The lads of the Yarras 5th Eleven, (Round One 3/10/09). From the front: David Strachan (C), Bobby Fisher, Gideon Haigh, Amit Mehta, Vic Nicholas, Nat Williams, John Scurry, Conrad De Souza, Sajja Kathir, Tim Miller and Nashad Alam.~Steve Young (1961-) Former NFL Quarterback, MVP of Super Bowl XXIX.
Happy generally feeds the ball into the machine and yells his encouragement or disapproval depending on what kind of shot I play and whether it is sticking to the tenets of classic batting technique or not. Occasionally when I get tired and need a break, Happy will have a bat and I in turn feed the ball to him.
Unlike myself, Happy likes the ball fired at him at a comfortable sixty five miles per hour. Sometimes I get a bit mischievous and I speed up the left wheel to eighty and sometimes even eighty five miles an hour. This coupled with the right wheel remaining at sixty five miles an hour causes the ball to be fired out with the most vicious reverse swing seen since Waqar Younis was in his pomp.
The first three balls delivered to Happy with this wicked combination swung viciously through the air hit the popping crease and bowled him leg stump. The fourth one zeroed in like an Exocet missile on Happy’s toe and he hobbled away in some pain. All the while I was laughing at poor Happy's misfortune. As long as it is someone else who is unfortunate enough to be in some pain from a cricket related catastrophe, then it is funny. When it is you that has been pole-axed by that rock hard ball, then it is not funny at all.
And it came to pass...on Thursday at my last training session with the bowling machine before the first match of the season, I was literally in superlative form. Timing the ball beautifully off the middle of the bat, eighty odd miles an hour, whether pitched up or pitched short, I was slaying them and feeling pretty good about myself and my prospects for the weekend.
Then things took a fateful turn.
Happy had decided that I was handling the pitched up bowling and the bumpers with ease, but he noticed that off my legs I tend to play the ball square rather than playing the on drive. I play in a wristy manner off my legs reminiscent of Indian and other sub-continent players. This is as a result of playing shots off my hips and legs square in my backyard cricket games all those years ago with my older brother. It is hard to unlearn something so intrinsic to ones style of play.
The first ball bounced a little and I played it off the splice of the bat to leg. Happy yelled out, "no play the on drive". The second ball speared towards my pads and I got a bat to it and pushed it around the corner. Happy was displeased and lectured me on the merits of playing the good old fashioned on drive...then it happened...
The third ball rocketed straight into my left leg...even the pads couldn't prevent the sharp pain produced by this violent impact of rock hard ball on padded leg. I hobbled and winced in agony (this was indeed Happy's revenge for my shenanigans with the bowling machine a week earlier). I was in excruciating pain, but I continued batting and after half a dozen deliveries, Happy seeing my discomfort decided to reset the bowling machine to bowling bumpers - as playing off the back foot is my default setting and where I am most comfortable. Bowlers can bowl as fast and short as they want, it doesn't bother me at all.
My confidence was now shot to pieces. Cut shots I usually put away I was barely middling. I was jumpy with defensive strokes as my leg was throbbing, so my footwork was inhibited to a large degree.
I went home and realized that this searing pain was not going away all afternoon. My head was starting to fill with negative thoughts...would I be forced to miss this weeks match? Please God no...I couldn't stomach waiting another week to start playing again. I went to club training that was held at Clayton at the Monash Centre of Sporting Excellence. I tried bowling a ball...but alas, my leg was hurting like hell and the ball would barely make it to the other end. So, I decided that there would be no bowling for me that night. The asked me to pad up and have a bat, but I declined only asking to have a bat later in the evening, hoping my leg would start to maybe feel a little better.
When my turn did come, I was still in considerable discomfort. I lined up to bat, and I really struggled with my foot work as I was very tentative and obviously conscious of taking any more blows on my leg. I batted horribly as my mind was scrambled and my trigger movements were of a man cowardly avoiding further pain rather than getting behind the line of the ball as I am accustomed to doing.
All this put me in a tail spin - how was I going to be able to bat on the weekend? I would be letting my teammates down as I knew I was not right physically, but more importantly, I had entered a negative head space which is unusual for me as I am always upbeat and I possess a "I am going to kill these guys this weekend" mentality. All Friday and Saturday my mind was playing tricks on me.
Should I declare myself unfit?
No, I couldn't do that. Whilst I was concerned with letting my teammates down, I was even more concerned in creating eleventh hour selection headaches for my captain, the comic genius that is Strachany.
While I was thinking all this, suddenly flashbacks came back to me of my preparation before my first game of Under Twelves all those years ago. I remember going to bed the Friday night before the game with my left knee bandaged because I had injured it that week! I cannot remember how that injury occurred thirty years ago to the week, but I suddenly remembered that I went into that first match as an eleven year old under an injury cloud. I remembered that I was selected to open the batting alongside future Carlton AFL footballer Mark Majerczak. After making one run (a dab to cover for a single), I ran myself out stupidly with a mix up running between wickets.
History couldn't repeat itself?
No way, I consoled myself. For a start, I would be batting at my customary number three position and I don't believe in any superstition or any of that nonsense. I started the process of psyching myself up for the game. I watched a couple episodes of Seinfeld before going to sleep late at about 3am. I was feeling happy and excited and dreaming of playing perfect strokes.
****************
I awoke this morning nice and early at 11am. I ate my bowl of cereal and I felt a touch nervous, but not too much. I put my kit bag into the boot of my car and I set off for the ground with my wife following in her car (so she would not have to suffer through a whole days play).
I reached the ground early enough and sat down and watched the final overs of the Fourth Eleven game that was still in progress due to the insane scheduling for this opening weekend. I felt more or less ok, but I couldn't wait for proceedings to kick off.
Strachany called me over and informed me that I would be opening the batting! What? No time to be nervous now, I have to obey my captains wishes...even if I was not exactly enamoured with the idea. The captains tossed the coin and Burnley CC decided to put us in.
I ran inside the club rooms and padded up. I then emerged out into the sunlight with my helmet on and bat in hand ready for action. I received a few throw downs, but this only made me feel more nervous, so I stopped that and I waited for a few moments before the fielding team made their way out onto the field.
Nathanial Williams my opening partner agreed to take first ball. Scottish born "Nat" Williams is a portly lad and not overly tall. Throw in the fact that he wears spectacles and he looks anything but a cricketer and you get the picture of a bloke who I thought was the cannon fodder being offered up to the alter of sacrifice for the sake of the team. Throw in my own troubles and I was seriously wondering how long both of us would last. I immediately admonished myself for such negative thoughts and I silently repeated to myself "just watch the ball".
The first over was played out without too much discomfort by Nat - he may have even got off the mark off the last ball to take the strike at the start of the next. I cannot remember exactly now. In any case before I knew it, I was facing up to my first over in nearly twenty six years...how was I going to go?
It appears that I am playing a defensive stroke with Nat backing up from the bowlers end. A very atmospheric picture taken from the pavilion balcony. (Photo Strachany)
I played anything on my stumps defensively with a straight bat and I left anything off my stumps alone at this early stage. I got off the mark in the most anti-climactic fashion one could imagine, by edging a delivery onto my pads which deflected away to leg. Not something that I would particularly like to log into my memory bank, but at least I was off the mark. Meanwhile, Nat - who despite his Scottish heritage, sounds like he has spent the majority of his years living in the northern counties of England - started playing in a swash buckling manner by throwing safety out the window and flashing at anything wide of his off stump. He didn't middle many into the cover region, but amazingly he was edging them wide of second slip and picked up a number of boundaries in this way.
Burnley at this early juncture were operating with a medium pacer from one end and a tall young fast bowling tyro from the other end by the name of Smith who was not on the original team sheet which led me to believe he was a Saturday player who was doubling up in the Burnley Fourths on a Sunday. He was bowling at a reasonable speed and getting good bounce which suited me better than the medium pace which seemed to hold up a touch once it hit the pitch making it harder to time the ball.
Our score started to mount bit by bit...fifteen, twenty, twenty five and Nat was blazing away in a sensible manner - as other than his risky flashes past second slip, he was not going the aerial route and thus we had not given them even a sniff of a wicket taking opportunity. My only small quibble with Nat (and my own unfit self I might add) is that as he is not the most athletic bloke around, many easy threes were turned into twos, easy twos into ones and dead easy singles were being missed all together. We were clattering along, but we could easily have scored much, much more.
My moment came after about eight or nine overs. The young paceman Smith bowled a quick one just outside my off stump...probably not short enough to cut, but I threw the bat at it anyway and it caught a thickish edge sending it flying past where third or fourth slip might normally be straight to boundary.
My first boundary was not exactly one to savour, but I was relieved that it was a safe shot in the end. Later in the over Smith strayed onto my legs and I flicked it off the middle of my bat past square leg for a nicely timed boundary. Happy would not have approved if he was watching, but what the heck, it was a very sweet shot which gave me alot of satisfaction. The very next ball Smith steamed in and dropped it short bowling a bumper - instinctively I rocked back and played probably the best hook shot of my life hitting the ball clean off the middle of my bat and it sailed high towards the boundary and bounced over for yet another boundary.
That was three boundaries in a row - something I have never done. I was feeling ten foot tall by this stage. If that was the best these blokes have got, I was going to kill these guys. I thought to myself, "I am going to bat right through till the end of the thirty five overs".
Confidence was back and Nat and I - an unlikely opening combination as you would ever see - had brought up the fifty opening stand after eleven overs. We were clattering along by this stage. A double bowling change quietened us down a little bit, but that was probably more to do with the fact that Burnley had scattered the fielders almost in arc around the boundary other than the keeper and the one remaining slips fielder. We were striking the ball well straight to deep fielders for singles and sometimes for no runs at all.
By the beginning of the sixteenth over we had reached fifty nine without loss - a fair enough effort, but I started to think that we needed to start accelerating the scoring as we were reaching the half way mark of the innings in this shortened game and with wickets in hand, we really had to play some big shots.
I was not thinking of going aerial or anything silly like that, but I felt my eye was in and I had missed some easy boundary scoring opportunities by missing some pull shots off their medium pacers and not even getting any bat at all at some of their wider offerings down the leg side. It is not easy to hit balls full and wide of your legs - probably why they are called wides in shortened forms of the game at first class level. In this instance, there was nothing much we could do.
During the last over before the drinks interval, I had noticed that the field was even deeper than normal and I thought to myself, "I could drop one on either side of the wicket and get an easy single."
I should have waited until the end of the over to let Nat know what I was thinking...it was the drinks break coming up, we could take stock and I could word the lad up of my cunning plan to play cat and mouse by dragging their fielders in with short singles, and then spread-eagle them again, with some lustier blows. Easy runs just waiting to be had and as we were both set and batting beautifully without offering even a sniff of a chance, we could really put the game out of Burnley's reach.
I didn't wait, I acted immediately.
That was my first and last mistake.
I pushed a delivery in the direction of short midwicket - an easy single to be had, I called out "yes" and set off at one hundred miles an hour when only to my horror I saw that Nat had been watching the ball and then turned his head looking at me flying towards him when he finally called "nooo" with a look of terror in his eyes.
My momentum was such that I could have nearly reached out and shook Nat's hand as I applied the brakes and made the forlorn effort to turn back and make my ground. I was finally run out by not much more than a meter and half...quite remarkable that I had all but run to one end and then turned and run almost all the way back. This vindicated my belief that there was an easy single in this shot.
I was angry at myself as I walked off with all the other players following me as drinks had been called with my dismissal. Even the consolation "well played’s" by the opposition fielders as I walked off could not console me as the stupidity of my actions were sheeted home to me as I realised that I had squandered a priceless start to make a big score and make the game safe for my team.
"You schmuck" I thought to myself as I reached the steps to the pavilion shaking my head at my own stupidity. The next batsman in, the venerable Gideon Haigh passed me with encouraging words. I in turn told him to go out there and give them stick. My own teammates now shouted encouragement with their "well played Vic", as I walked up the stairs, but I had let them down with a brain fade of epic proportions.
As I took off my pads I thought to myself, "Gee Nat was NEVER going to run on such a sharp single - it is outside the scope of his level of fitness and it was insane of me to even contemplate it without any advance consultation of Nat himself".
"Never again" I mumbled to myself in the darkness of the dressing room. I went outside to check my score and it was all of eighteen. We had run a number of leg byes etc, so it felt like more. Also Nat had the happy habit of getting alot of the strike - thus I seemed to be spectating a fair bit.
In any case, that fifty nine opening stand should have been seventy five plus, because of poor running between wickets, Nat and I must have easily spurned the opportunity to run an additional fifteen-twenty runs.
It was poor cricket on both our parts, but on the other hand, we DID put on an opening stand of fifty nine and we did see off the new ball bowlers which is the primary task set out for opening batsmen. If someone offered me a fifty nine opening stand with my share being eighteen including three satisfying boundaries - I would have taken it any day of the week.
It *is* my first game back in twenty six years, but I was so comfortable and so untroubled by the bowling, I cannot help but think that a personal score of sixty or seventy went begging and a match winning total along with it.
As so often happens when a wicket falls, the batsmen become unsettled and another wicket falls soon after. Nat, who had been batting with gusto was suddenly bowled playing a hoick to one on his stumps. Maybe the run out was still on his mind? I felt even more guilty watching Nat walking off the field after making an entertaining thirty three.
Nat may look like the sort of bloke who would rip down a beer or three down at your local pub rather than a svelte cricketer, but today, he was absolutely heroic. I had the best seat in the house watching his buccaneering style, and I truly hope to bat with him many times more this season as it was never dull (even with the frequent problems running between wickets).
Gideon Haigh an angular looking cricketer, journalist, author and globe trotter is the living embodiment of somebody improving their cricket out of sight simply due their obsession with the game and assidious practice to improve their technique. Gid batted beautifully with a technical adroitness that would put many first class cricketers to shame. Always looking unhurried, he stroked the ball around at will and batted out the rest of the innings to finish thirty five not out.
He was ably assisted initially by Timmy Miller our stand in keeper and then Strachany our skipper playing a selfless innings and ultimately throwing his wicket away in the search for quick runs. Amit Mehta followed, a charming Indian chap who also threw his wicket away in the search for quick runs being bowled when he played across the line of a straight delivery. Gid finished the innings with resident funny man Nashi Alam - Bangladeshi by birth and comedian by proclivity - who played some flashy strokes to make some runs off the last over.
We finished at 5 for 122 after thirty five overs compulsory closure of the innings. The older heads in the team like Bobby Fisher and Strachany reckoned that we were perhaps twenty runs short of a par score and maybe fifty runs short of what we should have got after the promising start.
Strachany gave us a pep talk out onto the field to keep positive at all times and to back each other up and put pressure on the batting team with some tidy fielding. I felt a great wave of enthusiasm sweep over the lads and I was hopeful that we could give a good account of ourselves. In the weeks leading up to round one, we have been training indoors, so fielding drills have been non existent, save for one poorly attended fielding training session a couple of weeks back. So, it was on my mind that holding all our catches would be critical to our chances today.
The first over was bowled by a young Sri Lankan lad by the name of Sajja Kathir or "Sajj" for short. A tall skinny lad with an infectious smile and boundless enthusiasm. Sajj is the most unusual fast bowler I have ever seen. His whole run up consists of three steps. Looking at him, you think he is going to bowl spin and only a glance to where the keeper and the slips cordon is standing offers any hint at what is about to come. With Sajj, it is one, two, three WHANG!
Sajj is not express pace, more fast medium, but he is one hell of a surprise packet to a batsman with his unorthodox minimalistic approach to the wicket. After the first balls were pushed around by the Burnley bastmen for some runs, the batsman got over ambitious and tried to smack the third ball of the innings over cover only to spoon a catch to Nat "Mr Natural" Williams at cover who held the catch against his body. The man was on fire!
The next over Bobby "The Grand Master" Fisher took the new ball alongside surprise packet Sajj. Bobby must be somewhere in his late fifties, perhaps early sixties and looks more like a politician or a government bureaucrat than a bloke who could take the new ball with any effect. Twenty eight wickets last year would suggest that he has something up his sleeve, but this was going to be my first look at him to see first hand what all the fuss was about. Bobby sauntered in and CLONK! With his first ball, Bobby Fisher has cleaned up the batsmans middle and leg stump! As the overs went by Sajj and Bobby picked up more wickets and we seemed to be in a commanding position.
The bowling change when it came brought on Conrad De Souza - a young Indian lad - who bowled at a similar speed as his sub continental contemporary Sajj, but with a left arm trajectory and off a more orthodox long run up. Also from the other end replacing Bobby Fisher was Johnny Scurry a tall angular left arm medium pacer who is all of sixty two years old but looks somewhat younger.
Both lads bowled well and wickets continued to fall with Burnley's task starting to resemble something more difficult than deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics. Everything was going wonderfully well and we broke the back of the Burnley batting with the score board now reading 8 for 86. Thirty seven runs still required and only two batsmen left in which to get them - surely a hopeless task?
The number ten batsman for Burnley was an old bespectacled chap who must have been in his sixties. Both he and the younger batsman both closed their eyes and threw their bats at seemingly everything. Surely this couldn’t last? They were bound to miss a straight one and get bowled.
They didn’t.
They were bound to sky a catch in the outfield. Well, they did, but we conspired to spoil a perfect day by dropping at least seven catches in the last eight overs or so. By no means were all of them hard.
I did not drop a catch, but that was probably more by dint of good fortune that nothing came my way than anything that I had done. The closest I came to a chance was when I was fielding at square leg, the old chap played a short armed jab in my direction and I just managed to a get a finger tip to it as I was jumping up in the air to try and take it. I was standing way too close and later Conrad told me that a couple balls prior to the chance, he felt I was standing a touch too close but didn’t voice his concern to me. I wish he did.
The big moment where the game was won and lost actually came rather early in this eighth wicket partnership when the two Burnley batsmen set off on a suicidal run and Nashi “Jonty” Alam fired in a great return to our keeper Timmy Miller who broke the stumps with the younger batsman out of his ground by about a foot as he was desperately sliding his bat in.
Both Amit Mehta and myself had a perfect view as I was fielding at gully and I ran around to back up the throw and Amit was fielding at point. When the umpire gave it not out, both of us turned around and looked at each other in disbelief and I then looked to the sky wondering how the only umpiring error in the whole match had come at this critical juncture. I do not want to bash the umpires as both of them did a fabulous job and umpired very sensibly – but this was a BIG moment and our fate was ultimately sealed by this and all the catches we put down.
Burnley got the winning runs in the second last over of the day – my only over of the innings. The scores were level and I ran in and bowled a wide to give them the game. What an anti-climax. I hadn’t bowled all week and I really should have known better than to ask for the ball with no preparation behind me. With the match won, the Burnley batsman smashed me to the boundary two balls in a row in between yet another wide from my wayward arm. As I ran in and bowled the last ball of my over, the Burnley batsman mishit my pitched up delivery and skied it to mid on. Nat Williams called out “mine” and got underneath it and spilled the regulation chance.
To be completely honest, I was not upset at all, because to pick up a wicket in such a terrible over would have been almost a cricketing injustice. I could only smile a rueful smile. That summed up our day in a microcosm.
We trudged off the field in darkness beaten but not bowed. “How did we lose that game?” I uttered out aloud, but really speaking only to myself. We all must have thought the same thing. From 8 for 86, we conspired to allow their second last pairing to make the final thirty seven runs by giving them let off after let off.
“Cricket is a funny game” is a quote often brought up in the aftermath of such illogical losses…but I tell you, if cricket was indeed a funny game, none of us were laughing. Strachany gathered the boys around one last time and told us it was one of the most enjoyable games he had ever been involved with and that he was proud of our positivity and efforts. We knew where we had fallen down, but it was no time for post mortems.
I trudged up the hill with my kitbag on my back in the darkness to my car in the car park and I drove home exhausted after having spent an hour or so in the club rooms. I pondered the days events from the relaxed position of a hot bath. For ninety percent of the day, I was sure we would win. It was only with about five overs to go did I realize that we were losing our grip on the game.
That is cricket in a nut shell and none the less, it was a wonderful day and I smiled to myself in that hot bath and thought, “that is why I play this great game”.
More next week!
Vic Nicholas
Melbourne
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