by Jock Serong
Little cloth bags in the outside pockets of the coffin. One contains sunscreen, zinc, Vaseline, Aerogard, glue and scissors. The other is more specifically medical: painkillers, anti-inflammatories, tape; needles for lancing blisters. These are the superstitious relics of a long career in grade cricket. The big grounds have all this stuff on tap. Even the umpires carry it in their pockets, but my vestigial self-reliance persists.
There’s a brown paper envelope they gave me the night before the game that contains guest passes to the ground, a timetable and a few badly spelled briefing notes. The Queensland side, their averages, strike rates; probably dietary requirements. I couldn’t say precisely what the notes cover because I haven’t read them. What do I need briefing notes for? Bowl the fucking ball at me and I’ll hit it.
She’s stirring. I drop a guest pass in her open handbag, lean down and place my fingers lightly for a moment on her forehead. I don’t expect her to turn up.
The airconditioner is grumbling into life now.
At breakfast in the bistro (another bistro, another eight-slice toaster), I can feel eyes on me. It’s the fate of state cricketers to be perpetually half-recognised. We’re the backbenchers of cricket—elected but not anointed. A kind old lady in the lift appears to recognise me, but it turns out she wants to let me know I’ve left the thimbles on my forehead and I look like a twat. My word. She said ‘dill’.
The eyes in the bistro, however, are real. It’s him. Who? Keefe. Next big thing. Ninety-seven not out overnight. If he keeps going the Vics could win the final. At one table, the newspaper has the back page facing outwards and there I am, taking up three-quarters of the page on one knee, smashing Wehnderfer to the cover-point boundary. Big Hans is slightly out of focus in the background of the shot, stooped in his follow-through.
When the occupants of the table have wandered off, I scuttle over and collect the paper.
Starting at the back, I read all about the game. With more tea left in the pot, I flip over and work my way into the paper from the front.
Five pages in, a one-column court report from Amy Harris. Pitbull Freer is back on the streets; he lost the appeal she told me about but he’s out on parole now. A little cloud darkens my sun. Should I be worried? Wouldn’t he have better things to do with his liberty? Would he even know I once spent a few vigorous hours with his special friend? His photo, like mine, is taken with a long lens but for different reasons. He’s outside some restaurant: the corded neck with its chains, the spikes of the tatts reaching forward of his ear, pointing towards his tiny eye, set deep behind the cheekbone like a fighting dog.
Pitbull. More apt than I’d realised.
The waiter comes over and tells me there’s a phone call. When I take the receiver and hear the scratchy noise, I know that Louise is holding the phone to Hannah’s ear. So I wait patiently for her little voice.
‘Mum says you have a very big day,’ she says carefully. ‘I hope you bat for a long time, Daddle hey guess WHAT Wednesday is the first day of school and I’ll be in grade one Daddle and that means I get a desk with Charlotte and I can play cricket with the grade twos cos they don’t like preps but now I’ll be a grade one but I can get em out anyway cos I can do that ball you know that ball I got you out with at our place when it went under your bat? Daddle?’
‘Yes, mate. That’s a yorker.’
‘Yorker! And we’re allowed on the big playground at lunchtimes this year but not at little lunch or after school and we get to go on the tramps if you got a teacher watching and how many runs do you haf to make?’
‘What do you mean, mate?’
‘You know, to get in the Test team with Dad?’
‘I don’t know, mate. Hopefully not many more.’
‘Anyway I hope you do…yep I AM Mummy, wait…so…love you bye.’
Like all kids, she lacks a sense of the wind-up towards ending a call, and has just crashed the receiver back on the cradle. Gone.
She turns out to be the only one willing to go straight to the issue at hand. Everywhere I go this morning, people maintain a distance, like I’m busy defusing a bomb or something. But there are no nerves. I’ll clear the ton with ease and I’ll do a whole lot more than that.
In the dressing room, there’s a brief team meeting in which the talk is about everything else but me. We’re five down and we need 289 runs to take out the final, to take delivery of the Sheffield Shield.
First ball of the day, I watch Dave Pemberton in his sweatbands limbering up. I watch him like I will circle him on a plain and then tear a bloody piece out of his flank with my tusks. Long, smooth approach, upright delivery stride. Hands aligned parallel through an invisible vertical plane.
There’s a faint chatter of applause as the ball is delivered. Straight and full on middle stump and I chip it out easily enough.
Second ball, my certainty about the ton nearly brings me undone. I take a wild swipe at a loose one outside off, and succeed only in getting a thick edge on it. The ball flies just over second slip and is gone. About three seconds later I hear it hit the advertising hoardings; the clang of hard leather on tin.
The hundred.
My batting partner Phil Herring runs down the pitch and clamps me in a hug. Our helmets bash together. There’s a ripple of polite applause among the Queenslanders, and a gentle shorebreak sound from the grandstands. Clutched in the arms of Herro, somewhere mid-pitch in the centre of the MCG, I’ve got 956 runs for the season and a century in what is likely to be Victoria’s winning Shield final. I’m averaging fifty-four, with daylight between me and the next-best number-four batsman in the country. In two weeks’ time they’ll announce the squad for the Ashes in England this winter, and there is nothing on the face of the earth that can prevent me getting the nod.
I break away from Herro’s hug and salute the stands with a raised bat. Yes, thank you kids and pensioners. Thank you junior office workers, skiving off your Friday so you can drink piss in the sun. Thank you empty plastic chairs in your multiple colours to fool the news-viewing public into thinking there’s people here. Thank you ground staff, who have to be here anyway, and thank you stoners tugging on quiet spliffs high in the northern stand. This one’s for none of you. This one is entirely for me.
And then they bring ol’ Feddy on. For some reason, they didn’t use him in the previous innings, or indeed in this innings until now.
Federal Collins. Pride of Antigua, and the fastest bowler I never saw. A man so introverted he makes men of few words sound like gossip girls. Some burr of anger is buried between the great shoulders. He takes the ball from the skipper as though he should have had it all along—no ‘Thanks skip’, no ‘Can I have a third slip?’ Nothing.
The keeper and slips are standing so far away I can barely see them.
Fed walks out to the end of his run and drops a plastic marker disc, windmills his arms through one quick warm-up and just starts running in.
As he gathers speed, I have a brief second to regret that someone else hasn’t borne the brunt of his impatience. He’s six foot four standing still. I know this because I’ve looked up into his eyes at social functions, and I’m six foot. In his delivery stride, leaping off that left foot and airborne as he passes the umpire, he’s at least seven foot two. And as that right arm whips over his ear, the clutched ball streaking like sunlight through a thrown glass of claret, I swear that giant hand is topping out at, I don’t know, eleven, twelve feet in the air.
The problem with such a high release is not so much the angle it comes down from, but the resultant angle at which it rears up off the turf. A ball pitched on a reasonable length suddenly becomes a spitting, hissing bastard of a thing that wants to get into your throat.
I know from long experience the barely detectable dropping of a bowler’s eyes, the sinking of the lead shoulder, that tell you it’ll be a short one. It’s there too in the angle of the wrist holding the ball, the knuckles tipping forward to retain it for an extra millisecond. And from years of dodging
microwaved tennis balls, I have an instinct for unnatural bounce.
The eyes drop: a jolt of adrenaline.
So I’m already half-ducked when it enters the space–time continuum fuckery that causes a cricket ball to become invisible. At first it’s in his hand, then it isn’t there at all, and then—apparently—it’s streaking at about a hundred miles an hour through the space where my head was. But I’m squatting on my haunches by now, wondering if I couldn’t take a job with Craigo at the leasing joint where things happen a lot slower.
It sails harmlessly past me. At some point I grab a single, leaving Herro to take strike and deal with the rest of Federal’s demons.
He’s got a great eye, Herro. Eye like a dead fish. But he’s also got an unfortunate tendency to put his body in the way if he’s not confident his bat will do the job. Squat, powerful, thick-limbed, he’s a generous target. He wears two short ones in the ribs, with his bat (the very object that should be taking the punishment) held aloft, out of harm’s way. Both times, the ball makes a hollow tympanic thud that reminds me fondly of belting tennis balls into ol’ Sambo the fat staffy.
I’m about to wander down the pitch to offer support when Feddy finally finds his voice. Watching the gasping batsman from the end of his follow-through, he grabs the underarmed return throw from the slips and turns to me. Then he says, in the bassest of basses:
‘You take a walk down dere and I will troe dose fuckin stumps down, mon.’
I’ve never seen a man so serious. I offer Herro a weak little you right mate? and a concerned wave of a gloved hand. He’s grunting his way back to his feet by then.
The next one clean bowls him, and he looks glad to go.
Federal’s first spell is a mere six overs. Through a combination of good luck and careful strike manipulation, I weather it.
By the time he starts his second spell, I’ve cobbled together another sixty runs and we’re a mere thirty-seven runs from victory. In the moments of stopped play, I’ve been sneaking the odd look at the scoreboard, the sequence of lit globes making the letters: KEEFE, D. Beside it, the triple columns say 170. The highest ever individual score in a Shield final between these two sides.
The sun has passed its angry peak and is now bathing the east side of the ’G in a soft yellow glow. The grandstands bury the outfield in deep shadow. Federal’s been gone from my thoughts for an hour or so now, out fielding defensively on the boundary rope. There’s nineteen overs left to bowl in the last session and we’ve got three wickets in hand. Nothing can, or should, go wrong. And even if it does, my ticket to Heathrow is booked, because no one can take these one hundred and seventy runs away from me.
So seeing big Feddo there at the end of his run-up is disconcerting but by no means alarming. He’ll be tired by now. He’s been in the field all day, a glowering presence under that big hat of his. For a guy with his destructive ability, the solitary wicket of Herro would be a disappointing return. For whatever reason of internal team politics, he’s been under-used.
On reflection, I should’ve guessed these things might’ve added a little sting to Fed’s bowling. Maybe my mind wanders ahead, to the press conference I’ll give as man of the match, charming everyone with my insouciant one-liners. To the phone call I’ll receive from the chairman of selectors, asking my size in caps. Maybe I can taste the first cold beer, less than an hour away. Who knows where my mind is.
But Federal Winston Collins is still very much here.
He streams in like he just finished a morning warm-up: momentum personified. As he rears into that delivery stride, his upper body is bathed in the golden light spearing through some empty exit in the grandstand. It flashes brilliantly on the gold chains around his neck, a blinding flash of light in the exact place I don’t need it.
I pull away, bat raised.
It takes a long instant for Federal to realise what’s happened. He half-releases the ball and it rolls away towards mid-off, as his momentum carries him down the pitch, winding his arms to regain balance. Finally he stops, standing with hands on hips about ten feet from me, breathing hard. ‘What da fuck was that?’
The ump’s moved from his position and is rushing down the pitch. ‘Darren, why did you pull away?’ he asks.
‘Fed’s chains,’ I respond. ‘They caught the light. Couldn’t see a thing.’
The ump looks from me to Federal, to the chains. Fed’s fuming, but he says nothing. The Queenslanders are starting to gather, directing a bit of chat my way. Stuff about my mother. My poor, much maligned mother.
‘All right,’ says the ump. ‘Let’s get on with it, eh?’
I think about this for a moment, and balanced on the tiny fulcrum of that moment I make a decision that will change my life.
‘Tell him to take the bling off.’
Fed and the ump simultaneously stare at me in disbelief.
‘What?’ they both say. Fed’s taken two steps forward.
‘Ditch the chains, Fed.’ I lean on the bat. Brother Wally would know this stance. ‘I’m not gonna have that happen again. Take ’em off.’
Fed takes three very quick steps forward, and suddenly he’s towering above me, pointing a long finger deep between my eyes. ‘Don’t you dare disrespect me, boy!’ Several fielders have darted forward to grab him by the waist. ‘Don’t you even look at me battyboy…I will fuck you up!’
‘Cool it Federal,’ says the ump. ‘Darren, where’s this light coming from?’
I point at the non-striker’s stumps, which are now bathed in the heavenly glow. Over in the west, the sun is blazing through the exit halfway up the Ponsford Stand.
‘Pussy,’ spits Fed. ‘Ain’t never seen the sun?’
The ump wanders over to the square leg ump, who’s been avoiding us all. They chat for a moment, then he returns.
‘Take them off, thanks Federal.’
Fed’s eyes are wild now. He fumbles around his throat, searching for the clasps, and one by one he hands the chains to the ump. Someone throws him the ball and he allows it to smack into his palm. His eyes never leave me.
‘Gonna hurt you for this, little boy,’ he whispers.
The urge to antagonise just gets stronger and stronger when these things happen to me. I’ll never know why. So I wait until he’s got all the way back to the end of his run, until he’s turned, until I’m damn sure he’s looking at me.
And I blow him a kiss.
Fed takes off at full speed from the first step, expressionless. I tap the bat as he runs; lift it as he leaps. He slams the ball hard into the turf—again, I can tell only because his body says he did—and it disappears. I’m inside its line of flight, because I’ve already decided before he bowls that a man this angry is incapable of feint: it’ll be a bouncer. And it’s important that you don’t get a reputation for copping this sort of stuff. I have to hook him.
So in the part of that second when the ball is invisible, I’m rocking onto my back foot, tipping slightly to my left, beginning to pull the bat in a low-to-high arc that will take it past my nose. It’s pure guesswork, based on Fed’s usual pace, the state of the wicket and endless repetition of exactly this shot. If I’m out by an inch or two I can adjust. You sometimes see still photos of batsmen doing this, and they have their eyes closed. This is not evidence of an action reduced to forlorn hope. It is the point of total trust in the intimate choreography of the swing. Eyesight no longer matters. It will work, or it will not.
Then the ball reappears, and it’s got awfully big.
It’s where I thought it would be, but so much earlier than I’d calibrated the shot for—a mere instant from smashing into the grille of the helmet.
I jab the bat handle forwards at the ball. Two inches off the grille of the helmet: I’ve managed to protect a wire cage with a leather glove. The idiocy of this is unanswerable. But then, reflexes are themselves unanswerable.
There’s a sickening crunch and I know immediately that the ball’s caught my thumb on the bat handle, and all sorts of dest
ruction has taken place. For a moment, though, I’m suspended in that childlike state where I know the pain is coming like an avalanche but it’s not here yet. I throw the bat and start hopping away from the crease. God knows why I’m hopping. I bend double, with the hand between my knees, straighten and look at the sky. Now it’s here. Nothing will separate me from the planet-size pain, the death-metal screech, coming from inside that glove. I collapse and roll over onto my back, clutching the hand to my chest. People are starting to gather. Klausner, their new wicketkeeper, looks down at me with something like pity, something like vindication. We’ve been shitting each other for two days out here, and now I’m writhing on the grass, a victim of my own hubris. The crowd has roared somewhere beyond sight because the ball has reached the boundary. It was propelled there by seven millimetres of bone in my left thumb.
The team physio waddles out with his little bag of parlour tricks. Magic spray and reassurance is about all the wobbly tit has ever been good for. Sure enough, he undoes the Velcro cuff on the glove and pulls it away, ready to hit it with the aerosol. But as the glove slides back, he stops dead and drops the can. The long side of my thumb, just above the wrist, has deformed into a nauseating sac, with a pointed angle in it where some piece of bone has been forced outwards. First metacarpal, I will hear over and over. Looks like something from a horror movie. The end of the thumb is turning purple and the nail has been smashed and torn back. It’s crowned with a comical tuft of cotton wool from the inside of the glove’s padding, like a fucked-up finger puppet. The crushed splinters of the thumbnail are spiked out of the pulp of the nail bed. The end of the thumb is already completely devoid of sensation and will remain that way for the rest of my days.