The Rules of Backyard Cricket

by Jock Serong

  But Hannah? She’s a delight; a raucous, slapsticking show-off with a talent for the ridiculous. When her mangled speech and funny faces don’t work, she’ll disappear and reappear with something on her head: underpants, a box, a pillowcase. She tumbles and dribbles and jabbers her way through the giant world, grabbing at everything with her warm, sticky fingers. I can watch her for hours. Sometimes her antics remind me of Craigo when he’s drunk—the staggering gait, the emotional outbursts, the need to be hugged. It fascinates me watching her eat. She shovels food in as fast as she can, frequently missing her head altogether.

  She runs on love as much as food, but is far more delicate in the way she consumes it. She will stroke an adult ear to savour its velvety surface, then carefully compare the feel of her own. She likes to kiss faces: her mother’s, Honey’s, her hovering father’s, and mine. She will look carefully over the available terrain before deciding the perfect place to position the kiss; left of the nose, high on the brow, out wide on a cheek. Despite her voracious attack on everything under the sun, kissing is done delicately. This tiny peck is yours alone in the universe.

  Under Honey’s influence, my game improves out of sight. Not the instinctive stuff, but the stuff that comes from being fitter, more alert. Like sleeping a full night before a game and cutting down the pharmaceuticals.

  In three years, I make so many runs that the only thing preventing me from following Wally into national selection is the ongoing success of the national side itself. And that can’t last forever.

  Honey and I start telling people we’re trying, an active expression for the passive reality that we’ve stopped trying not to conceive. Hannah doesn’t know what a large part she plays in my decision to go along with the program. She’s in prep now, a tiny human in her school tunic, carrying an oversize bag on her back like some comic turtle. Louise is making the cross-town trip to South Melbourne day after day in search of—what? Sisterhood with Honey? Family for her daughter? She’s fraught and exasperated so much of the time.

  Following an armchair afternoon conversation about Wally’s and my backyard days, she asks me to make a pitch in the backyard at Kew. We sit out the back in the sun painting stumps on a compost bin and Hannah swings the miniature bat with theatrical joy. We throw a ball at each other at waist height. She can catch. She’s five and she can catch.

  In Adelaide I knock up the fastest fifty in the history of the four-day game. When I get home we get back to trying, with a mortal earnestness that is new and different. We’re no longer fucking, or even making love—we’re attempting to reproduce. In Hobart I take a catch at gully that for ten years will be described by pundits as physically impossible. The phone rings in my peach-coloured suite at the Casino and Hannah’s breathy voice is on the line, telling me she watched it on the telly and she can do that too. Mum says Daddy’s got very good news, she whispers. But we can’t tell anyone. In Perth I bat for nearly two days to make two hundred and fifty and save a match. I get a call at the hotel afterwards from Wally, strained and distant. He’s in the Caribbean, wants to know if I’ve heard from Louise, and how’s Hannah? I’ve got my feet in the bath and a beer in my hand. I feel for him: he’s a man who got the very thing he’d wanted all his life and then discovered it wasn’t what he thought it was. Why are you asking me? I say. His answer is gone from my memory, but it was unsatisfying.

  Hannah’s very good news appears on the evening bulletin a few days later.

  I’m at home with Honey, chopping vegies for a paella. Onions frying, two soda waters on the bench: no beer hour in this kitchen. The telly’s yammering away in the background and when I glance at it I see his face, squinting in his baggy green.

  ‘Turn it up.’

  The newsreader is waiting to throw to a press conference, recounting Wally’s stats and making reference to his ‘humble beginnings in suburban Footscray’. She’s talking about a ‘bombshell appointment that will send shockwaves through world cricket’.

  Wally, my brother, is the captain of the Australian Test team.

  The newsreader touches her ear—they’re ready to take the press conference—and suddenly there he is, looking a little pink and scrubbed after training, eyes up and talking to the room, no notes. He’s behind a chaotic nest of microphones, a curtain of sponsors’ logos behind him. And beside him, the chairman of selectors and the outgoing skipper. Looking vanquished.

  ‘I’m as surprised to be sitting here today as you are no doubt surprised to see me,’ Wally opens with a smile.

  There’s an appreciative ripple of laughter.

  ‘Circumstances have dictated that I’ve been promoted to this role well before my time is due. I’m under no misapprehension about that. There can be no greater honour for an Australian cricketer than to become captain of the Test side. When I walked down the corridor on the way in here, I looked up at the faces in those paintings and I thought to myself, there is no way I deserve to be among these people. Bradman, Hassett, the Chappells. Allan Border. These are men of enormous character, and right now I feel very daunted at the prospect of trying to emulate their deeds. I want to thank the board for giving me the opportunity—’

  ‘Thank Mum. You need to thank Mum.’

  ‘Shut up, Daz.’ Honey gives me a playful slap.

  ‘—and I particularly want to pay tribute to my mother Pamela, who has done so much over so many years to make this dream a reality.’

  ‘Oh good boy, Wal!’

  ‘I want to lead a united team, and I want to listen to the considerable range of views and experiences within the squad. Anyone who knows me knows it’s not my nature to try to bulldoze my way through. Anyway, there’s a lot to do, so I’d better leave it there.’

  He smiles briefly, shakes the hands of the men next to him and he’s gone.

  And at our place, the phone starts ringing.

  Life in the state side churns onwards, largely unwatched by the public.

  Then in Sydney something quite odd happens.

  It’s a day–night game, which we’re expected to win. Small crowd, an unexpectedly cold night. I’m listed to open the batting. During the afternoon, the opposition have put on 246, a little shy of five runs an over. Thoroughly achievable. I’m putting the pads on when I’m approached by a touring Englishman called Rowan Cooper. He’s a nobody, a dour off-spinner who won’t play a red-ball game for us all summer. He’s good for five overs of handbrake cricket if the other side gets some momentum up, which is precisely what he’s delivered today. Other than that, he’s inconsequential.

  ‘Mate,’ he says. ‘Mate.’

  So he wants something.

  I keep strapping the pads on.

  ‘Mate, I’m onto a little action.’ He raises his eyebrows. ‘You want in?

  Such approaches happen from time to time. They’re rare, but not unknown, particularly for someone like me. Anyone—players, assistant coaches or jackals in suits might sidle up at some unexpected moment and ask if you could help out a punter. The transaction’s usually a minor one—just beer money for an easy stunt. No one’s going to ask you to throw a game, so there’s no real moral problem with it. It’s just a sport within a sport. Honey wouldn’t like it but Honey won’t know. My attitude is, if I can fit a little wager within a credible game plan—and you don’t look like you’ve got two heads—I’ll entertain it.

  Cooper very nearly falls in the two-heads category though, and my hunch is this is barely going to be beer money.

  ‘What’s the gig?’

  ‘You get stumped. First ball you face from Alberts, after you pass twenty-five. It’ll be a wrong ’un. Charge down the pitch, have a swing and miss it. Get it right and it’s worth three grand. Here’s fifteen hundred now.’

  Three grand is a bit of a surprise from this minnow. He hands me a batting glove and I can see the hundreds tucked inside. I take the deal. Why, you ask? Because none of it matters.

  Getting to twenty-five isn’t much of an effort.

  I chip a few aro
und, tap one boundary out through covers and one through mid-wicket. By odd coincidence, I reach twenty-five without facing a ball from Johnny Alberts. I’m on twenty-eight by the time he comes into the attack and I’m on strike. And it’s then that I realise there’s a conceptual problem here. Johnny’s a left-armer. And I’m a left-hander. What constitutes a wrong ’un in these circumstances? His ordinary spin would be from leg to off across me, so I figure he’s going to turn one from off to leg. I stand with my bat raised, watching them arrange the field, wondering which of these idiots is in on the joke. Keeper must be. I look back at him, standing right up close at the stumps, and he makes a little smooching motion with his mouth. Not sure how to read that. Alberts is too far away down the other end to read any cues off him.

  He lopes in and whips the ball into the air. By the time he’s let go of it, I’m already moving, a half step then a full one, so I’m five or six feet down the track and completely vulnerable. Normally I could watch its rotation, the seam tumbling over itself, revealing which way it’ll break once it bounces. The light’s wrong and I can’t make it out, but it should spin in towards my pads. All I have to do is play around the outside of it and it’ll go through the bat/pad gap.

  So I pick a line through about ten o’clock and throw everything at it, hands high on the bat handle, swinging in the very direction the ball shouldn’t spin. I even close my eyes as I heave through the shot. But at the point when the ball should have slipped past the inside edge of the bat, I make contact.

  Perfect, sweet contact. Middle of the bat.

  Even as the swing finishes with the bat lying on my back I’m already wondering what the hell’s happened. The ball is streaking through the night sky, rising slightly as the backspin takes effect. The spectators at wide mid-off are swelling in their seats as it rockets towards them. I’ve hit it out of the park and I have no idea how.

  The keeper’s remonstrating with the bowler, marching down the pitch with his gloved fists on his hips. This, to the audience, would be as they expect. He’s furious with Alberts for serving up an absolute pie. But there in the middle, there’s no missing his words.

  ‘That was supposed to be a wrong ’un, you fucking idiot.’

  Alberts looks back at him helplessly, shrugs his shoulders. ‘Sometimes they don’t come out right. Can’t help it.’

  They exchange a long stare, long enough to set me wondering whether the problem is something else entirely, whether Alberts is no dupe at all, but has taken a counter-wager with someone else. If he has, he’s a long-odds punter, because the chances of me doing what I’ve just done are extremely remote. The ump finally senses there’s an unusual level of tension in the air, and sends the two of them back to their posts. As the keeper passes me, he fixes me with a murderous glare.

  ‘Not my fault your boy can’t bowl a wrong ’un,’ I venture.

  Seeing as I’ve blown the three grand (and indeed I’ll have to return the fifteen hundred), I can’t see any reason to throw my wicket away now, so I settle in and enjoy the night. The act of batting is flowing in the same way that drinking flows some nights—unconscious ease and fluidity. Alberts, it seems, not only can’t bowl a rigged ball, but struggles to bowl competitively as well. I finish with a comfortable eighty-eight not out, and we record an easy victory.

  As I saunter up the players’ race, kids reach out to pat my back and high-five me, but something’s wrong. Badly wrong. I can see backs turned as I enter the rooms. The atmosphere’s poisonous. Not the reaction I expected. It’s possible this thing was a smidge bigger than I understood.

  ‘Great win boys,’ I say to no one in particular. And no one in particular replies.

  Rowan Cooper’s in the locker room, packing his things. He looks like he just lost his last dollar. I wonder if he has.

  ‘Mate, I’m sorry. It turned the wrong way and the damn thing connected.’

  Cooper turns and looks at me, and to my horror I can see he’s been crying. ‘Wasn’t much to ask, was it mate. Just miss the fucking ball. Just once. But you had to be a bloody hero, didn’t you.’

  He pushes me half-heartedly out of his way and storms out of the room. I’m left waving the batting glove with the fifteen hundred in his direction. If he’s not concerned about that, he’s taken a much bigger hit than I thought.

  But this is only the beginning of the weirdness.

  Two hours later I’m seated on the hotel bed watching TV, eating a light chicken salad as instructed by Honey. The phone rings: it’s Wally in Miami, where it’s late morning. Even as I greet him he’s underway, speaking firmly.

  ‘What happened tonight, Darren?’

  His thoroughness exhausts me. How the hell has he heard about tonight?

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s people calling me, Darren. What happened in that game tonight?’

  His voice hasn’t risen, hasn’t wavered. It’s me doing the wavering, for some reason.

  ‘We won. It’s cool. I don’t know what the problem is.’

  ‘Darren, I want you to be straight with me. Was there a fix going on?’

  ‘Darren? Who’s “Darren”? I’m still your brother, you know.’

  His tone softens just slightly. ‘Yes of course, Daz. So was there a fix, or not?’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘Not really? What does that mean?’

  This probing of his is beginning to make me deeply uncomfortable.

  ‘Well, it was sorta waved around, you know, but it didn’t come off and it doesn’t matter. It was just a spot thing anyway, not the game.’

  There’s a long silence on the other end. Then the same cold, patient voice. The voice of a man who was my brother but is now burdened with responsibilities I can’t imagine. The voice of someone choosing their words with particular care.

  ‘You don’t want to have anything to do with these people. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Mate, it was fucking Cooper and Alberts. We’re talking park cricketers here. They’re muppets.’

  ‘Do not underestimate them. Stuff like this can have consequences you can’t see. Who knows about this?’

  ‘There’s nothing to know about. No one does. Fuck, what do you care, anyway? Carrying on like it’s the bloody Mafia. How’s Miami?’

  ‘I’m not interested in small talk, Darren. I’ll say it again—you’re mixing with people you don’t understand. I’ve made very sure to never get caught up in that stuff, and I don’t see why you can’t resist it.’

  ‘I think your job’s going to your head,’ I say, and because it seems the sensible thing to do, I hang up the phone.

  Squibbly

  After countless attempts, I’ve got the shard of plastic lodged right where I need it, between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand. It’s getting cold in the boot. The muscles above and below the shot knee are cramping, making the leg jackknife excruciatingly. There’s no prospect of stretching it out in such a small space, no option other than to clench and writhe until it sorts itself out.

  I start slowly, carefully slicing away at the cable ties with the shard of plastic. Dropping it again could cost me an eternity. An actual eternity; so no pressure or anything. I can’t get my fingertips down to where the ties wrap around my wrists, can’t check the effectiveness of the tiny scratches I’m making. All I can do is persist.

  A smell wafts through the boot, thick and unpleasant over the exhaust. Meaty and sulphurous. Takes me a moment to identify it.

  Werribee. The western sewage treatment plant. So we’ve reached the outskirts of Melbourne.

  Another season. A home game in Melbourne, but the players get the option of a hotel room near the MCG, and Honey and I take up the opportunity.

  We’ve talked and talked, as the city faded to silence and even as it awoke itself in the small hours. Like me, she’s capable of lying awake all night worrying about the shape of the universe. So we had each other to annoy. When she fell asleep, I turned the bedside lamp on to push back the
dark a little. Little thoughts and worries. Tiny dancing bears that I stop with a pill.

  The dawn comes quiet. I leave Honey to whatever place she’s gone to, transfixed, as I dress by the brown curve of her thigh, lit soft in the baby glow of a summer day through the gauzy hotel curtains. The early hum of traffic. Someone tipping a bin far below in the alley. Leaning in close to her cheek, I listen to her breathing. Confident, unconcerned.

  This will be a Day Among Days.

  Everywhere I look I see perfection. I feel it. Even my bare feet on the carpet are feeding me the ticklish static of fate. My body feels fine: not a twinge, not an ache. I plonk myself on the carpet and stretch the hamstrings. Leaning forward, legs apart, I push my hands along the floor, pulling at the muscles behind my shoulders. They spring back in response. I push the hands a little further and a grunt escapes me.

  ‘Goo’luck.’

  Her voice is smoky with sleep.

  Because it’s a lifetime habit and one of the ways in which I’m most like Wally, I open the coffin and run a hand through the gear: in the long compartment, three sets of pads for a lefty: buckskin, recently scrubbed and whitened by Max the property steward. One pair’s still slightly damp from yesterday’s sweat. Two bats, new grips on each—again, Max’s hand, like one of Santa’s elves while I downed a beer in the dressing room. A box, greasy and adorned with two random pubic hairs; two thighpads, again, one of them damp. The damp one’s the lucky one.

  Rolled up in a white towel, four pairs of batting gloves with the pad on the left thumb. Another little ritual of mine is to take the small rubber thimbles out of the thumb of each left glove. I’ve never understood the point of them: they take away the tiny sensations you get through the thumb, and they make your hands more bulky. The pile of discarded thimbles is on the benchtop. I interrupt my audit of the coffin for just long enough to pinch the air out of a couple of them and use the suction to stick them to my forehead. Good to have a sight gag in reserve in case your winsome bedfellow wakes in need of a laugh. The effect, I confirm in the mirror, is like a lightly sunburnt baby goat.