The Rules of Backyard Cricket (8 page)

In the shade of the grandstand, a couple of association officials stand around, studying clipboards. Two uniformed umpires—another first in our cricketing lives—are perched on the benches. They've got crests on their shirt pockets, and they're good and fat, as cricket umps should always be. Take it from me, you don't trust the skinny ones.

An official wanders up. Balding, no discernible chin. Long nose, topped with a schoolmaster's thick glasses. This is 1983, remember—the plastic frames are so big they reach halfway down his cheeks.

‘The Keefe brothers, no doubt,' he smiles. ‘We've heard so much.'

He extends a hand to each of us.

‘Now,' looking from Wally to me and back again, ‘You'd be Wally. Congratulations son, you're skippering Western Suburbs.'

Wally smiles modestly. This honour is the most natural thing that could've befallen him.

The association boffins have all sorts of ideas about the batting order, who they want bowling and in what sequence. Wally takes it all
in, nodding and pointing at the clipboard now and then. He laughs politely at their witticisms. This is the beginning of Wally's career-long habit of easy sycophancy with officialdom. As I watch, I'm torn between the desire to interrupt and offer my thoughts, to be a part of this earnest exchange, and the stronger urge to stick a wet finger in Wally's ear.

Wally wins the toss and elects to bat. Ten minutes later he's out there opening our innings, and I'm lounging in one of the plastic chairs regaling the boys with a few tales about how they do things in the Eastern Suburbs. Up to this point, I've never been there.

The pattern of things is much like always. No one can get through Wally's defences. Not an edge, not a swipe, not a chancy lofted shot. He exudes permanence, even as wickets fall around him. He defends a lot: stretching into technically perfect shapes that look like fencing. He is very still, stiller than I've ever seen him. He is, for the first time, imposing.

Rifling through my bag to get padded up, I can tell that Mum's been in it. The pads have been strapped neatly around the bat, and inside each of them is a rolled-up bathtowel. A Granny Smith in the bottom of the bag. Spare socks.

It's eleven. She'll be mopping out the bar at the Mona Castle, rolling in the new kegs.

Twenty minutes later I'm standing in the middle with Wally, who's unbeaten on forty. I'm not going to ask him how the bowlers are, because I can see. The wicket's clearly not treacherous.

‘You right?' he asks vaguely, and I nod and wander to the striker's end.

They take a while setting the field. Their skipper has a smug look which to me says either he's already played a lot of representative cricket or he's accustomed to running things. He's clean-looking, new shoes. He stands only metres away, arranging everything as though
I'm not there. He even talks about me as he does so.

‘No, come straighter. He won't hit wide through there.'

Then he gestures to the guy standing at deep backward square. He's tall, and I recognise him as one of the opening bowlers. Skipper winds him right in until they're standing side by side.

‘Come in to short leg, mate. Right under him, please.'

And so this big lummox squats down almost within reaching distance of my bat, watching me. And as soon as his skipper's moved back to slips, he starts on me. As I scratch out my guard:

‘Fucking peasant.'

I tap my bat gently on the turf as the bowler reaches the end of his walk back and turns to run in.

‘Dad on fucking welfare, mate?'

The bowler's almost all the way in towards me and I wait until he's just about to leap into the air, then pull away and raise my bat. The bowler staggers to a belligerent halt. I point my bat at Short Leg in accusation.

‘Good one, cockhead,' I mutter softly.

He swings immediately towards the square leg ump. ‘I'm sorry ump, but there's some very ugly abuse being directed at me by the batsman,' he says, mouth full of private-school plums.

‘Fucking sook,' I add. He's a foot taller than me.

‘What'd you say?'

He's advancing on me as Wally comes down the wicket to defuse. The two umps meet us mid-pitch. One of them's got his hands out in a conciliatory way like he's soothing dangerous animals. Short Leg gives me a death stare as everyone gets back into position and the bowler runs in again.

This time the bowler's high in his delivery stride.

‘Commission-flat maggot.'

His timing's very good. I've pressed forward and missed outside
off as the ball bends elegantly way from the edge of my bat. I turn and look him over without responding.

‘Fucked your mum,' he adds, staring straight back. ‘She fuckin loved it.'

I curl and uncurl one hand on the bat handle, imagine crushing the bridge of his nose with it so his breathing crackles through little chips of bone and the blood makes bubbles as the air comes out.

Curl, uncurl.

But somewhere within me, a switch is tripped. Not the one you'd expect, perhaps, from his inclusion of Mum in the banter. It isn't tipping me towards white-hot fury, but into a state of perfect composure. A sudden understanding.

I'm not hosing out a urinal so you can lose your temper and blow your big chance.
That's what she'd say.

The bowler runs in again. Pitches perfectly straight at good pace on middle stump. Ordinarily, and two balls into an innings, I'd carefully defend such a ball. Not this time. I drop onto one knee and sweep across my front pad, making clean contact and whipping it square.

There's never any time to react at short leg. The best you can hope for is to flinch before the shot's made, as you see the bat coming round. This fool hasn't even moved and the sound of ball hitting bone just below his knee is nearly as sweet as the shot itself.

He drops like a shot dog.

It feels just like All Saints v Laverton. Wally calls me through, and we run two as Short Leg clutches his knee, a concerned mob gathering around him. I make sure I saunter, nice and relaxed, back to the crease and then turn to face him. You don't want to overplay it when you've dealt an ace in such a situation, so I just watch him patiently as the skipper calls for a helmet and box and someone else takes his spot. He grimaces all Hollywood and limps off the ground.

For another hour, the empty grandstand echoes sweetly with
each connection of ball and bat. Their attack's diminished with the opening bowler off the ground, and I can show off all I want. Wally chides me for indulging in what he calls ‘ball-watching'—my habit of remaining in a pose after a perfectly executed shot, showing no interest at all in running. And he's right: I'm savouring every minute of it. In the distance I can see drivers marooned on Punt Road, windows down, arms hung defeatedly over door sills. They gaze longingly across the ground at us as though we're splashing in a pool. This is an oasis.

By lunch, Wally's fifty-two and I'm not far behind him.

The dining room is long and spacious. Everything's laid on, and they have staff whose only job is to feed hungry people in whites.

I scoff as much deep-fried food as I can. Wally's loading up on fruit, the very thing we can already get for free. I scan the walls as I eat. Honour boards, black-and-white photographs, serious men. A kind of gravity I've never previously associated with the game. People who lived and played cricket and went to war and then died. I can't equate all that commemoration with the joyful act of smacking a cricket ball.

Wally has his fruit scraps neatly arranged on the side of his plate.

‘Let's get back into 'em, eh?' he smiles.

We walk out of the dressing room and down the steps to the ground. I want to savour this moment. I've seen footage of Bradman and Ponsford walking together just like Wally and me, padded up and casually trailing our bats.

But as the dining room door closes behind us, it's clear that something's changed.

It's hot, unbearably hot, and as we emerge from the shade of the grandstand the air tastes different. It even smells hot, somewhere between smoke and baking concrete. But something else feels wrong, and it takes a moment or two to work it out.

The light's changed.

It's heavier. No longer blinding and reflective, it's taken on a malevolent hue, a tint towards brown or orange that's loaded with menace. Wally's pressing forward through the gate and onto the outfield, swinging his bat now. He hasn't even noticed.
Task driven
, a commentator will say years later.

There are no birds. Before lunch, there were seagulls all over deep midwicket, settled on the grass, rising reluctantly for a struck ball. Now they're gone. So too are the mynas and sparrows in the street.

Within a few deliveries, Wally's gone too. Uncharacteristically wafting at a wide one, he nicks it through to the keeper and never looks back as he leaves. No doubt he's satisfied that his half-century brought him the right kind of attention.

The next batsman wanders out, looking, as I did, at the sky. Instead of heading for the striker's end he ambles up to me, a big grin splitting his features under the cap. He thrusts a hand forward in greeting.

‘Mate! Craig Wearne!'

I don't know how I didn't encounter this bear over lunch.

His handshake is overpowering. I look down at his grip and see the oversize bulge of his forearm protruding from the shirt. His face is all puppydog giddy. Never have I seen a human being so desperate to be loved. Remembering after a moment that I'm no longer batting with Wally, I allow myself a smile.

He waddles off down the pitch, saying g'day to each fieldsman he passes. None of them returns his greeting. As he walks, I'm conscious of how he fills his clothes, even his sneakers. He's not fat, in the simple meaning of the term, but there's so
much
of him.

When he reaches the crease he doesn't take guard or look at where the fieldsmen are placed. He thumps his bat happily into the turf and looks up to see where the bowler is. As the ball streaks towards him
he plonks a foot down the wicket and misses by at least the width of the bat. He's laughing at his own impetuousness, so he doesn't hear the fieldsmen sledging him. Next ball he plays a very self-assured glide through gully, and it runs away slowly as a fieldsman pursues it.

I call him through, charging down the pitch at him before I realise he hasn't moved. We're nearly standing next to each other.

‘Craig! Go!' I scream. The fieldsman's gaining on the ball.

He looks at me calmly.

‘It'll get there. Relax.' He still hasn't moved. The fieldsman lunges and slides. The ball finally tumbles into the gutter under the advertising boards.

‘See?' His face isn't boastful. He's just happy things worked out.

The next over, I finally reach fifty and he runs down the wicket and hugs me. We've known each other for eight minutes.

‘We'll remember this,' he says, suddenly dead serious. ‘You and me. This is special.'

I don't know where to look.

It's getting steadily darker, and now the umpires are looking skyward. It's hard to tell what's going on because the sun's moved behind the grandstand and the MCG next door. The sky's tint has become an orange glow like an eclipse. The umps confer briefly then ask me if I want to go off. I don't. Craig, who hasn't been asked, makes it clear that he too wants to keep batting.

As the bowler wanders back to his mark, a stiff breeze picks up, swirling papers and leaves across the ground. It's cold, cold air, instantly chilling the sweat on my back, and for a moment it's a relief to feel the layer of hot air stripped off my skin. Then I'm cold like the heat never existed. I'm screwing my gloved hands against the rubber grip of the handle, trying to regain my concentration, when I realise that all the fieldsmen, and the umpires too, are looking up.

There's a wall collapsing across the sky.

A plume, a cloud, an avalanche: none of these things. It looks like smoke but it's a deep, rich brown colour. Although it floats across the sky like cumulus, it looks unbearably heavy. By unfortunate coincidence, we've been doing Pompeii in Ancient History, so I assume we're all about to be petrified under ash. I'll be found by archaeologists in cricket pads, smothered under the considerable bulk of Craig Wearne.