by Ron Elliott
David went down to see him. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No.’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘No. My arm is numb.’ Tanner undid a button on his shirt and David could see a number of round purple bruises on his chest and other round red ones that had not yet turned blue.
‘Oh.’
‘Better go down swinging. I can barely see it anyway.’
David returned to the bowler’s end, while Tanner took guard. His stance looked a little off.
Tudor bowled another short-pitched delivery and Jack swung early and a little blindly. The ball caught the top of the bat and flew high and behind. Tanner screamed, ‘Run.’
David ran. He could see Proctor way down on the boundary running in. He was aware of Windsor running back.
‘Yes, another,’ screamed Tanner.
David was running through and had to skid to a halt and turn around.
Tanner was already nearly down his end. David wanted to see where the ball was. If it had been a catch.
‘Run,’ screamed Tanner in his ear.
David ran down the other end and was there easily before the ball was returned. It had apparently dropped safely between the two fieldsmen. David panted and felt at his forehead. Blood? It was rain. A big wet drop splashed on his cheek.
Tanner was ready.
Tudor ran in. It was exactly the same ball that Tudor had bowled the previous two times.
Jack stepped forward and hit early and sweetly. You could hear the wood clap like thunder. The ball drove through the on side along the ground all the way to crash into the pickets with another loud woody thud for four runs.
‘Shot,’ yelled David. The crowd cheered and clapped.
Wisden put his arm out and round, signalling four.
Jack Tanner stood resting on his bat, looking at Tudor, comfortable with the world.
David realised that Tudor had panicked.
Longford called to the umpire. ‘This rain, Mr Wisden. My players could slip and fall. Shouldn’t we go in?’
Jack was on forty-seven. They only needed a four to win.
The rain was steady, but light. The flags on the clock pavilion had stopped swirling. They hung, sodden. It would not be long.
Mr Wisden called, ‘A little longer, gentlemen.’
Jack Tanner swung his left arm and winced. He took his guard.
Longford changed his field. He put a couple of players out on the boundary. Then he brought some others in. He was wasting time while he looked at the sky.
Tudor bowled a yorker. Tanner stepped forward, saw it late, and jammed the bat down even later. He missed the ball, but the ball just missed the stumps. David could not see how it had missed.
On the next ball, Tanner played back, but Tudor had bowled a perfectly placed outswinger that drew Jack’s bat to a nick. The ball flew to Windsor in second slip. His hands came up to meet the ball, but not quickly enough. The ball hit his wrist and came forward. He reached again, too slow. The ball hit the ground. The crowd gasped.
Morgan and Longford groaned too.
Windsor yelled, ‘The ball is wet and I couldn’t see it properly. We shouldn’t be playing in these conditions.’
Two Bob wiped the rain out of his eyes and took his guard once more.
Tudor came steaming in and bowled another yorker. Jack caught it low and hit another drive out towards the boundary. There were no fieldsmen out that way. He yelled, ‘Run four.’
David ran. He got to the wicketkeeper’s end and turned.
The rain was slowing the ball down to stop inside the boundary. Ostler was still running around to it.
David ran again, Tanner already nearly down his end again.
‘Again, David,’ yelled Jack.
‘Bowler’s end,’ yelled Morgan.
Jack had caught up to David. ‘Run!’
David ran back to the wicketkeeper’s end for the third run and he turned for the fourth to see Jack stopped at the bowler’s end.
‘No,’ yelled Tanner, and David turned to ground his bat across the crease.
The powerful throw from Ostler came in on the bounce and Morgan caught it over the wickets. They’d only made three. Tudor had one more ball left, and the scores were now tied.
While Tudor caught and dried the ball and stalked off to the top of his run, Longford brought the field in to surround David.
Windsor said, ‘I’ve seen a player die from being hit on the head with a cricket ball.’
Longford said, ‘That’s enough.’
‘What did you say?’ asked Windsor, angrily.
‘I said enough. I think he’s being quite brave.’
‘Might I remind you, Henry, the board has suggested a failure to win today will cost you your job.’
‘And so it’s already gone then, mathematically, wouldn’t you say, old chap.’
Windsor smiled. ‘The king is dead, long live the king.’
Wisden called, ‘David, this light is awful. Can I offer you the light?’
Morgan called, ‘It is within your power to do more than offer, Mr Wisden.’
‘Within my power but not my inclination,’ replied the umpire.
Jack called down, ‘We can take the tie, David. Even better than a draw. They’ll talk about it for years.’
‘I’m ready,’ said David. He wasn’t. He realised how dark it was. Rain kept getting in his eyes. His bat was slippery. He waited, hitting the base of the bat against the ground, trying to open up his eyes in order to see everything more clearly. He kept his mind on the bowler.
Tudor was running in. His arm came over.
David swung his bat at the same time. He heard his elbow shatter before he felt the pain. It was intense for a single moment, like being stabbed with a burning stick. A bright light burst inside his head, then passed. His bat was flying in the air, doing a slow arc down the wicket towards the bowler. He felt faint, but made himself take a huge lungful of air, and turn and step back into his crease. He would not faint. He would not go to sleep. There would be no blackness. He would stay awake.
And then the pain went. It didn’t hurt. There was a lot of booing coming from the distance. Maybe it was thunder.
The Englishmen were around him. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Shouldn’t have been out here.’
‘None of us.’
‘Oh dear. Look at his arm.’
‘This is your fault, Tanner.’
‘You fucking bastard, Tudor.’ It was Jack.
David looked up. ‘I’m fine, really I am.’
Mr Bosanquet said, ‘No you’re not.’
Longford said, ‘You need to go off.’
‘Call a stretcher.’
‘The doctor. There’s blood.’
‘No,’ yelled David.
Mr Wisden said, ‘It’s broken David. Bone is sticking out!’
David felt cold. His arm was starting to ache, deep inside, from a place he’d never felt pain before.
David said, ‘Let’s finish the game. I’m not out.’
Jack Tanner said, ‘David. It’s only a game. There’ll be others.’
‘No.’
‘Quite right, Mr Donald. Very well. Let’s do this. And let’s do it correctly.’ It was Longford who was taking charge. ‘Allegro, Jack, before we can’t see a single thing. Windsor, first slip. Dorrington second. I want a ring of slips fieldsmen. Ostler, fly slip. Tudor and Proctor, both of you down at the boundary behind Morgan.’
Proctor said, ‘But who’s going to bowl, then?’
‘I am,’ said Longford.
Windsor said, ‘What? You’re mad.’
Other players nodded. Some grumbled. But Jack Tanner nodded and went down the batter’s end. Longford ran back a couple of steps.
David could see all the English players behind Tanner.
Ernie Morgan yelled, ‘Hear hear, Henry.’
Henry Longford took two steps and bowled a slow looping delivery outside off stump. Jack didn’t hit it hard. He d
idn’t need to. He hit the ball to the vacant mid field. ‘Run, David.’
David could not run. He didn’t even have his bat. He held his right arm at the wrist, feeling blood or rain dribbling from his elbow, as he walked down the pitch towards the Englishmen. Only Windsor had turned his back. People were already coming over the fences and running towards the middle. Thousands of people seemed to be running towards David as he walked towards them.
‘Come on, son,’ yelled Darby.
David walked across the crease.
Jack Tanner got his fifty.
Australia won the Test series three games to two.
It rained for a week, even in Dungarin.
David Donald did not bowl in the fifth Test, nor did he score any runs with the bat. He did not bowl or bat for Australia again. His elbow did not heal properly and this meant he could never again completely straighten his right arm. Nor could he turn his right wrist without a little pain. Doctors agreed that there were probably drifting bone fragments.
Cricket went on without him. Young Dan Bidman was about to enter the Australian team and become the greatest batsman who ever lived. Western Australia joined the Sheffield Shield and played cricket against the other states. Other British colonies besides Australia produced their own champions. The West Indies were unbeatable, until the next great team. And still things changed. Six-ball overs replaced eight. Five-day games replaced ten. A version of cricket was invented in which each team only batted for a mad dash of fifty overs as the world got faster, and found new ways to sell more of itself for less.
David went back to his grandfather’s farm, which was now his. The rain soaked the ground and the river flowed high. He used the irrigation system to put in new fruit trees and even tried a stand of olives. He didn’t go down to Perth, nor attend a hundred dinners they tried to organise in his honour. It wasn’t him, he said, who did all that, but someone else. He planted wheat and ran sheep and kept a couple of Jess’s litter. The girls spoilt the dogs for working, but David didn’t have the heart to stop them. He found that the strength of purpose and character that had helped turn him into a great bowler and national hero seemed to have deserted him utterly when confronting his own wife and children. It was an abject failure he never regretted.
David married Nell Parker and had four girls, none of them cursed or blessed with especially long fingers. Frances, the youngest, was good at piano. Jill became a pretty good swimmer. Samantha and Bronwyn would go to university, Bronwyn becoming a historian. They all played netball, including Nell, just for the fun of it.
Occasionally one of the team would visit, ‘just passing by like,’ even though it’s hard to be passing by Dungarin, as it’s not on the way to anywhere. Bigger, better cars on bigger, better roads made that easier. Ten Ton visited with his whole family, and Two Bob came up quite a lot, strange as it may seem. He’d sit on the front veranda and have a cup of tea while he told David about Australia and the world, and they’d remind each other of the little things about each other that got up each other’s nose that particular summer.
There are some myths around all sports and no less with cricket. Bidman was reported to have practised his impeccable timing by using a cricket stump to hit a golf ball up against a corrugated iron water tank. A lovely story, but a little too neatly crafted, I always thought.
Rumour had it that the lost cricket ball from that final over in Sydney was souvenired by none other than Henry Longford himself. He had fielded it and tucked it immediately into his pocket, making sure there was no possibility of a run-out. According to this version, Longford keeps it in his office in Leicester and calls it his Redemption Ball. Longford never played cricket for his country again. He retired from the international circuit, but captained Leicester for the next fifteen years, establishing a team noted for its sense of fair play and sportsmanship.
Others declare that Longford can’t have the ball, as many distinctly recall one of the groundsmen limping out to retrieve it almost as soon as Jack Tanner had hit it. Apparently this groundsman then managed to get young Donald to sign the ball, left-handed, as he was carried on the stretcher to hospital. Hitting hard times, the distraught groundsman had had to sell the ball in a pub raffle. Many people from all around Australia have personally sworn to this version of events, an improbable number also offering to produce the ball.
There are myths, and then there are facts and then there are the real people. Ten Ton retired from cricket, and opened a pub in Fitzroy. Freddie Turner, the injured spinner, returned to the team following David’s injury, proving every cloud has a silver lining. John Richardson captained the team for another five years. He became a major in the Second World War, in which Andrew Bardsley and Maud McLeod were killed. Jack Tanner served with bravery and returned to sell television sets before entering parliament. O’Toole fell under a tram and was killed, but not before he published a very successful book called The Kid based on David’s life story. It was full of lies and controversy, and Geoffrey Calligan teamed with Steven Biggins to sue O’Toole for the slander. David used the money to build a health clinic in Dungarin.
He tried to entice Helen O’Locklan to work there, but she would never leave Melbourne.
I tried Dungarin. At first, I’d wander in like a stray tomcat with a chunk out of me and get a feed and a couple of pounds before heading off again to spread the communist revolution and assorted cricket paraphernalia. With Nell’s help, I taught David to read a bit better. It turned out that he had a medical condition called dyslexia. They got me a job in the Dungarin school, and that seemed to be working fine for the town and myself, until I complicated things a little too much with a brief dalliance with one of the Mrs Pringles. Lovely girl, but that was the end of Dungarin for me.
I’m writing this account in Melbourne now, between teaching in a public high school near Helen O’Locklan’s house. We continue to share a drink and some laughs and our various injuries with a lurching contentment. Sometimes, in the evening, reading a letter from David, we share him too. Occasionally, I’ll go in a pub and tell David’s story and sell one of those old cricket balls he’d practised with, just to keep my hand in, so to speak.
There are myths around sport and cricket and around David. People forget the facts or ignore the truth pretty soon, and believe the things that suit them. With every passing year, it becomes harder to affirm David’s brilliance. He remains so damn unlikely. He bowled a whole cricket team out, not just once but twice, and for only one run. It is impossible. The cricket records make it seem even less real. He only bowled in two Test matches and the decision to bat that dark Sydney afternoon leaves you wondering what might have been. Many talked in the press and in some books about the tragedy of David Donald ... that the cricket world had been robbed of twenty or thirty years of brilliance. It was as though the world had only just been given this bright hint of potential, to have it ripped away again ... a beautiful bird glimpsed amongst the trees and gone. Like the men and women gone to war.
David did not regard any of it as a tragedy. He was happy with what had happened. He brought back some good memories from his adventures away from the farm. He was also happy about the person he had become while he was away. Somehow the pressure had re-clicked some things inside his heart and he was less anxious and less afraid. He’d opened up to the possibilities in other human beings, and this had allowed greater complexities within himself. It allowed him to love.
‘What are you going to do now that you’ve got no one?’ O’Toole had yelled that day, and David had his answer. He did have people. But he also had who he had always had. David was content with his own company, with his own thoughts and feelings and memories and his reflection on the world. He was at peace.
David liked the size of Dungarin. You can know all of a small town. Where it ends. What its parts are. You can know each of the people who live there and who they are and what they’ve done and even pretty regularly predict what they might do. A small town is a thing that is of human size
, at least of the size that David’s mind could encompass.
It got too small for David’s girls and they left. Dungarin foundered and failed, as the nearer towns thrived. One, then all, of the Pringles moved into cities large enough to hold them. The railways closed down, then the school. Even the highway moved east.
David liked his town, and he loved the space that was his farm. He liked working it: digging and planting and harvesting. He liked fixing it. He liked the seasons and how they needed to be stepped into and worked with. David liked the pre-dawn and eating breakfast with Nell. He liked being out there, anywhere on his land, when the sun came up.
And at dusk, he liked to be on the hill overlooking the dam. From there, he could see the lights of the house. His favourite time was still just before sunset, when all the midgies came out to dance in the last gold the sun put out. They danced around the golden liquid of the dam, turning from grey to silver and then golden themselves. And for those fifteen minutes they turned into orange and yellow fairies and wraiths and whatever else that was filled with magic, and you could remember or imagine being anything in the world, absolutely anything you wanted.
ADDENDUM
I came into possession of this manuscript while helping my mother order my father’s affairs, following his death in 2008. It would appear that the manuscript was sent to my father following my Uncle Michael’s death in 1986. It is characteristic of David Donald that he did not mention it to the other members of his family. I’m not even certain that he read it. He was never a great reader, nor a great talker for that matter. He was a wonderful father.
I have been persuaded to share these writings with a wider public. It is, after all, a very different version of matters, but one I think of which my father would have approved, most certainly in the abundant mischief of the thing.
I have not changed any of the text, but I have added some accompaniments that should help readers who, like myself, are not particularly deep students of cricket.
The diagram depicting fielding positions is courtesy of Learning Cricket: Rules and Strategy by J.M. Lawler and R.S. Trumper (Oxford: Olive Press, 1984) and is provided in an effort to explicate some of the fielding changes and positions mentioned in the manuscript.