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
~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
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