above average for a boy of my age.

Both my brother and I played spectacular hook shots of immense power straight through the kitchen window. Dad was not pleased, but he never dissuaded us from playing cricket in the backyard even though we must have broken that kitchen window a number of times.

Being a cricket nut, my brother read cricket coaching manuals and listened intently to television commentators describing technique in minute detail for the television audience. This was a time where World Series Cricket had revolutionized cricket watching on TV with more camera angles, better close ups and more expert analysis than ever before. I can still clearly visualize my brother yelling at me to roll my wrists when I played a cut or pull stroke. He also would tell me constantly “when defending the short ball or defending to a spinner – play with soft hands. Let the ball drop dead in-front of you”. This advice along with “get your foot to the pitch of the ball, no gap between bat and pad, arch the bat and smother the spin” are seared into my memory and form the corner stone of my technique to this very day.

I never had any formal coaching, yet my technique was pretty much straight out of the MCC coaching manual – all thanks to my brother. I have often wondered if the average test player is created as a result of playing fierce backyard cricket with their siblings. Clearly growing up with brothers can only be an advantage to budding young cricketers compared to the solitude of being an only child and not having a constant cricket companion.

As far as backyard matches go, we were no different to millions of kids all over the world in any era in that we played for hours in almost any conditions with only heavy rain causing us to stop play. We would keep playing in 40 degree heat and we even started playing at night – as my father installed floodlights to enable us to do that. We literally would play for five to six hours a day until I reached about fourteen years of age. By this stage my brother graduated from university and had commenced work. It was very sudden and we only played cricket fleetingly after that as my brother also met his wife-to-be soon after and his time became even more encumbered.

I am starting to think that my batting form suffered from going from practicing thirty plus hours a week to two short ten minute net sessions a week with my club side. Looking back, it is only logical that touch is lost if normal routines are changed and time spent with a bat in hand is reduced.

I can always look back to those formative years with a smile remembering the fun I had learning a game that has gone on to play a huge role in my life. The courage I needed to face up to my brothers fast bowling was character building not only from a cricketing perspective, but also in my approach to tackling the grander more complex game of life.

Cricket – I owe you everything.

Vic Nicholas
Melbourne

A BAT IN HAND

"...quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est."
[...a sword never kills anybody; it's a tool in the killer's hand.]
(Lucius Annaeus) Seneca "the Younger" (ca. 4 BC-65 AD)

I have never been able to do things by half measures or be satisfied with second best. It is not in my nature. So after I purchased my first bat for the season ahead (the Gray Nicolls Nitro 750 Long Blade), I already started dreaming about getting at least one other bat to add to my kit.

One other? Was I going to really be able to stop at one? Who was I kidding? Certainly not my wife who helpfully asked me how many bats I would need for a season? Surely one would not be enough? (You have to love a girl with that kind of foresight!)

So keeping that helpful advice in mind, no sooner had I purchased one bat, I was already thinking about another! I momentarily flirted with the idea of maybe getting another brand like a GM as a counter point - but who was I kidding?

Last week I bought a Gray Nicolls EVO Players and for good measure, today I added the Gray Nicolls Xiphos Extreme Long Blade to the collection. I now have a complete set of paddle pops for the summer ahead. The Nitro weighs in at two pounds eight ounces. The EVO is a weighty two pounds twelve ounces and the railway sleeper look alike Xiphos weighs in at a whopping two pounds fourteen ounces.

Seriously, if you ever wanted to bludgeon someone to death, the Xiphos would be your weapon of choice. Gray Nicolls erred by not naming this instrument of destruction "The Morning Star" because just like that hideous medieval weapon, the Gray Nicolls Xiphos Extreme is down right deadly in the wrong hands. It should be put on the Weapons of Mass Destruction list.

I suppose every bloke has their reasons why they select a particular bat. Some geezers go for a bat that is used by their favourite player: I am sure that MRF sold millions of bats in India because Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara and Steve Waugh endorsed them.

What are my reasons for choosing a certain brand of bat? Well, Sachin Tendulkar is my favourite batsman along with Adam Gilchrist and Michael Slater from the recent past - but only Slater of this lot used Gray Nicolls - so that isn't it. No, it must be something else. Something perhaps aesthetic? Maybe something even deeper than that?

When I was growing up, Gray Nicolls seemed to be the premier brand amongst the kids I played cricket with - merely having an over sized and slightly cracked Gray Nicolls in my little hands at the crease as an eleven year old gave me instant cred. At least that is the way I felt at the time. So that preference for Gray Nicolls bats has stayed with me all through the years, to the extent that when I walk into a cricket store, my eyes only seem to see the Gray Nicolls bats. In the advertising industry they call that "top of the mind awareness" or "brand awareness", and so it has proved.

No matter what happens this summer, I certainly cannot complain about my weapons of choice. They are some of the best tools of the trade. If I cannot make any impression, it will not be because that I am lacking the right tools of the trade.

For that, I have to thank my wife for her understanding. Seriously, how many girls ask the question of their husband after they have purchased three cricket bats in less than a month: "maybe you need more - just in case?"

More next time!

Vic Nicholas
Melbourne

P.S. If you are looking for solid advice on great gear at very reasonable prices - go see Shane Deevers of the Greg Chappell Cricket Centre in West Melbourne http://www.cricketcentre.com.au/site/pages/MelbourneCity.php He will certainly help you get the best value for money gear on the market.

Starting Out - The First Steps

"May you live all the days of your life!"
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745, Anglo-Irish satirist & essayist)

It was on Monday 10th of August 2009 that I finally made the fateful decision to actually make contact with a cricket club to re-ignite my playing career.

I had long admired Como Oval as I drove past it many times…and practically each time I passed it I would comment to my wife – “I would love to play at that ground”. So I looked up on the internet who played on that oval and it was the South Yarra Cricket Club – also known as the mighty “Yarras”.

I filled out the questionnaire and to the question “…what discipline you prefer (batting / bowling etc[?]” I responded with the following:

I coulda been a contender! Seriously, I would love nothing more than to relive the camaraderie that only cricket provides. While my pedigree is ok (I made combined teams for the Essendon Broadmeadows & Keilor Cricket Association as a 14yo), I haven’t played any competitive cricket since the age of 16 and I would need many sessions in an indoor net to regain my confidence and touch that helped me fill the #3 position for most of my junior career. As for my fast off cutters, I think they are realistically past me. I am a 180cm, 77kg non smoking, non drinking (whaaat?) 41 year old trapped in a 30 year olds body. I am happy to make up the numbers in your fifths or your sixths should there ever be moves afoot to create such a team.

Needless to say, at that early stage, my expectations of my likely output were not high.

The secretary of the Yarras, David Hill replied and invited me to the first training session to be held for the new season which was scheduled for that Thursday 13th August at the Monash High Performance Sport Centre. Phew, this was the real deal coming up…and I suddenly realized I had absolutely no gear whatsoever!

I sent off another hasty email to Hilly as the Yarras secretary is otherwise known as. I let him know that as I had been out of the game for such a long time, I had pretty much nothing left, ergo, did they have a communal club kit with some gear?

Hilly helpfully responded that there was no kit that would be available at training and that I was welcome to use his kit (assuming I was right handed).

This got me thinking – I really do not want to appear to be some kind of peasant when I roll up to club training…I want to make sure that I am not inconveniencing anybody. So I went out that Tuesday to the Greg Chappell Cricket Centre in Dudley Street West Melbourne where I met Shane Deevers. He helped me pick out all the gear I would need…batting gloves, pads, thigh pad, arm guard, box and helmet. As for a bat – I had no idea what to choose and seeing my confusion, Shane handed me a catalogue and told me to go home and check it out, so I could make a better informed decision.

I headed home that night and I thumbed through the glossy catalogue like a school boy. All the bats looked brilliant and I kept thinking to myself “how do I limit myself to just *one* bat?” I decided that the bat that appealed to me slightly more than the others was the Gray Nicolls Nitro 750 Long Blade. I drove in the very next day (Wednesday 12th August) and bought the bat.

I must say I spent nearly all afternoon admiring it like it was some kind of Holy Grail. As a kid my first bat was not a brand new bat – it was infact a hand-me-down from my older brother, a Gray Nicolls Cricketer Ian Chappell signature series. I think it was a 1975 model, but in any case, by the time I started playing club cricket as a ten year old near the end of 1978, the bat was obviously over sized for me and was damned heavy. This did not dissuade me from using it though – as it was afterall, a Gray Nicolls, but I struggled to lift it properly compared to the lighter bats used by the other kids.

It had long been my dream to one day own a new Gray Nicolls cricket bat, and here it was before my very eyes. I felt like a twelve year old all over again as I played imaginary shots in the hall way that afternoon with the brand spanking new bat.

Prior to Thursday evenings training session there was an informal training session held on Wednesday night at the Hawthorn Indoor Cricket Centre by a handful of the lads in what they call “Special Training Unit” which consists of some tragics from the club who wish to keep training once or twice a week in the off season to stay sharp.

So that evening with my new gear and new bat I arrived ten minutes early at the training venue and I sat down infront of the lane where I would shortly commence training and pick up a bat for the first time in twenty five years. As I sat there waiting for someone to arrive, I nervously thought about how I would go. Would my reflexes be up to it? Has my eye sight diminished and will I still be able to pick up the ball early? It was nerve racking, but my thoughts were interrupted by a distinguished looking chap in his mid sixties who introduced himself as “Happy” – atleast that is what I think he told me his name is.

Slowly other men arrived and introduced themselves but in my nervous state I quickly forgot all their names. The only chap that was younger than me (from what I could tell) was a young lad of Sri Lankan ancestry (though Australian born) was a young left arm quick bowler Roshan. No sooner had the other five gents arrived when Happy turned to me and told me to “pad up”.

Sheesh! I was going to be batting first without even a chance to see what each one of the blokes bowled. Were any of them fast? No time to worry about that now I thought to myself as I put on my pads, gloves, helmet etc and stepped through the net and walked up to the batting crease to face my first ball. Rosh the young Ceylonese Ace bounded up to the bowling crease and let fly with a short ball that I tried getting back and across to as I had been taught to do so long ago and “CLUNK” the ball hit the bat label and dropped down towards the pitch as I played it instinctively with soft hands. There was a slight jarring feeling in my hands as I reasoned that I had played it off the splice.

Ball after ball was delivered to me at varying speeds and some with spin imparted on them and by and large, despite my lengthy absence from the game, my trigger movements were still largely intact - though not perfect by any means. I tried to play some cut shots, but each time I seemed to be flailing at air as the ball wizzed passed me and thudded into the back net. I tried playing some pull shots too, but again I seemed unable to connect much to my chagrin.

Happy (where had I seen this man before?) and an Anglo Indian chap by the name of Glen David bowled at me at a comfortable gentle medium pace. Rosh bowled fast with an awkward slant across my body as did a sixty two year old chap by the name of John (though slightly slower) and there was this other tall (about 6’3” in the old scale) red headed bloke who bowled fast medium but with disconcerting bounce on the synthetic surface due to his height.

I got through unscathed and gained some confidence that with a bit of work, I would be able to make a contribution this season rather than be merely the bloke who helps make up the numbers. As I sat down taking off my gear feeling elated at having survived my first hit out, the tall red headed chap told me that my bat needed knocking in and that I should buy a mallet and spend about six – seven hours knocking away to get the bat in shape. I had heard about knocking in, but as I used my brothers old bat throughout my six year junior career, I had never had any cause to actually do it myself. So I purchased a Puma bat mallet that evening and commenced the endless ‘knock, knock, knock” everyday and every night over the next few weeks.

Before any of that, I still had to bowl that evening to the other lads who were having their bat. I t6hought that before I inflicted myself on any of the batsmen in a live net, I would first bowl some trial deliveries in the vacant net next door. I grabbed an old ball, flipped from one hand to the other and then ran in and swung my arm over as I must have done thousands of times as a kid and…and…despite all that exertion the ball barely made it to the other end bouncing at least twice getting there.

OH MY LORD!

Could I have lost all ability to bowl a cricket ball?

It seemed so.

I ran in and like a wind mill I heaved yet another ball…and it struck the side net. The next one struck the roof…and so on until I finally landed one on a reasonable length just outside off stump. To prove it wasn’t a fluke, I ran in and tried again only for this one to hit the side net again. Gee wiz, I never thought that I would have to virtually relearn the art of bowling all over again.

After a dozen more deliveries in the vacant net, I finally plucked the courage to bowl at the batsman in the live net. To my relief most of my medium pacers landed on a length on or just outside off stump. However, I still had the disconcerting habit of losing control of the occasional ball that sped wide. I had to confront the reality that something that I took for granted my whole club cricket career was not only going to have to be re-learned, but even with a concerted effort, I would be unlikely to be called on to bowl at any time this season.

I made the snap decision that my fast bowling career was well and truly over and that I would concentrate on off spin. While in theory it was a sound decision, the reality that despite my loopy flight that caused many of the guys difficulties over the coming weeks, I can hardly turn the ball more than a couple centimeters. Where had that skill gone? Can it be rediscovered? Only time will tell.

All these questions…but that is why I play this wonderful game!

Cricket Comeback...flannelled fool?

"Immortality is a long shot, I admit. But somebody has to be first."
Bill Cosby (1937- Comedian)


Hello Dear Friends!

This winter I decided after much consultation with my good wife that I was going to make a comeback to club cricket after twenty-six years out of the game. I had thought about it so many times...dreamed about it, but somehow there was always an excuse not to get back playing the game that has meant so much to me on so many levels throughout my life.

Cricket has always been much more than a game to me.

It is not merely a man hurling a hard leather ball at another man with a piece of wood in his hands with a posse of other men standing around waiting for the ball to come their way - no it is much, much more than that.

Cricket has a life force all it's own. It is at once a sport, a game it is true, but it is also a level playing field that brings competitors together in equal combat. It is a metephor for life - we have all heard the expression "it is not cricket" for any situation which is considered unsporting or unfair.

It was a sport introduced to the colonies of the British Empire by well meaning public servants who paternalistically felt that they were somehow civilizing the savages of the outposts of the glorious Empire by introducing them to this gentlemens game.

I somehow doubt that these British civil servants would have envisaged that one day these semi literate savages and descendants of convicts would beat them at their own game.

Perhaps because of these ancient beginnings, cricket has it's own literature that other sports can never hope to match. Wonderful writers and commentators on this wonderful game such as the venerable Neville Cardus could transport the reader through time and space with their colourful prose on games long past and players who have answered a higher calling. To spend hours engrossed reading a Wisden Almanack is something that only another cricket fanatic could understand - the statistics, the match descriptions and the wonderful stories of sometimes famous matches and at other times obscure...but always fascinating.

Heroes.
Villains.
Romantics.

Cricket has a place for them all.

My life long obsession with cricket has never abated and it never will. It is a game that is in my blood, in my brain - and most importantly - in my heart. Whenever I walk or drive past a cricket ground with a match in progress, as the bowler is running in, I feel compelled to watch what is going to happen next - that great unknown is what makes cricket such a fascinating, engrossing experience.

Cricket is a team game, but out on the pitch it is a man with a ball in his hands running in with a plan to dismiss the batsman while being supported by ten of his team mates who are strategically spread all around the field in order to prevent the batsman from scoring and to help in getting him out. For the batsman, when he is waiting at the crease for the bowler to deliver the ball, he is alone. Well not completely alone for he has a teammate at the non strikers end, but in his battle of wits with the bowler, it is one on one...a battle within battle. A game within a game.

This blog will be my inner thoughts of my first season back after a lifetime out of the game. A game I started playing when I was eight years old...forced to play by my brother who was nine years older than me. A game that I started playing at club level at the age of ten. A game I stopped playing at the age of sixteen for reasons that still do not make any sense to me.

The last twenty six years I have never ceased dreaming about playing...that adrenalin rush that comes with a well executed cut shot or a powerful pull shot that scorches to the boundary. I can close my eyes now and remember the feeling that comes with playing a stroke off the middle of the bat. I am ashamed to admit that I thought my playing days would be forever in the past and that my passion for cricket would be merely relegated to the realms of reading and dreaming.

Now, I can say with great excitement, that I will finally be able to yet again call myself a cricketer. I cannot thank the South Yarra Cricket Club enough for welcoming onto their playing roster and I hope I can repay the club with some honourable performances this year and beyond.

This blog will aid me in my efforts to articulate my weekly experiences so that I may one day be able to look back and read about my come back season and have a jolly good laugh. It will also record it for all time for the sake of posterity. But as Groucho Marx famously quipped long ago "Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done for me?"

For those of you out there who feel I am being self indulgent - I beg your forgiveness - but all rationality has gone out the window and it has been replaced by a mindless enthusiasm that has arrested all logical, dispassionate thoughts and suspended them in place of childhood dreams being relived.

I'm nervous, but I am excited!

Vic Nicholas
Melbourne