Game Day

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.

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"The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before."
~Steve Young (1961-) Former NFL Quarterback, MVP of Super Bowl XXIX.

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I have been practicing for about six weeks now and everything has been falling into place. I have been practicing with my teammates and in addition to that, I have been practicing twice a week with a bowling machine at the Hawthorn Indoor Cricket Centre with club stalwart Brian "Happy" Hannon.

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.

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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

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!