by Brett Lee
See page 603 for more details about Toby’s Under-13 competition.
BOOK 2 TOBY JONES AND SECRET OF THE MISSING SCORECARD
IT’S NOT JUST A GAME—IT’S TIME TRAVEL!
1 Imagination
Monday—afternoon
IT was raining. But our cricket coach, Mr Pasquali, who was also our teacher, wasn’t going to let that get in the way of cricket practice.
‘I’ll meet you outside the gym at a quarter to four,’ he said to Jay and me as we left the classroom at lunchtime. ‘See if you can find Ally and the others too,’ he added.
‘That shouldn’t be difficult for you, Toby,’ Jay laughed. Mr Pasquali had gone but I knew my face was turning red. Jay was always matching me up with some girl.
Only Martian was missing when Mr Pasquali led us into the gym. He had been our wicket keeper until he’d had an accident on his bike. But he was out of hospital now and getting better. His wicket-keeping had been taken over by Ally after the accident. I think Mr Pasquali, our coach, was going to have a tricky time when Martian was ready to return.
Mr Pasquali explained some rules for the indoor cricket game then quickly divided us into two teams.
‘Jono, Georgie, Rahul, Martian, Minh, Gavin, Jason and you Toby. Go over to that corner there and work out your batting order.’
‘Can I open?’ Georgie asked almost straight away.
‘Scott’ll be bowling,’ someone said.
‘I know,’ she replied, firmly.
Scott Craven was our number one strike bowler and all-round mean guy. I was glad we were on the same team, though even being team-mates hadn’t stopped Scott and me from crossing each other a couple of times already this season.
No one else seemed to be jumping up and down to take Georgie’s spot.
‘Okay, who wants to open with Georgie?’ I said. No one spoke. ‘Rahul?’ I asked.
Rahul sighed, but nodded.
I watched Georgie as she strode out to open the batting.
‘Have I gotta bowl slow to the girls?’ Scott asked.
‘Bowl as fast as you like,’ Georgie called out to him before Mr Pasquali had time to reply.
‘A tennis ball can’t hurt too much,’ I muttered to Jono, our captain for the Saturday games.
He smiled. ‘Depends where it gets you,’ he said, trying on a pair of batting gloves. ‘I’ll go in next, then you, Tobes, then Jason.’
We settled down on the benches along the far wall as the fielders took up their positions. There was a sense of excitement in the air as Scott yelled out his instructions.
‘Not that far!’ he shouted to Jay, who was now standing against the back wall. Jay smirked and moved in half a step.
‘Right then, everyone ready? Play!’ Mr Pasquali called.
Scott ambled in off a few paces then hurled the ball down to Georgie. She took a step back and swung at it. The ball raced towards the back wall, bisecting two fielders on the way. Georgie and Rahul walked through for the bonus run.
‘Whoa! Way to go, George!’ Ally called from behind the stumps. Ally was awesome. She played softball for a State league team and had amazing reflexes. She’d fitted into the team really well.
‘You don’t encourage people in the other team,’ Scott sneered, snatching at the ball that Jimbo tossed back to him.
‘Oh, lighten up, Scott,’ Ally muttered, crouching down to wait for the next delivery.
‘That’s enough!’ Mr Pasquali barked, clapping his hands. ‘Focus on your job, all of you.’
After that the game settled down. Scott brought himself back on to bowl when it was my turn to bat. That didn’t surprise me. Neither did the fact that Mr Pasquali no-balled three of his six deliveries for being too high. He was aiming for my head. I hooked the third of his no-balls and was neatly caught off the wall by Jimbo. Scott’s yell of triumph was shortlived, though, when he noticed Mr Pasquali’s arm outstretched to indicate another no ball.
Maybe the only assignment tougher than facing Scott Craven at full speed was bowling to Jimbo. His dad hadn’t let him play for the first three games of the season, but after last week’s game, when we’d seen Jimbo watching with his father, it looked like that might change.
Jimbo was a natural. He never seemed to rush. His timing and placement were perfect. During his four overs at the crease, he scored a massive 27 runs; and he hadn’t hogged the strike. Unlike Scott, Jimbo would be the last person to do that. We finished up with a score of 75 and won the game by 12 runs.
During the last part of the session, we did some short fielding drills. Mr Pasquali yelled out instructions and encouragement to everyone. He made you want to try again, even if you made a mistake. As usual, I felt tired but excited when the training session was over.
I stood behind the grandstand and looked left then right for the nearest drink stand. A deafening roar filled my ears. A six? Or maybe a wicket? But the thought vanished as the noise of the crowd dulled. I took a quick glance behind me. A terrifying figure was closing in on me, its long dark cloak billowing.
Where was everyone? Where were all the people who a moment ago were jostling and bumping me?
On the other side of the stand thousands of people sat transfixed, watching a game of cricket. But on this side, there was only the hooded figure and me. I edged away, my hands feeling behind me for the brick wall I was about to bump into. The figure advanced. I turned and ran, speeding off to my right, tearing around the outer perimeter of the grandstand. I plunged into a set of stairs, but immediately fell back, blocked by some invisible force. I struggled to my feet. The creature got closer.
My breath was coming in gasps as I focused on the path ahead. My strength was fading. I screamed in terror, realising I couldn’t outrun the figure.
Hot, foul breath steamed over my left shoulder. I gagged, gasped again for breath, then collapsed.
For a moment there was silence. Even the crowd had calmed.
Then I felt his bony hand on my shoulder, trying to turn me over.
‘Nooooooooooo!’ I screamed. ‘Heeeeeeeeeeelp!’
‘Look at me,’ the creature hissed. I gagged again as another blast of putrid breath spread over me.
I was shaking uncontrollably. But I obeyed. I turned my head slightly and opened my eyes.
‘Aaaaaaaaaagggggggggghhhhhhhhh!’
The scaly remains of a face glared down at me, blotched and red, with parts of bone protruding, scabby flesh dripping and hollow eye sockets.
With a burst of energy I jumped to my feet and tore off in the opposite direction, desperately searching for an opening to escape.
Suddenly the scene changed. Ghostly people slowly materialised before my eyes. For a few moments I charged straight through them, until I was bumped off course by a big guy with a beard and tattoos.
‘Oi! Look out, feller! Bloody idiot!’
I had just run straight into him and the four drinks he was carrying. We were both splashed.
‘S-s-sorry,’ I panted, easing up.
There were people everywhere now, talking, laughing. Kids were playing cricket on the grass down near the fence and there was a delicious smell of hot dogs, pies and chips. I bounded up the steps and looked out across the oval. Then I took one last fearful look behind me. It was as if I’d stepped into another world.
‘Toby!’ came a familiar voice. ‘C’mon, boy. Let’s have some lunch. I’ve got some great sandwiches up there, but I thought we’d do a bucket of chips each too. What do you say?’
‘Great idea, Dad.’ Tears welled in my eyes.
‘You okay, lad?’
‘Yep. I’m fine…now.’
‘C’mon. It used to get to me too when we lost a wicket last ball before lunch. But I’ll take three for 261 any day.’ Dad smiled and put a hand on my shoulder.
The hand felt bony. I jumped back and looked up into his face. Dad’s skin was cracking and shedding layer after layer, I saw the bones beginning to break through and…
‘Noooooooooo!’
I woke with a start. The familiarity of my bedroom washed over me: the Brett Lee poster, the collection of bats, racquets and other sporting things behind the door, the cricket ball on my desk. My nerves settled. Then I glanced at the old brown Wisden that Jim Oldfield had given me and my heart started to race again. Gently I pulled it down from the shelf. The feel of the book calmed me. It was heavy and strong. It was like a reliable friend. My thumb brushed its dull brown cover. I could open it now and be transported anywhere. These Wisdens were a free ticket to any game of cricket from the past. It was the most unbelievable gift. But it was also dangerous. I’d vowed never to travel again. I knew life would be safer, and a whole lot simpler if I just left these Wisdens alone. Then again…Shutting my eyes, I opened the book.
‘Toby?’
With relief, I closed the pages. ‘Dad?’ my voice croaked.
He opened the door. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Or dreamed about one. C’mon, you bludger, you promised me half an hour in the garage before school, remember? You said you wanted a go at soldering something too, didn’t you?’
I hopped in the shower quickly, threw my school clothes on and joined Dad in the garage.
‘So, did you have a bad dream?’ Dad asked, putting the soldering iron down and walking over to the boxes of books. I looked at his face. There wasn’t any cracking or peeling happening. But I held back all the same.
‘It was spooky—batting collapse. And I was a part of it.’
‘Ooh. Nasty. They’re the worst sort of dreams.’ Dad paused. ‘But spooky?’
‘Yeah, well, these strange creatures were bowling. They were wearing black clothes and had six arms and you couldn’t tell which hand had the ball.’
I was making it up as I went but luckily Dad was distracted by the Wisdens in the boxes. He flicked one of them open to the contents page, mumbled a few words, then thumbed through to the back.
‘He took nine wickets, you know. Not eight.’
‘Who?’
‘Richard Hadlee. Sir Richard Hadlee. And the 10th wicket?’
‘Run out?’
‘Nope,’ Dad said. ‘Caught Hadlee, bowled Brown.’
Dad had often talked about this game—the First Test match between Australia and New Zealand in Brisbane in 1985.
‘Here we are. Australia were 2 for 72. Struggling a bit, but not a bad position to be in at lunch.’
‘And?’
‘Well, even at 4 for 146 the Aussies would have been thinking 300, which in the conditions would have been a good, solid score. But Mr Hadlee had other ideas. We lost our last six wickets for 31 runs. Hadlee’s bowling analysis? Here you go, Toby, you read it out.’
I reached out to grab the book, then realised what would happen if I started to read the numbers.
‘Nah, you read it, Dad. You make it sound like you’re a commentator.’
‘I do?’
Dad looked a bit confused, but turned the book around and started reading.
‘23.4 overs, four maidens, 9 for 52.’
‘Is that the best Test bowling effort ever, Dad?’
He was just about to launch into a long spiel when Natalie, my younger sister, appeared at the door to tell him he had a phone call. Dad dropped the Wisden into my lap, picked up the box with all the other Wisdens in it and headed out.
‘Why don’t you see if you can find out,’ he called. ‘Then we’ll compare stories.’
Which was all very well except that I found it hard to read Wisdens. When I opened a Wisden I didn’t see a neat page of words and numbers; I saw a sea of blur. A spinning swirl of dairy-whip ice-cream; the words and numbers like little bits of chocolate chip, spinning in front of my eyes. I had ‘the gift’.
Jim, the old guy I met at the Melbourne Cricket Club library on our school excursion to the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the MCG, also had the gift. It was Jim who had guided me and helped me understand how to time travel. And who’d made me learn by heart the poem I needed to quote from to bring me back. He’d also warned me about the dangers involved. Like only being able to stay out of your own time for two hours before you had to return. And the danger of ‘carrying’: taking someone along with you. Jim had said that carrying could make you vulnerable to other presences and forces. I thought of the hooded figure in my dreams, and the one Jimbo and I had encountered when I took him back to see his father playing cricket as a young man. But I wouldn’t be carrying if I took a quick trip now.
‘Toby?’
I looked at my sister standing in the doorway. I knew what she was going to ask.
‘You want a game of corridor cricket? You can bat first.’
Natalie is nine years old and already a good tennis player with a mean double-handed backhand. She also loved playing cricket.
‘I still haven’t had breakfast,’ I said. ‘Maybe if we’ve got time later, okay?’
It would be the quickest trip I’d ever taken. What harm could it do? Five minutes, then back inside for breakfast and corridor cricket.
I waited for the door to close behind Natalie then opened the Wisden to the place my thumb had been resting in. I dog-eared the page as I watched the letters swirl around in front of me.
This was the moment. This was the amazing gift that somehow I had inherited. While almost everyone else in the world who reads a Wisden sees words and numbers on the page, when I opened the book a sliding, swirling mess of letters and numbers swam giddily in front of my eyes, spiralling in a vortex towards the middle of the page but never quite disappearing. But with instruction from Jim, I’d learned to eventually slow and finally stop the movement. And when that happened, when the letters finally formed into the words that everyone else sees straight away, the real adventure began…
I scanned down the page a little. The letters were small and hard to focus on, but in a few moments words started to appear. I was looking for a date, a place or any score. ‘No bowler to match…’ drifted into my vision, like a fish suddenly appearing just under the surface of the water, ‘…demolished the Australian innings…’ Suddenly, from nowhere, ‘Brisbane’ swept across the page.
A familiar rushing noise like wind and fast-flowing water grew inside my head as more words settled on the page. Although it was never painful, it reached a point where I knew something had to give…
Yuvraj Singh scored the fastest 50 in a match at Durban between India and England. He smashed his half-century in only 12 balls. The innings included 6 sixes and 3 fours.
2 Fire
THERE was a cry from all around. It wasn’t a shout of joy, more one of surprise. I turned to the field. Players from everywhere were rushing in to congratulate the bowler. I swallowed and stared. It was Richard Hadlee. He was tall, with black hair and a small moustache. His shirt sleeves were rolled up. An Australian batsman was walking slowly back to the gate. I looked at the scoreboard. We were eight for 175. Hadlee had taken every wicket to fall so far—all eight of them.
There weren’t many people about. Maybe the overcast and steamy conditions and the threat of rain had kept them away. Maybe they had a premonition about how the Test was going to unfold. I found a spot on a grassy bank and sat down. Like every other time I had travelled, I had arrived undetected. No one seemed the least bit interested in me having suddenly appeared, literally, from nowhere.
But the moment I had settled, I sensed that something wasn’t right. I turned sharply, aware of a presence not far away, and saw a hooded black figure almost floating over the grass. No one else seemed to have seen it.
I jumped to my feet and started walking quickly in the opposite direction. Surely the other spectators wouldn’t let anything happen to me? Unlike my dream, they were not disappearing or ghostly.
‘You cannot escape me,’ a voice rasped from just behind me.
It was time to leave. But my mind had gone blank.
‘Please help!’ I called, racing over to the nearest person. But he just looked at me and laughed. ‘Noth
ing I can do, mate.’
The guy next to him laughed too. ‘It’s only a game, little feller. Be the same when we bowl.’
My head was spinning as I lurched away and onto a concrete path. I turned around again, stumbled and fell. I hauled myself up, but not before a hand had reached out and grasped my shoulder.
‘I need help!’ the voice hissed.
I swung out with all my might. My hand hit something hard and a stab of pain sliced up my arm. I broke free of his clutches and veered off, away from the ground.
The poem. I gasped for breath. The poem. I desperately tried to recall two lines that would get me back to the safety of home but no words came to mind.
My dream had become real. We were away from the spectators now. Only a group of kids playing cricket were in sight. I came up against a fence and spun around. The figure was right behind me.
‘Stop,’ it whispered. ‘Stop running and listen.’
‘Help!’ I screamed.
A few kids turned to look at me. ‘What are you doin’?’ one of them called.
Suddenly the truth dawned on me. All they could see was a kid, all alone, backed up against the mesh fence, obviously looking like a complete idiot. The cloaked figure was invisible to them.
‘Is it a bee?’ another kid called, heading over to me.
I rolled to the left and started to run again, but had gone only a few metres when I was pulled back by a tremendous force.
I thrashed out again, this time more in anger and desperation. But the claw-like grip on my shirt wouldn’t let go. I felt the pain of sharp nails tearing at my stomach and froze in terror.
‘Help me, and I will leave you alone.’
I couldn’t look into the face of the figure that held me.
‘Don’t look, just listen,’ the voice hissed. I kept my head down. The hold on my shirt slackened and the pain from the scratches across my stomach eased.
