by Brett Lee
‘Anyway, you didn’t write that bit about coming straight home on your little piece of paper here,’ I said, waving it in his face.
He grabbed the paper from me, pulled a pen from his shirt pocket, and squeezed in another sentence.
As soon as I have seen Dean Jones in hospital, we can leave.
‘No.’ As soon as I said it I knew I didn’t really mean it. I think Rahul did too.
‘What did you say?’ he asked, flabbergasted.
‘Oh, well, okay,’ I said, shaking my head. I thought for a moment that he was about to hug me. Instead he stuck out his hand. I took it.
‘You won’t regret this. I promise.’
We decided that I would stay the night at Rahul’s on Sunday. Dad would drive me over to his place late in the afternoon. We would say that we wanted to put in a good couple of hours on our cricket projects as Mr Pasquali would be checking on our progress on Monday morning. We felt sure there wouldn’t be a problem.
‘You’re lucky, Rahul. I found some old Wisdens in Dad’s garage last weekend. I’m pretty sure he had the 1988 one.’
‘Fantastic. You won’t forget it, will you?’
‘I’ll try not to.’
Monday—afternoon
Nat had set the hallway up for a monster game of indoor cricket. She had bundled together 25 pairs of socks, all different shapes, sizes and colours. The game was simple, but heaps of fun. She would throw the socks at me as hard as she could. The wicket was an open door behind me. I had to belt the socks with the bat. The scoring was simple.
Having 25 pairs of socks was great—25 deliveries. It meant she had raided all available drawers in the house and that I was a good chance to make my 50—as long as Mum didn’t catch us first. If I got my 50 I would definitely be giving Nat a bat.
‘Nat, you want a hit?’ I asked her. I’d made 67, but had been bowled once and caught once. I was happy with 47.
‘Only if you bowl under-arm.’
‘No probs.’ We gathered up the socks and I thought of Ally, the catcher in softball, as I pinged the socks at Nat, who was swinging the bat like a softballer.
After dinner I put through a call to Ivo at the hospital. He sounded pretty flat.
‘How are you feeling, Ivo?’
‘I’ve been better. But Mum says I’m over the worst.’
‘So will you be in there long?’
‘Probably another couple of days. I’ve got some internal bleeding, which they want to monitor or something. They had to operate too.’
I didn’t want to ask about the actual crash. I was assuming that no one else was hurt.
‘Watch out for driveways, Toby.’ Ivo’s voice was quiet.
‘You were on your bike?’
‘Yup. Remember that day in the gym when I had that headache?’
I nodded.
‘I was riding home and could hardly see, my headache was so bad, then this car rammed into me.’
‘Geez. They probably weren’t even looking.’
‘I think we both weren’t.’ There was a pause.
‘The cricket’s going well. We’ve got a one-dayer coming up this weekend.’
‘Oh, cool. They’re the best, aren’t they? When you can go home with a result. Hang on.’ I heard Ivo talking to someone. ‘I’d better go, Toby. Thanks for ringing.’
I liked Ivo. And I felt sorry for him, stuck in a hospital bed. Still, it sounded as if it wouldn’t be too long before he was back with us playing cricket. I wondered if Ally would be willing to give up her wicket keeping to him.
I rang the hospital again and this time asked for Jim, but he wasn’t available to talk.
‘Is he okay?’ I asked.
‘Who’s calling?’ said a bossy voice.
‘His grandson,’ I lied.
‘Well, you ask your mum or dad to ring.’
Maybe it was time to try a new one. A new fib, that is.
Wednesday—afternoon
We had our library session on Wednesday. Rahul told us all, including Mr Pasquali, more about his interviews. The one with Dean Jones had been by phone. Even Scott Craven was listening, though he pretended to be working. Gavin Bourke was so interested that he started asking a question—before Scott gave him a not-so-gentle whack in the ribs.
‘Go on, Gavin. That sounded like a good question,’ said Mr Pasquali, giving Scott a bit of a warning look.
‘Well, he said that you’d actually have to be there to get a feel for the heat.’ Rahul was looking at me, pointedly. ‘He said it was just shocking. And smelly too. There must have been some sort of sewerage place, nearby.’ Everyone was saying ‘yuk’ and ‘gross’ and wrinkling their noses.
‘It was gross!’ I said, without thinking. ‘I mean, it would have been,’ I stammered. ‘Rahul was telling me about it earlier.’ I felt my face going red.
I had brought Dad’s copy of the 1988 Wisden to school. At the end of the library session I ducked over to the photocopier and copied the page describing the tied Test match. The scorecard for the game was on the second page.
I didn’t know what to expect when the sheets came out, but I was relieved to find that I could read them without a problem. The writing and numbers were clear and still. It must be the Wisden book itself that was the trigger for the time travel.
I folded the pages and put them in my pocket. I would practise with those, training my eyes to go straight to the correct spot. Hadn’t Jim said that, with practice, you could go to any specific part of a game by looking at the relevant section of the scorecard?
Rahul’s interview with Mr Bright, as he called him, was great too.
‘Poor Ray Bright,’ said Rahul. ‘You know, he was very, very sick too, just like Dean Jones. He almost didn’t play. He was so relieved when Australia won the toss and batted. It meant he didn’t have to go out into the field.’
‘So he just watched from the comfort of the dressing room?’ I asked.
‘Comfort? Oh, no. He lay on a table all day with wet towels on him. He doesn’t remember anything about that first day until the captain, Allan Border, came up to him with about half an hour to go and said, “You’re night watchy.”’
‘Night what?’ someone asked. Everyone was leaning forwards, listening to Rahul.
‘Night watchy. Night watchman. You come out if a wicket falls close to the end of play to protect the batters up the order.’
‘Sounds stupid to me,’ said Scott.
Rahul looked at him. ‘Well that’s what they did. And sure enough, a wicket fell and poor Ray Bright had to struggle off his sick bed—having eaten nothing all day—and walk out into 40°C heat to face the Indian bowlers.’
There was a pause.
‘Well?’ I asked.
‘It will all be revealed in my talk,’ Rahul said, smiling.
‘Yeah, but what happened to Bright?’ Gavin asked.
‘You’ll hear it all when I present my assignment,’ said Rahul with a cheeky grin. There were a few groans of disappointment. ‘It’ll be just as if I was really there,’ he added.
I gave him a look. He just shrugged and smiled.
In a 1903 game between Victoria and Queensland, Victoria used only two bowlers in each innings. In the first, Saunders 6/57 and Collins 4/55 took all the Queensland wickets. In the second, two different bowlers grabbed all 10 wickets (Armstrong 4/13 and Laver 6/17).
15 The Proof
Thursday—morning
BEFORE school started the next day, Jimbo approached me when I was talking to Ally, Jay and Georgie.
‘Hey, Jimbo,’ I said.
‘Toby, can I ask you something?’
I moved away from the others and Jimbo followed.
‘I’ve been thinking a bit about our chat the other day. I want to find out some more about what happened the day my father decided to walk away from cricket, and I thought you might be able to help me.’
‘Oh,’ I was a bit shocked. Jimbo was the sort of guy who never asked for anything. ‘How could I do that
?’ I asked.
‘All I know is that it happened on his birthday, which is the same day as the Boxing Day Test match. And I’ve also been hearing some pretty amazing things about some Wisden books and your ability to time travel from a library.’
‘You have?’ I asked, surprised.
‘Yes, from Rahul, and he isn’t the sort of guy to make up stuff like that.’
‘Rahul told you?’ I was stunned.
‘Not as such. But like I said, I’ve heard things. You know how you do.’
I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant, but somehow, if there was anyone who would know what was going on without appearing to—or even seeming interested—it was probably Jimbo.
‘Anyway, I rang up my grandfather and found out that Dad’s game wasn’t far from the MCG itself. It was in a big park where there are heaps of ovals and grounds.’
‘Hmm. So we go back to the Test match, then try and get to the ground where your dad is playing. And then what?’ Two lines from the poem ran through my mind.
Don’t meddle, don’t talk, nor interfere
With the lives of people you venture near.
‘Nothing. I just want to see and understand for myself why my father has made this decision. Then maybe I can accept it and we can get on better.’
I thought of Rahul and his reaction to the Madras Test.
‘Jimbo, strange things happen when you travel through time. You sort of lose control. You might do something stupid. If you interfere with the past it can change things and stuff up the present.’
Jimbo looked at me hard. ‘I can be trusted, Toby.’
Jimbo rang his mum during lunchtime. He’d said she was a safer bet for getting permission for him to come round to my place.
‘Yeah?’ I asked as he put the phone down.
He nodded.
‘Yeah. I think she was actually pretty pleased. Dad’s going to pick me up at nine o’clock. He’s working late. I think that helped. Should you ring up your parents?’
‘Nah, it’ll be fine. I’m always bringing home friends. They’re used to it.’
I introduced Jimbo to Mum and Nat after school when they collected me. Mum seemed pleased that I was bringing home a new friend. She celebrated by stopping off for ice-creams on the way home.
Nat had taken a fancy to Jimbo right from the outset, and I had to wait till she had given him the full tour of the house before we could get upstairs and onto the computer.
‘Can we do corridor cricket?’ Nat whispered to me at my bedroom door. ‘I’m gonna get every pair of socks in the house—you’ll see.’
‘Okay, Nat, but later, okay?’
We logged into the best site on cricket that I knew. I had it bookmarked and often went there myself to check up on various games, especially the ones that Dad spoke about.
Every game—Test match, World Cup, one-day international and any other official first-class game—was listed. Most of them had full scorecards and match reports and some of the later ones even had a commentary so you could read what happened, ball by ball.
‘Jimbo, what year did your grandpa say for that game with your dad?’
‘Not sure, but it was early ’80s and the Boxing Day Test was an Ashes one, which means—’
‘Yep. Australia–England,’ I said, excitedly. I scrolled down, searching for the December Tests played in Australia. I knew that 1982 was an Ashes series; since England only came out every four years, it would have to be that year.
‘Oh, my God, Jimbo.’
‘What?’
‘It’s the 1982 Boxing Test match. The one that Border and Thomson had their huge last-wicket partnership and nearly won the game for Australia. Better still, Dad’s got the Wisden down there in the garage.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Wisden. It’s what we need to get there. And the exact game is down there, in the 1984 Wisden!’
We spent the next 10 minutes looking over the scorecard. I told Jimbo the story about the match that I still loved having Dad tell me.
I was just up to the final morning when Dad called us down for dinner.
‘No worries. I’ll get him to finish the story. He won’t mind.’
We raced downstairs and into the kitchen. Dad told the story during dinner. He went a bit overboard when he got to the part about everyone stopping what they were doing to listen and watch the game. This time he had parliament stopping and trains and buses coming to a complete standstill as the whole country tuned into those fateful last minutes.
After dinner—and a quick game of corridor cricket—we raced back upstairs.
‘Okay, here’s the plan. We’re going to head out to play some cricket in the nets. On the way we grab the street directory from the car—’
‘And the Wisden book from the garage?’ Jimbo added.
‘And the Wisden book from the garage. No! We’ll go to the garage. Let’s go from there.’
Jimbo nodded excitedly. In fact, it was the most excited I’d ever seen him.
‘You are so going to like this,’ I told him.
‘It’ll be the best nets session I’ve ever had!’
I gathered up some loose change from my desk and we headed out, saying we were going for a hit in the nets at the oval across the road.
‘You expecting that someone has left all the gear there for you, too?’ Dad asked as we headed out the front door.
But Jimbo was a quick thinker. ‘I left my kit down in your garage, Mr Jones, we’re going to take that.’
‘Fair enough. You want an extra bowler?’
We stood there shuffling our feet.
‘Then again, maybe I’ll clean up the kitchen first.’
‘Okay, Dad.’ I felt a bit bad. Dad loved a hit. I’d make it up to him. We’d have a massive hit over the weekend.
A few minutes later the two of us were standing in the garage. Jimbo was holding the street directory, and I was holding the Wisden.
‘Here Jimbo. You find the Boxing Day Test match. Check the contents page.’ I passed him the Wisden and took the directory from him. I found the MCG and looked around for some green patches—ovals where his dad might have played.
‘Did your grandfather have a name for these ovals, Jimbo?’
‘Not that I recall. He just said that there were stacks of ovals, for rugby and hockey and soccer. Footy, and of course, cricket. Oh, and they were next to a hospital. A hospital that had—probably still has—a helicopter service. You know, for emergencies.’
‘Yep, I know.’ Jimbo heard the excitement in my voice. ‘I know exactly, I think.’
I flicked to the next page.
‘Got it. I reckon we’ll just take this with us,’ I said to Jimbo, holding the open page to him.
‘Here we go, England in Australia and New Zealand. Page 879.’ Jimbo flicked through the book.
‘Toby, you can get to any of these games? And this is just one Wisden!’
‘Yep. I think so. As long as there’s a scorecard for me to look at.’
Jimbo was shaking his head.
‘This is just crazy.’ He was searching for the right page. ‘What Test match was it?’
‘The fourth.’
‘Here we go. Pages 898 and 899. This is it.’
‘Okay, let’s swap again.’ We passed the books back.
‘What happens to the Wisden? Does it come with us?’
‘No, it sort of just falls to the ground.’ For the first time, Jimbo began to look a bit nervous.
‘You okay?’
‘Yep—let’s do it.’
‘Here, grab my hand.’ Jimbo took it. We sat down on the floor of the garage, next to the open kit.
I looked at the page of the Wisden. I must have been getting better at it, because almost straight away the shifting swirl of names and numbers had settled. Soon I saw a Cook, then a Fowler.
‘Cook, Cook,’ I said, slowly and clearly.
‘Now, Jimbo,’ I whispered as the familiar sound of rushing air and pressure s
urged through me.
A second later we were standing outside the MCG. I’m not quite sure how we managed to be outside the ground, but it was a good place to be. I had focused hard on the names of the first few English players on the Wisden page, and as I sensed the movement, kept my eyes away from the numbers. Even then, we had no idea how long it would take to get to the ground and then how long before whatever happened to Jimbo’s father actually happened.
Jimbo looked totally stunned.
‘Don’t ask,’ I said. ‘Just trust me. It works. We’ve just got to blend in.’ I looked at him. He was wearing runners that looked three sizes too big, the laces were undone, his cap was on back to front and his shorts went down below his knees.
‘Blend in as best we can,’ I added, spinning my cap the correct way. Jimbo’s mouth hadn’t closed.
We must have been the only two people walking away from the game. It was a beautiful sunny day and hordes of people with cheerful faces and huge Eskies were streaming towards the ground. Tight T-shirts, tight shorts, small white towelling hats, moustaches and thongs were everywhere. I felt as if I was from another planet, especially as I was walking away from the start of a Boxing Day Test match.
I spotted a line of taxis dropping people off.
‘C’mon, Jimbo.’
‘Yep. Just don’t leave my sight, Toby. You hear?’
‘I won’t.’
It proved easier than we thought and we didn’t need the directory. We climbed into the back seat of a taxi, gave the driver the name of the park and took off.
The cab driver’s radio was blaring out a song I’d heard on one of those radio stations that play ‘Golden Oldies’ music.
‘I know this song,’ I said to the driver.
‘“Eye of the Tiger”? Of course you do—it’s on the radio all the time.’ He smiled.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out some coins.
‘Seven dollars will do you,’ said the driver. I handed over the coins. The driver grunted.
