There are moments in life that stand out simply because what hitherto had been background clutter, had now crystallised and made perfect sense.
Childhood contains a number of these seminal moments as gradually you understand the world around you. If these awakenings result in life-long loves then they take on extra significance and fondness, like meeting a life partner.
This week the Ashes series starts, but for me it marks 25 years since my cricket enlightenment – the magical 1988-89 international cricket season – and my silver wedding anniversary to the game.
It does not rank as one of the most memorable seasons in cricket history, either of itself or in comparison to other classic series, but it remains magical for me for the reasons above.
All of a sudden there was an all consuming passion that lasted all summer, so take this as a love letter to the 1988-89 cricket season and the way it infected me forever.
It probably started auspiciously – somebody brought a cricket bat to school and we started playing. As a seven year old that had just come out of an all-consuming footy season, it suddenly seemed natural.
Then Scanlens cricket card boxes popped up on milk bar counters where the footy card boxes had previously been, so I naturally started collecting and the Australian player names and faces connected.
The photos of the West Indies players showed something super-human to a seven year old – a then unknown to Australian fans Curtly Ambrose in delivery stride looked 10 foot tall.
The first Test went by at the Gabba. My passing interest gathered that we’d lost and the West Indies were miles ahead of us, though Steve Waugh had shown some steel in the face of it all.
The second Test in Perth was a turning point. On the back of a Viv Richards assault, the West Indies had blasted us around the park.
In what seemed to be a very unfair fight to a child’s eyes, Waugh and Graeme Wood staged an unlikely fightback via a 200-run partnership that gave some hope.
Later on the Sunday afternoon the unfair fight came back into view when Geoff Lawson was felled by a bouncer. Waiting for dinner, I was transfixed by the screen.
As dinner was served the West Indies innings started in the most hostile circumstances and my first vivid recollection of a ball in Test cricket came about.
The screen flashed that Merv Hughes was on a hat-trick and I jubilantly celebrated as he trapped Greenidge in front, the hostility on Merv’s face both scary and thrilling. That was the moment.
As Christmas approached there were one-day games I watched – Allan Border taking a one handed caught and bowled off Gus Logie at the SCG, David Boon spearheading a brave but ultimately losing cause.
The one-day games were a bit more interesting with their colourful new uniforms with names on the back. Everything was easy to understand – the West Indies were the undisputed champions of all cricket and we were the underdogs.
Christmas came and Australia got belted in the third Test in Melbourne – the Boxing Day Test that was actually the Christmas Eve Test. I remember reading the paper afterwards about the bruising suffered by Ian Healy to places I’d never read in newspapers before.
The series had been lost but all I cared about was how impossible it seemed to even get close to this team. Switching back to one dayers, it at least seemed a slightly easier task.
The annual summer holiday at the beach had taken on a new dimension.
The older kids around were listening to INXS and playing cricket – it seemed like this was what summer was all about. Curtly Ambrose had become an object of fear, respect and begrudging idolisation.
Then it happened. I woke one morning to pick up The Sun and it had a photo of the aftermath of the famous Steve Waugh running at the sightscreen catch.
It had taken almost two months and it was only a one dayer, but we’d beaten the West Indies in a game of cricket.
Not only that, but Mervmania had taken hold with the Southern Stand exercise routine, and Simon O’Donnell had returned to the team after cancer. There was more to this.
I bought a copy of Australian Cricket magazine and read it from cover to cover , then read it again and again. I’d now fallen into the rich mine of information, statistics and literature that was attached to the game.
We beat the West Indies again, then we beat them in the first game of the one-day finals as I listened on the radio in bed. The finals weren’t won, but there was a certain belief and hope, and as I discovered, more Test matches.
As the dying days of the endless summer holiday came around, AB of all people spun Australia to a Test victory at the SCG as The Sun screamed “Dustbowl”.
Boonie had been moved to three and scored a ton. There was real jubilation – ‘dead rubber’ meant nothing to me, and so it seemed to anyone else.
We’d beaten the unbeatable. Never mind the helpful SCG pitch.
To the fifth Test in Adelaide and the summer’s close. School was back and I was back at Little Athletics, having latched onto it off the back of the 1988 Olympics.
But the day the fifth Test was being played sealed my fate, as I wanted to get home to watch the cricket.
Dean Jones and Merv Hughes shared a rollicking late partnership that finally put Australia in a dominant position. Deano made 216 and Merv hit an almighty six to bring up 50 on the last ball before tea.
The match ended in a draw, but the season finished with an Australian team playing in the same postcode as the Windies.
I was hooked.
The triumphant 1989 Ashes tour followed, franking everything the summer had triggered in me. And it’s been with me ever since.
I’ve never stopped playing, I’ve never stopped watching. It’s taken countless hours of my life, it’s paid my way to live abroad, it’s paid my wage at times, it’s broken my heart consistently, it’s given me my greatest highs.
It all traces back to 25 years ago and the longest summer.
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