Look you bastards, I bloody well came here as a favour. So what if I missed the damn ball? That's not why they're 120 bloody 6.
But he couldn't, it wasn't possible.
It was strange. Long after he'd given up playing at school Richard would idle away entire summers listening to Sports Roundup. He'd know the players of every province by heart, their strengths and weaknesses, career-best performances. He'd spend hours on his bed calculating partnerships and aggregates, dreaming world records, waiting for the extraordinary. Over and over he'd select the test team, deaf to the controversy he created with his obvious parochialism. He still watched cricket on TV if it was on. This here, now, wasn't anything like any of that. Instead it was alarmingly real, with real people and real responsibilities.
Still, drinks woke him up, which was just as well, because almost straight away one of the batsmen collected a really sweet hook, hurtling the ball low and hard through the air towards the boundary to Richard's left. With nothing to lose and a fair amount of bitterness still welled up inside him, he ran like people on fire do and hurled himself at the spot where it seemed the ball would land. To his complete astonishment he found his left arm landing on the ground at the same point and the same instant as the ball, so that it stopped dead, wedged between his stinging hand and the ground. It was a superb, a brilliant piece of fielding. He'd stunned himself a bit when he'd landed, and he stood up only slowly. People were running towards him. In a silly momentary pride he held the ball aloft. He felt much better, as if he'd proven himself to the others.
Nigel reached him first.
Great catch, mate. Brilliant. That's turned the game.
Richard now saw the batsman halfway back to the pavilion. His bat swung the pendulum that marks a man out, scudding the ground at the bottom of its arc. A new man was already starting to walk out. His bat did whole ferris wheels. Richard realised that any attempt to correct the situation could only invite disaster. Almost all his team had arrived at fine leg by now and they were bubbling. There were thumps on his back, hands on his shoulder. Everyone mingled, describing to each other great catches they remembered, acting them out, excited.
Now, relating the whole thing to Sandra, he justified his decision to remain quiet by saying it had been too late for him to be honest by the time he'd realised what had happened. If he'd seen the misunderstanding earlier he would've said something. He hadn't known that holding up the ball necessarily meant you'd caught it. He was just pleased to have stopped it and he was dazed from landing on the ground. Besides, he'd got their ring-in, who shouldn't have been playing in the first place. There were lots of reasons.
But you cheated, says Sandra.
I suppose you could say I did. I suppose I could've made a big show of it. But I wouldn't've been very popular if I had. Anyway, it was a great stop. It deserved to be a catch.
Yes, she says, lining up a fingernail with a disinterested eye. I'm sure it did.
A spell had been cast on the game. The other players had become his team-mates. The next over someone suggested he come in only so far as deep mid-off, so he didn't have to walk all the way to the other side of the field. A few overs later, after another couple of wickets had fallen, he was even offered a bowl.
Bowling had been his strength at school, but in this situation he felt nervous. He hadn't bowled in years and the whole thing was so much more competitive than he'd anticipated. Fielding on the boundary he'd been able to dissociate himself from the intensity of it all, but now he was to become a central figure in the ongoing process of the game itself, an essential ingredient. In a way though, he did have to admit there was a small thrill about the control he suddenly had. He could tell people where to stand; he could bowl fast or slow. He could go over or round the wicket, flight the ball or scuzz it in low, could alter irrevocably the entire direction of the game. If he wanted he could bowl right outside the competitive spirit: a slow full toss down the leg side, a gentle spinless half-volley slightly to the off. Or he could try and bowl a bouncer, smash out the guy's teeth.
His first delivery was a long hop he didn't plan at all; on later reflection he realised he hadn't planned anything. It was, as they would have said in the commentary box had there been one, dispatched imperiously to the boundary. The batsman—some guy Eric from Accounts—didn't even bother running, just stood about fiddling with the bottom of his bat handle, quite unconcerned. Richard could feel his team exchange serious glances.
The next ball was pretty much the same, and he cringed to think there were four more after that. But somehow Eric misread it, maybe believing it to possess mysterious powers of subtle deviousness, when in reality it was as simple as an underarmed tennis ball. Employing the same condescending wrist-flick that had just earned 4 runs, he played most of a bat-width inside it, snicking it clean to first slip, where Clem Weekes, Nigel's younger brother—put there by Richard only because it was a position whose name he remembered—watched in entranced disbelief as it flew into his cupped hands. Eric took a few steps in random directions as if treading the earth where he'd just buried the last twenty seconds of history, then looked up and glared with meaning at Richard, who once more was playing host to ten ecstatic men in white. Even the keeper—Russell Hogan, who could scull five jugs one after another with a gut to prove it—who must've realised it was a shit ball, even he was full of congratulations.
The next guy was much older than everyone else; he looked near retirement. Maybe he'd been a star in his younger days. Richard couldn't place him, although he thought he knew his face. He bowled him first ball. Maybe he was an eleventh-hourer too—he wasn't there long enough to tell—but he didn't move either forward or back, swung limply from a suicidal no-man's land, and because the ball was fortuitously heading for the stumps it hit them. The whole ritual of congratulating was repeated and a faint cloud of unreality like the start of being wasted began to descend on Richard; things were happening with a warm and pleasant natural momentum which no action of his, good or bad, could alter. It was like the big wire roundabout they have at some playgrounds, where you push with your foot like a scooter, then climb on properly and ride for minutes on end, round and round, till you feel too sick to continue.
Richard felt fine right now, was already back at his mark waiting for the next batsman. He recognised him from the staff café, where he sat by himself every lunchtime reading the paper, chain-smoking. He was obviously an amateur too, because he had the tell-tale backward step that unfailingly reveals those who are afraid of cricket balls. Even if he'd remembered it existed—and it seemed he didn't—his bat wouldn't have been long enough to reach the ball as it bounced up, a harmless and indeed juicy delivery, and then down—that was how slow it was—into the off stump.
By now Richard felt like he was drunk. Everything was submerged in a kind of hot dream. A stupid grin burned on his face. A few of the women on the boundary had started cheering in shrill unison and somebody said something about setting a closer field, but nothing was very clear when he tried to remember it all in detail later.
It didn't matter: the next man in, who Richard recognised from Wages, came with a suicidal plan already branded onto his brain. As Richard bowled he bullocked down the pitch like he was just out of a trench on the Somme and flung his head right back, dragging his body in an impossible arc, and halfway through his enormous executioner's swing overbalanced completely, falling backwards to the ground. Even then he could have made it back to his crease—Russell Hogan dropped the ball and fumbled it twice in stumping him—but instead he remained on the ground in a heaving fat heap, gazing upwards at the sky in a state of exhausted wonder, calculating, perhaps, the interest lost on withheld holiday pay.
That left the last pair. Richard didn't manage to get either of them in bowling five more increasingly anticlimactic overs, but such was the spell his luck had cast only two treacherous singles were taken from him, even though he continued to bowl fodder. Someone else got the final wicket in the end—there was quite an a
rgument about whether it was actually out, and people were gesticulating all the way back to the pavilion—and Admin were all out for 153, a collapse worthy, as someone said, of the New Zealand test team. From Workers’ point of view it had been an impressive recovery, considering the sorry state of things at drinks.
So what's that called again? Sandra picks at her big toe, pulls it up to examine it closer.
A double hat trick.
I thought a hat trick was three batters out in a row.
It is, yes.
She looks up from her foot. Well then four should only be one-and-a-third hat tricks. What an idiotic game.
Embarrassed and overwhelmed by the insistent praise of most of his team, Richard agreed with Nigel that he should bat down the order. He needed time to sit back and recover, and also, of course, a chance to live again to himself those few delicious moments when in four balls he'd rewritten cricketing history.
Probably we won't need you at all, said Nigel.
Workers' batting was abominable. Nigel opened—he'd opened the bowling as well—and was out in the fifth over for 2. Others went and returned, all flailing wildly. Russell Hogan belted a couple of meaty sixes, but when Richard's turn came they were 38 for 8, and then, before he'd even faced, 38 for 9, at which stage Ewen Holbrook—who'd been given no choice at all about his place in the order—arrived at the crease.
Just play straight and hit the loose ball, I reckon, but make sure it's along the ground, Ewen advised when he first came out, but almost every delivery seemed loose. It wasn't at all clear why everyone else had done so badly. Richard took the simple approach of attempting to swipe the cover off the ball every time. In the main this resulted in precarious snicks and skewed slashes, with the odd attempted drive managing to dribble back past the bowler for a single, but by this time Richard knew he couldn't get out no matter how badly he played. He was dropped twice, one a simple caught and bowled, and the other time by the keeper, who'd dispensed with his glasses after one of Richard's snicks had nearly hit him in the face. At one point he did his best to run himself out, sprinting up to the other end of the pitch only to find Ewen standing beside him, but the return flew about ten metres over the keeper's head for 4 overthrows. Ewen, on the other hand, was obviously talented, and he compiled runs with easy and orthodox confidence. It was somewhat surprising then, when with 15 runs required for victory and his own score on 62, he holed out to cover, who juggled, but held. Admin had won, the fourth year in a row.
Richard and Ewen walked back to the pavilion together, shaking Admin hands. Victory made praise of their stand easier, and everyone commented on how close it had been. Usually these people just glided by in a corridor without even smiling. Two women were waiting for Ewen and Richard with more orange to drink; they seemed excited by their effort. They smiled easily, refilled their glasses when they'd finished, made semi-intimate jokes about each other as if the batsmen knew them well.
You must be tired, said one to Richard seriously. Her fingers brushed his arm. He thought of Sandra, flopped back in an armchair watching videos, smoking the last of the ounce. He smiled at the two pictures of himself in the woman's sunglasses.
There's a whole party to go yet, he said. Can't be too tired for that.
Nigel had already opened the bar, and the rest of the Workers were barricaded into closed groups. There was certainly no welcoming party. Stoic, Richard went for a drink. The choice was DB.
Richard was used to spending entire Saturday nights engineering complex social manoeuvres just getting near a table and free chairs; now, with a surfeit, everyone chose to stand. The tables were used for empties, which in turn were used for ashtrays, the proper ones ignored. The room was already starting to fill with smoke.
The constant need for replenishment of supplies of beer made conversation easier as people left holes in their groups to go to the bar, and Richard found himself in amongst a few of his own team. They were arguing about South African locks. It occurred to him that he worked with these people every day and still knew almost nothing about them. They were faces in the back row of the annual photo.
Once the question of the locks had been resolved, the talking lulled—probably because he'd invaded—and one tall guy whose own bowling had been battered mercilessly looked Richard in the eye.
You must have good figures, mate.
Richard sipped on his beer. It was a time to be careful.
Yeah. He waited. Pity we lost though.
Everyone exhaled together, as if this comment had smashed some wall that had been damming the conversation.
Sure was, said one. By jeeze, we've had them Admin pricks on the ropes every year but they always seem to scuzz out. Bloody weasels.
Yeah, said another, Marshall O'Donnell, a welder well known about the floor for his lively driving and the utter baldness that had come to him so young. Same again this year, he said. Wallies. I'd've liked to've seen them without Don Bradman.
Yeah, said everyone together, and talk drifted into an argument over Bradman's test average. Marshall wanted to bet a grand it was 207.66, but the tall guy maintained that the only Australian with an average over 30 was Greg Chappell.
It's a total myth about Bradman, he explained, full of knowledge. He just had a couple of well-remembered innings, that's all. He ignored the offer of the bet.
Well one of his better innings was today, that's for sure, said the other member of the group, and they all groaned again, bound by loss. He looked at Richard.
You're lucky you didn't have to bowl to him. Richard let them drift back into further sporting argument and left them to it. He'd always thought Don Bradman's test average was 99.9 something.
Sandra sits forward, wrinkling her forehead.
So this guy you pretended to catch out actually plays for Australia?
Who?
Dan Bradman.
No, that's just what we called him. And I didn't pretend to catch him out. I told you …
Why? What was his real name?
I don't know.
So why Dan Bradman?
I don't know, 'cause he was good in his day, like this guy, I s'pose. And it's Don.
Okay, she says, turning back to the television. Sorry.
The woman who'd given him the orange drink and brushed his arm had been right. He was tired. He should never have worn jeans, and he should have worn a hat. Now he was drinking far too fast; he had to keep accepting toasts to his own health, and the woman kept reappearing beside him and filling up his glass. Each time she'd slide up against him a little bit more, like a cat as it gets past teatime. He sort of half-liked her—it was hard not to get turned on by her soft arm on his—but he presumed she was supposed to be attached. The last thing he wanted was a fight, especially with his pants down. And San …
I suppose I should be pleased you remembered me at all, she says.
Except for the batsman he'd got first, Eric, who avoided him all night so far as he could later remember, all the Admin players brought him drinks, congratulated him over and over, full of admiration. They asked who he played for, wanted to know how to spin a ball properly, sought his opinion on the current test line-up.
The drunker he got, the more elaborate his story became. He'd played minor county in England as a semi-professional and the pundits had predicted a future—he'd got Botham for two ducks in one match and he'd had him to tea last time he'd toured here; contrary to popular belief Ian was a teetotaller—but he'd fucked his back shifting wood. He still liked turning out in social games. He wasn't able to bowl at his full powers of course, but sometimes his natural skill got the better of him anyway. His doctor didn't like him playing, but some people have cricket in their blood. He always said the way to succeed in the game was to set reasonable goals for yourself and once they were attained to set further reasonable goals.
You've got to have something to aim for, he explained with increasing force to one person after another, but it's got to be within range.
He told
the man nearing retirement he'd got out for a duck that he'd always commiserated most with the second victim when he'd got his hat tricks, because the first guy, well, that was tough; the third knew the trick was on. The second guy was like the ham in the sandwich. He told the other two he always felt sorriest for the last in the hat trick, because the last guy was always mesmerised by what had gone before.
They believed him, felt reprieved. Ellen, who by now had introduced herself with a breathy whisper, wanted him to come out to her car, just for a minute, to help her with a few things, she couldn't say what. She was gently pulling him by the wrist to the door—he only really resisted because in his half-manic state he was all set to show the guy who always chain-smoked in the café at lunchtime a few useful grips to help him spin to the leg with greater accuracy—when Nigel started clattering two cans together, calling for silence.
Come on, whispered Ellen, this is crap, but Richard held back.
I've got to wait, he said. It's the awards. Ellen tightened her grip.
Fuck the awards, she said between her teeth. I thought you didn't care.
Nigel made a short speech thanking everyone for coming and the girls for their sterling work. He concluded, having acknowledged the Admin victory with a breath-held grace and promising a different story next year, with praise for cricket itself, which had won on the day, was a funny game—which was why everyone here loved and played it—the best thing being that even losers could be winners. Nobody could understand what he meant by that but everyone clapped anyway as he introduced Mr Holtz, who'd rolled in specially to present the prizes.
Holtz's thick German accent made his English almost indecipherable. His speech, prepared on small cards, was a long eulogy to excellence. He hadn't watched the game because, being German, he didn't understand it. But in all walks of life, and all sports, there was excellence. There was excellence in the workplace, and excellence at play. It seemed, listening to him go on, that excellence was a particularly pervasive plague, infesting the entire world. Excellence was easily recognised. And it was his happy duty to reward it, on this occasion with alcohol.
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