I feel old. Don’t you feel old? Watching Patrick Cummins scythe through the South African batsmen, and then for an encore, nervelessly smack Imran Tahir to the fence to win his first Test match, all at the age of 18, filled me with joy and excitement and a feeling that I’d become my own grandfather.
It’s a thrilling new phase in Australian cricket: a new generation is coming through and we have high hopes – but it’s all making me feel like a decrepit old-age pensioner.
Eighteen years old, and winning Test matches.
I’m 32, and I have NEVER won a Test match. To be brutally honest, I’m starting to think I may never get picked for Australia at all.
Is this the way it goes? Is this a stage in life we all go through, the stage in which we suddenly discover that we are old, and the heroes on the sporting field are still young? Michael Clarke is the first Australian Test captain to be younger than me, and that’s a sobering thought to say the least. I like Clarke, he seems a nice young lad, but, oh god…how can a man captain Australia when I can call him a “nice young lad”? Surely there is something in the charter of Cricket Australia that specifies that Test teams can only be skippered by men older than me? I had assumed that was the case – all the other captains were older than me, that’s part of what I liked so much about them. Steve Waugh was older than me; Mark Taylor was definitely older than me (and even better, some summers he seemed to be fatter too). Ricky Ponting was a brash young kid when he debuted, but he was still older than me. Allan Border was so much older than me it was positively calming to see his battle-hardened face scowling from behind his ragged beard. Now there, I thought to myself, is an adult. A mature fellow with the life experience to really understand what a fourteen-year-old boy is getting at when he writes a lengthy and earnest letter informing him of how insipid the team’s performance had been in the Sydney Test of 1993-94. And understand it he did – not to blow my own trumpet, but they did win the next game. But I digress.
My point is, a captain needs to be a grown-up. Is Clarke a grown-up? Well I’m pretty sure I’m not, so he can’t be. He’s just a kid. He probably still practises with a tennis ball against the back door.
It’s just so jarring. Growing up, sportsmen seemed like giants, great titans bestriding the world. They were men, bigger and stronger and altogether more heroic than I or my friends. When I watched them on TV, they looked huge, even though I knew full well that I was taller than David Boon from the age of 12 on. Didn’t matter – they were grown up, and they inhabited a world of manliness and adulthood that was about a million miles from anything I could dream of.
And I kept on feeling that way.
Through my teens, and on into my twenties, I retained this feeling that I was young, and they were old, that I was a boy and they were men. I went on thinking of myself as a wussy little kid, watching these majestic creatures living my dream.
But illusions have to shatter, don’t they? I think I first realised the cold truth of the world when I was watching a rugby Test. “Wow, he’s massive,” I thought, looking upon a tremendous redwood of a second-rower, before suddenly stopping and realising that I was just as tall as him, and about forty kilos heavier. Of course I wasn’t as fast or strong or handsome or rich as him, but I was bigger, and that shook me up.
I realised, I was a man.
And that was depressing, because if I was a man, that meant I was a man who was not a professional sportsman, and now never would be. I wept. Well, not really, but on the inside, a little bit. My childhood was past, and my dreams were draining away like Mitch Johnson’s confidence.
And now Cummins has come along, and put the seal on it.
He’s 18.
He was born in 1993, the year I first went to the cricket at the SCG. The year Shane Warne first destroyed England. The year Justin Langer played his first Test, and Allan Border hit his last century.
It’s ridiculous – Australia has a strike bowler who’s two years younger than Nirvana’s Nevermind.
And of course it’s wonderful – I love to see new players coming through, succeeding, forging great careers on the world stage. The Johannesburg Test was a ray of light for all Australian cricket fans, not to mention a thrilling experience for purist lovers of the greatest form of the game.
I applaud Pat Cummins – all power to his mighty arm.
But still…I feel old. I feel like my days as a fresh-faced, bright-eyed fan-boy are over, and my days as a grumpy old man have begun. Soon I’ll start bitching about how too many modern players have tattoos, and wishing we could have a man like Greg Ritchie back in the team. It’ll be hard to adjust, but if that’s how it has to be, that’s how it has to be.
I just wish I could have one more season of feeling like a boy watching men.
One more summer with my face upturned to the gods of leather and willow. One more summer, hoping I could one day grow up to be a great cricketer too, instead of hoping I could one day pat a great cricketer on the head. But those days are behind me now – Pat Cummins has seen to that, and I suppose it’s all for the best.
Although, Pat, if you’re reading this: if you could grow a beard, that’d really help me a lot.
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