And so! The long hot summer of cricket is here and it’s cricket season again, again, and people are running about in long white pants in the sun and it’s good to be alive! Can you sing Hallelujah like Nick Cave did at Glastonbury in ‘98?
I bet you can’t. It was like being serenaded by sad, hungover Dracula. Haunting.
Unlike this nascent new cricket season, of course, which is all bubble and goodness and sprightly bounding about as clubbies and kiddies across the land whack at six-stitchers and fling the cherry, and go up as one: “Owazzawaaaaaaan?” As it has ever been in our great southern land.
Growing up in Canberra, the first cricket training was like a meerkat emerging blinking from a frozen tunnel in the tundra.
And while it’s not Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland in the north of Finland which is six kilometres south of the Arctic Circle where they filmed the documentary Reindeerspotting: Escape from Santaland, Canberra can get a little brisk mid-July.
And thus when Spring first poked its head above the parapets around the time of footy finals, you’d bust out the short-shorts and free your lily-white thighs like Mr Burns releasing the hounds.
And you’d wear those little Stubbies with the useless tiny pocket to cricket practice for a good four weeks, and hang out for that first game like a fair dinkum smack addict.
Maybe not a smack addict. It’s cricket, not crystal.
But on the Friday night season-opener-eve, I would cradle my David Hookes-embossed Gray-Nicolls twin-scoop and go to sleep thinking thoughts of my adventures in that first game.
Bring it, cricket, you magnificent bastard. Bring. It.
And then it would bloody rain and there’d be no cricket, and that happened every first day of the season from 1979-80 to 1996-97, it is written.
(Photo by Mark Evans/Getty Images)
Felt like it, anyway.
Whatever day it was – November 2, thereabouts? – it was going to rain that first day of the season. You could set your watch and warrant upon it.
But then for six months, the sun beat down and the tundra turned to tinder, and you slapped zinc on your hooter and got around in a terry-towelling white hat because Doug Walters did, and you fair dinkum lived for it. And loved it. Man, I loved it.
Loved Fridays because school sport was cricket. After you’d tear home and knock over a couple of Vegemite sandwiches and a fat glass of choccie milk, then hop on the BMX and scoot off to cricket training.
Next day you’d be ferried out to play the game by the old man or someone else’s and I once scored 26 out of 52 and the coach, Barry Rolfe, a great fellah, made a speech and wrapped me a treat. Kids clapped. Never forgotten it.
Barry later bought me a book, Peter Philpott’s Cricket Fundamentals, and signed it with a note saying that if I could develop defence to go with my natural attack I’d win games of my own bat.
Would’ve read it a thousand times. Still got it.
By under-16s, it was junior games in the morning and senior cricket in the afternoon. Fourth grade, fifth grade. Playing cricket against men and for a skinny, hairless boy, it was sort of unreal.
Cricket. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
All these men and their jowls, the sweat of them, their stubble, beards and bellies.
They’d smoke and swear. And they would sledge to make Steve Waugh blush.
You’d play against Queanbeyan, their entire team would sledge you. All eleven of them, chipping away.
They’d sledge you while you were off the field, padded up.
They had a wicketkeeper who played fourths, man must’ve been 72. And he’d be into you, calling you rabbit this, ferret that. It was pretty funny. And thus I used to bat OK against Queanbeyan.
You couldn’t take it seriously; being sledged by a bloke who could’ve been your grandad’s mate from bowls.
When old mate wickie came out to bat – he opened – my but he was a tough old bird – our ‘old’ blokes (they might’ve been 40) would give it to him back, instructing our bowlers to send him back to the retirement village, the funeral parlour, crematorium, and so on.
They were tough fixtures against Queanbeyan. They’d have frightened Nick Cave out of his vampire bat suit.
But Nick Cave be buggered. Nick Cave can tell his story walkin’ back to his coffin in Mordor.
Let’s instead leave the last word to a true man of cricket, a man of summer, the composer of Bradman, the great singer and song-writer of the stories of Australia, the great Paul Kelly, who said: “Roll on, summer. Roll on.”
Too right, Paul Kelly.
Roll on summer.
Roll on.
Geoff from Bruce Stadium
Roar Rookie
Great read Matt - good to have a couple of cackles on a Saturday morning. The Queanbeyan blokes sound like real characters. I was too young and probably too shy to come up with any decent sledges when I played. But its not really my go. I love the way some of these old blokes keep playing forever - wished I'd done it sometimes. I hung the indoor cricket sandshoes up at about 35 after we finally won a grand final after 3 attempts. I remember being given a Richie Benaud cricket book for young cricketers for Xmas which must have printed in the early 1960s. Absolutely treasured it with its black and white sequenced pictures of how to play different shots. Still have it in a box somewhere. I remember copying Richie's field settings for fast bowlers and leg spinners on a bit of paper and using them when I was captain of the Under 10 B side. I grew up in Broken Hill where the ovals were just dirt with concrete pitches and cork balls and it must have been at least 100 degrees in the shade. Best part of the day was buying a frozen chocolate or strawberry milk ice block at the end of the game - I think they were called Chocolate and Strawberry Snips. I ended up going to school in Adelaide when I was a bit older and was lucky enough to play on turf pitches. I'll never forget the smell of freshly cut grass when you went out to bat or field first thing in the morning. Love summer and I love cricket. While I love NRL and AFL cricket has to be the greatest game of all.
RogerTA
Roar Rookie
Great memories Matt. The book I had was Les Favell's "By Hook or by Cut" - he'd carve out a decent test career these days - as my bible. As PK went on to say "Now shadows grow longer and there's so much more yet to be told...".
BennO
Guest
I didn't read past the first bit but just wanted to say I was at the mud pit that was glasto in 98 and remember Nick Cave's performance. Was there in 97 too. Could never decide which was better but the mud was definitely thicker in 97. Nightmare.
Matt Cleary
Expert
I remember that line ... and how the pics illustrated the best way to walk off with dignity... had a picture of someone doing it, Greg Chappell I think: bat under the arm, take gloves off, get off. It was such a bible.
Spanner
Roar Rookie
Ah Paul - what a beautiful smell. I had a mate who sat his Gunn & Moore in a bowl of linseed for a week - it became that heavy the rest of us could hardly lift it ! He could though - he made runs against the touring poms for SA country !
Neville Neville
Guest
Peter Philpott's book, won a copy as most improved of season '82-83. 'eventually, inevitably, you're going to get out' Never a truer word written, or typed.
Big Red V
Guest
Great article and brought back a lot of memories. Got a St Peters bat (signed by Tony Greig - sorry everyone) for Xmas one year and after the presents were opened (7 boys so it was all sporting equipment and undies), we adjouned to the yard to test out the bat. Much to my disappointment, the od man claimed first dibs at batting and I bowled. Had a reasonable sized back yard but a bit short on the off side. First delivery was wide of off stump and the old man went back for the cut shot and belted it through point, through the neighbours fibro garage wall and into the side of his car. The problem was, in doing so, he clipped the "stumps" which were 2 besser blocks stacked on top of each other and took a chunk out of the corner of the bat. The bat had not even hit the ground when the old man, and the rest of the other brothers high tailed it upstairs like it wasn't their fault. By the time the neighbour came out (bloody deafening racket it made), I was in centre pitch craddling the bat like one would a dying dog telling it it will be ok, close your eye and the pain will go away soon.... Needless to say when the neighbour appeared, the old man came out and asked what the bloody racket was - bastard!!! Promised he would pay the damage that his bloody kids caused and went back to his ham and eggs. A week late got a new bat so not all bad!! Love cricket!!
Pope Paul VII
Roar Rookie
It's the game of life Matty. love it.
Matt Cleary
Expert
Ha. Nice one. Worse things for sheets to smell like than cricket bat.
Matt Cleary
Expert
That, Maxwell, is a horrible tale. Ha. Fair to say it tested the premise that pain is not just an emotion.
Matt Cleary
Expert
Nah mate, it was actually relatively light. Not a Hurricane. It was just a “twin-scoop”, I think, with Hookesy’s signature embedded in it. Cracking bit of willow.
Maxwell Charlesworth
Roar Rookie
Great read Matt, My first year I was made captain at my old club, I must've been 15, my dad gave me the book that his dad had given him in the 70's called how to play cricket, He scrawled over the front page "Play with a straight bat" and "Pain is just an emotion, like happy or sad, so smack the buhjeezus out of it". First game of the season came in at 4/20odd and tried to pull a ball about a foot and a half outside off, chopped it on straight to where my box should've been but I neglected to check if it was in my bag. In all the pain and flinching from the impact on the jewels, I swivelled and knocked the stumps over with my bat. Fair to say it couldnt have gone much worse.
Paul
Roar Guru
I got a hiding from the old man because the linseed oil from my County bat leaked into the sheets. It didn't matter how often they were washed, they still smelled like a cricket bat! Great article Matt.
Jason Hosken
Roar Guru
That twin-scoop, big heavy lump, was it a Hurricane?