The Rules of Backyard Cricket

by Jock Serong

  There’s no response, other than grunts.

  ‘You’re ten, idiot. No one even does stretches in the under-fourteens.’

  The grunting from above stops momentarily.

  ‘So what are you doing?’ he says.

  ‘Nothin. Just relaxing.’

  Which is mostly true. I’ve got the bat in my bed, but that’s routine. I’m staring at the McDonald’s team poster on the wall: the Benson and Hedges World Series Cup, a three-cornered stoush between Australia (moustaches), the West Indies (beards) and England (I don’t even care). They sit and stand in their bleacher rows in the burgers-and-cigs promotional shot, front row (keepers, spinners and batsmen) with fists neatly clamped on their knees, back rows (the quicks) with hands behind backs, exactly the way we’re drilled in school photos.

  Wally’s gone quiet. He’s got his bat in the bed too, I know. It’s a Gray-Nicolls, the plain one with the red stripe down the back before they started making one-scoops (like Clive Lloyd, the Big Cat, used) and double-scoops (Hookesy). I’ve been enduring weeks of Wally’s knocking-in rituals; the patient tapping of the bat’s face with a rubber mallet the sports store lent him. The pinpricking of the timber so the linseed oil seeps in better. I can smell the linseed now. If he gets it on the linen Mum’s going to explode.

  ‘What are you doing up there?’

  ‘Lying straight.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So I don’t get any cricks.’

  I feel a stab of panic. Should I be doing this?

  ‘What’s a crick?’

  ‘It’s when you lie crooked, like when you sleep with your head on one side and you wake up and your neck’s all stiff.’

  ‘That’s the dumbest thing ever. I’m not going to do that.’

  ‘Fine. Didn’t ask you to.’

  Despite this, I spend a few minutes getting myself in a position in bed from which I can watch the poster but ensure no part of my body is disarranged in any potentially crippling way.

  I’m still looking at the poster. To my eight-year-old eyes, these cricketers are Men. Men. Tough, resourceful, but other-worldly.

  I wonder if Dad plays cricket. I forgot to ask him.

  Tomorrow I will take on whatever Our Lady Help of Christians Laverton can throw at me. I will hook and pull and cut and drive, and lean nonchalantly on my bat handle as my shots hurtle past faraway boundary cones. Tomorrow, hair will appear on my forearms. Sharp catches will no longer sting. My voice will drop and I will use it sparingly and without emotion. Unless, of course, I am appealing for a leg before.

  Tomorrow, I will join their ranks.

  Wally clicks his light off. I leave mine on.

  If he comes back, I’ll ask him.

  It dawns bright and hot, as I’m sure all those days did. Statistically of course there must have been cloudy ones, rainy ones—probably more then than now—but memory’s discarded them. There’s a thing about dawn on such days. It smells clean and promising, the dew on warming grass, the house silent and close.

  We’re sharing a bag of gear; two bats but one pair of pads. I get gloves because I’m a lefty, and the communal kit at All Saints will have right handers’ gloves. Mum will have gone without something to make this happen, but I’m not wired to consider it.

  She’s whited our sneakers the night before, left the coloured stripe at the heel unpainted as she knows we like it, and she zincs our noses before we leave. Lastly, she solemnly presents us with our new caps, shaking our hands and patting our shoulders. Sponsors and dignitaries will perform the same ritual in coming years, and it won’t compare. I can still see her now, just lingering a moment as we try to get to our bikes. She’s watching us, feeling something.

  We ride down to the oval, elated, swerving great loops as the sun begins its arc. Wally’s tucked the right leg of his whites into the sock so the chain won’t grab the hem, and I’ve loudly mocked him. This of course disallows me from doing the same, and by the time we get to the LA Reid Memorial Oval, my right hem is all chewed up and streaked with black.

  None of the kids in our side or theirs goes to our school, but they’re all older and they’ve been taught to shake hands.

  Someone tosses a coin, we bat, and Wally’s opening. I’m batting number six: I’m the smallest kid in the team, and it’s made clear that I should count myself lucky I’m not number eleven. I sit on a concrete step outside the grotty-looking clubrooms and plonk my head in my hands, supported on two knees. I can feel tears stinging my eyes.

  The greedy eyes of a seagull bore into mine. It watches me, cawing at half volume. Do you realise I’m making my debut here, you stupid bird? Mum will come down shortly with a polystyrene cooler of red cordial and her big sunglasses on, before she nicks off to work at the pub. And I’ll be sitting on this concrete step watching Wally bat with some idiot.

  I study Wal closely as he strides out across the mown grass, the patches of yellow daisies. The other kid’s a bit shorter and quite fat. He’s got a helmet, first one I’ve ever seen, with a big sci-fi-looking perspex faceguard. He’s talking to Wally. I know my older brother well enough to know he’s not listening. The fielders wander around trying to decipher their positions.

  A plane drones faintly across the sky.

  They’re settling in their spots as the other kid takes guard. He asks for two centres and then tries to scratch the mark with his shoe which is, of course, impossible on concrete. The keeper points out the stick of chalk behind middle stump, so now he has to take off a glove and painstakingly draw a line on the pitch. It’s supposed to represent the line the ump gave him between the middle stump behind him and the one at the other end, but it looks to me as though he’s forgotten about that during the charade with the scratching and the chalk. This is confirmed moments later when the opening ball of the match—the first, glittering red new ball I’ve ever seen firsthand—takes out his off stump as he theatrically shoulders arms. The impact makes a woody doonk and the bails spin through the air like shrapnel from an explosion.

  I watch him trudging back towards us, trailing the toe of his bat. The bees circle out of his way.

  Past the opposition’s jubilant huddle I see Wally leaning on his bat, entirely unmoved.

  The umps are standing together at mid-off, deep in conversation as the next batsman frantically buckles his pads on, caught short by the sudden wicket. I didn’t mention, did I—the umps are the two coaches. Ours is Mr O’Flaherty, a strange little man.

  Strange.

  He doesn’t run, but sort of skips. His smile is birdlike. He watches everything intently. He watches us. At first I think it’s his attention to technique, but he’s not watching our shot selection. He’s watching us. At the second net session, Wally mistimed a hook shot then gave me a look of horror as O’Farty darted into his net and took up a position behind his back, arms wrapped over Wally’s shoulders and sharing his grip on the bat. His peculiar little belly was pressed into Wally’s shoulder blades, and there they remained, like the mating bears in the National Geographic, while he called for several more balls to be sent down.

  Here’s O’Farty in the bright sunshine of Saturday morning, standing swaybacked like a cartoon character, hands on hips and lips pursed in sour disapproval. He pushes his comb-over down on his scalp as the breeze lifts a single strand. Cricket is a game for gentlemen, he told us on Thursday night. At All Saints, we are all the best of chums…say it!

  Sullen silence.

  Say it!

  A mumbled repetition of his words floated back as we sat cross-legged on the grass.

  And nothing should get between a gentleman and his chums.

  O’Farty heads back to his position behind the bowler’s stumps as the next batsman reaches the pitch. The kid bowling has paced out a giant run-up. He’s been watching too much Lillee. In he charges, and new kid gets a nick through slips. Nobody can take a slips catch in junior cricket, Mum reckons. So have a fling when it’s outside off. If you nick it, you’re safe as houses. How righ
t she is. The ball streaks down to third man. New kid crosses through for a single and Wally’s got the strike. He puts his bat on the chalk line, confirms he’s a mile off middle, and sorts it out with the ump. Then he settles down over his bat and waits for Laverton’s opener to huff his way through that marathon run-up.

  He pitches it in the dust beside the concrete and Wally watches it roll through to the keeper with a look of disdain. He wanders down the pitch and flicks a clod of dry dirt off the surface with his bat. It looks cool: I make a mental note to copy him.

  Fourth ball is on his pads. Wally remains perfectly still, apart from his arms and bat, which swing a whipping half-circle around his body. The crack of perfect contact resounds around the agapanthus beds on the boundary. The ball bounces once on the field and comes straight to me where I sit outside the change rooms. People are cheering. Wally hasn’t moved. I take a quick look at the ball in my hand, gleaming a mysterious blood red in its coat of varnish. The centre of the sphere is embossed like a gravestone with gold lettering:

  KOOKABURRA—VCA APPROVED—5½ OZ.

  I am in love.

  I toss it back to the fieldsman and watch Wally smash it to the boundary twice more before Lillee ends his over and retreats to fine leg. Wally hasn’t looked up, hasn’t acknowledged anyone in the world.

  The kid bowling from the other end isn’t really up to it. His face is a tangle of reluctance. One look at him and I know what his schoolbag would smell like.

  He waddles in and bowls off the wrong foot, rolling his head with his arm as though they’re connected by one giant tendon. He looks like he’s learning freestyle. The results are much like last over: the kid batting with Wally gets dollar signs in his eyes as the swimmer lobs one high in the air. Down the pitch he charges, and misses it in a whoosh of flailing bat. The keeper has time to snatch at the ball twice before he finally gloves it, and he still makes the stumping. He whoops and runs around the stumps towards the bowler to celebrate. His shirt’s out and flapping in the sun. Mum told us never to let our shirts hang out.

  Second drop charges straight out there and moments later he’s back, having run himself out at the bowler’s end. At least it puts Wally on strike, and he doesn’t waste the opportunity—waiting for the swimmer’s looping deliveries to bounce, then swatting them tennis-style from overhead. The violence of his swings amazes me.

  Now it’s me wrapping my legs in the club’s pads, velcroing my wrists into my batting gloves. For a while I stare down the back of my bat towards the grass, my nose resting on the tops of the gloves. I can smell the timber and rubber of the bat handle. The clamour of another wicket comes to me, and I’m up and walking out there.

  I’m aglow. The world feels still and quiet. Wally is the most dependable presence in my world, even if he’s dependably annoying. And he’s out here in the middle: where I want to be.

  Now I’m looking down at that chalk line. Now I can see my feet placed either side of the crease, and looking up I see the circle of fielders closing around me. They’re all looking at me, trying in their childish ways to sledge me.

  Hey, who brought the club mascot.

  Don’t hurt him, Doggy.

  This one’s yours too, Doggy.

  It doesn’t matter at all. I can see the bowler at the far end of his Dennis Lillee run, shuffling the ball from side to side. He flicks his fringe, waits.

  Mr O’Farty is explaining to me that the bowler will be bowling right arm round the wicket, something I didn’t realise they do in real cricket. I can still see the faraway ball in his hand and I just want the thing. I want him to bowl it.

  He runs in and steps up into his delivery stride, the whole world silent but for those skipping footsteps and his breath, and he flings it and I can’t believe it’s a nude half-volley outside off stump, after all those taped balls and microwaved balls and assaults with sticks and wrestles on the ground and here I am in real cricket and I plonk a foot forward down the pitch and drop onto the other knee and give it everything and I get it a split second off the bounce and squarely in the middle of the bat and I can’t even feel the contact I’ve hit it so sweetly. I’ve wrapped the bat in its follow-through over my right shoulder and the ball is somewhere out past cover with a kid half-heartedly strolling after it but it’s gone, it’s gone, clattering into someone’s timber fence.

  At the end of the over I wander down the pitch to Wally, who is standing there mid-track like he’s brought my lunch to the grade two room.

  ‘Did you see that?’ I squeak.

  ‘Don’t stuff it up,’ he says. ‘We’ve got all day, and the bowlers are shit.’

  ‘You told on me last time I said shit.’

  Wally ignores me and points his bat vaguely back at the other end. ‘This guy’s just lobbing it. Real slow, doesn’t spin. But it bounces pretty high.’

  And he’s right. The ball is rapidly getting chewed up by the concrete, and it now looks all shaggy and pink. The first couple bounce over my shoulder and the keeper, pale and pudgy, has to leap up and glove them over his head. I’m not going to let him bounce another one of these farcical deliveries past me, and when he does it again, I swipe at the thing somewhere near my ears and succeed only in getting a thick edge on it.

  For a second I have no idea where it’s gone, but then I’m conscious of a second noise. A sort of tempered crack.

  I look back to see that my nick has shot straight into the keeper’s eye, and there’s already blood running down his cheek from a split in his eyebrow. He’s squealing, looking at me in outraged self-pity like I meant it. He shakes his keeping gloves off and puts his hands to his face. The blood leaks through his fingers and onto the white cuffs of his long-sleeve shirt. The colours, under the bleaching sun, are so beautiful I find myself transfixed for a moment.

  And now there’s another noise—Wally’s thundering down the pitch yelling at me to run. The ball’s ricocheted off the keeper’s face and out to point, where the fielding side seem momentarily to have forgotten it.

  I take off as directed by Wally. The last thing I see as I leave the crease is three perfect drops of blood on the grey-white concrete.

  By lunchtime, Wally and I have retired on thirty, then come back in again after the other wickets have fallen, finishing on eighty-two not out and fifty-nine not out respectively. Towards the end, Wally has started farming the strike to prevent me catching up with him. I’m tempted to run him out.

  Someone’s mum has provided lunch. Jam sandwiches, squashed and warm. Cheese sticks. Apples and bananas. We are the toast of the All Saints under-twelves, and for the first time in my life, older kids want to talk to me, want to ask me what I think. This is unprecedented of course, as Wally would no sooner seek my opinion than volunteer that it was him who put the Lego man in the gas heater. As I bask in the warm glow of celebrity, O’Farty approaches.

  Wally moves imperceptibly closer to me.

  ‘Now lads,’ he begins. ‘Very proud of you. So proud.’

  His face squishes into a sort of joyful cat’s bum squint, like he’s bitten a lemon and somehow loved it.

  ‘But.’

  Now he’s spat the lemon.

  ‘I was saddened by your display of poor sportsmanship out there.’

  I’m immediately baffled. No one had even got close to getting us out. No one had had anything to appeal for.

  ‘Darren, you struck that poor boy on the face. He’s gone off to the hospital for stitches. But you didn’t even look back at him, you just took off running. And you, Wally, you were possibly worse because you’re older and you called him through. You should know better.’

  The Brothers Keefe are dumbstruck. Wally finds his voice first.

  ‘But there was two in it. ’Snot my fault they weren’t looking.’

  ‘No amount of runs or wickets should ever replace common decency, you two.’

  He has his hands on our shoulders. I’m developing doubts about his version of common decency by now. The hands move to our hair, ruf
fle it. I’ve got my face down in confusion, and I observe that he has an odd-shaped, pouchy groin.

  ‘Next time, your priority should be to ensure that he’s all right. Now put in a big effort in the field and play like men, not boys. Eh?’

  My face is hot with embarrassment. Other kids are staring at us, trying to eavesdrop as they chew like Herefords on the spongy white bread.

  We watch him skip off, with his strangely light-footed gait, into the pale green sea of the field.

  ‘That man,’ declares Wally, ‘is an idiot.’

  Home that night, cheese and crackers after enduring a bath with Wally. All Saints have won the game by, I’ve lost count, by a lot. Winners are grinners, Mum chirps as she gets out the special glass platter that crackers always go on.

  It’s pine stools at the kitchen bench, the last of the day’s sun making golden squares on the wall.

  We get a Tab Cola to share while she flips the lid off a bottle of beer with a little fft and pours it into a special glass with a gold rim. I know from my pub days that she never drinks at work, not even a knockoff when she’s done. The drinkers would assume she’s a teetotaller. Never at work and never, until now, something she does with us. I take this as further evidence that something massive has shifted today. A door has opened into a new realm.

  She slides open the second drawer, under the bench next to her stool. Out comes the ashtray, one of her tiny personal totems. Fine china with sparrows on it. A flat rim with the four little dips where the cigger lies.

  She wants to know about footwork, running between wickets. Wally answers all the questions with his phony man-voice on. Until, mouth deliberately half-full of biscuit, I ask Mum about the keeper, about O’Farty’s lecture.

  She blows her smoke high towards the kitchen fluoro, aiming at the silhouettes of dead insects.

  ‘Did you do it deliberately?’ she asks, after a thoughtful pull at her beer.

  ‘No. It was an edge.’

  ‘It was,’ concurs Wally. ‘It was a crap shot and he had no control over it.’