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!