The Rules of Backyard Cricket

by Jock Serong

  ‘Fucking sook,’ I add. He’s a foot taller than me.

  ‘What’d you say?’

  He’s advancing on me as Wally comes down the wicket to defuse. The two umps meet us mid-pitch. One of them’s got his hands out in a conciliatory way like he’s soothing dangerous animals. Short Leg gives me a death stare as everyone gets back into position and the bowler runs in again.

  This time the bowler’s high in his delivery stride.

  ‘Commission-flat maggot.’

  His timing’s very good. I’ve pressed forward and missed outside off as the ball bends elegantly way from the edge of my bat. I turn and look him over without responding.

  ‘Fucked your mum,’ he adds, staring straight back. ‘She fuckin loved it.’

  I curl and uncurl one hand on the bat handle, imagine crushing the bridge of his nose with it so his breathing crackles through little chips of bone and the blood makes bubbles as the air comes out.

  Curl, uncurl.

  But somewhere within me, a switch is tripped. Not the one you’d expect, perhaps, from his inclusion of Mum in the banter. It isn’t tipping me towards white-hot fury, but into a state of perfect composure. A sudden understanding.

  I’m not hosing out a urinal so you can lose your temper and blow your big chance. That’s what she’d say.

  The bowler runs in again. Pitches perfectly straight at good pace on middle stump. Ordinarily, and two balls into an innings, I’d carefully defend such a ball. Not this time. I drop onto one knee and sweep across my front pad, making clean contact and whipping it square.

  There’s never any time to react at short leg. The best you can hope for is to flinch before the shot’s made, as you see the bat coming round. This fool hasn’t even moved and the sound of ball hitting bone just below his knee is nearly as sweet as the shot itself.

  He drops like a shot dog.

  It feels just like All Saints v Laverton. Wally calls me through, and we run two as Short Leg clutches his knee, a concerned mob gathering around him. I make sure I saunter, nice and relaxed, back to the crease and then turn to face him. You don’t want to overplay it when you’ve dealt an ace in such a situation, so I just watch him patiently as the skipper calls for a helmet and box and someone else takes his spot. He grimaces all Hollywood and limps off the ground.

  For another hour, the empty grandstand echoes sweetly with each connection of ball and bat. Their attack’s diminished with the opening bowler off the ground, and I can show off all I want. Wally chides me for indulging in what he calls ‘ball-watching’—my habit of remaining in a pose after a perfectly executed shot, showing no interest at all in running. And he’s right: I’m savouring every minute of it. In the distance I can see drivers marooned on Punt Road, windows down, arms hung defeatedly over door sills. They gaze longingly across the ground at us as though we’re splashing in a pool. This is an oasis.

  By lunch, Wally’s fifty-two and I’m not far behind him.

  The dining room is long and spacious. Everything’s laid on, and they have staff whose only job is to feed hungry people in whites.

  I scoff as much deep-fried food as I can. Wally’s loading up on fruit, the very thing we can already get for free. I scan the walls as I eat. Honour boards, black-and-white photographs, serious men. A kind of gravity I’ve never previously associated with the game. People who lived and played cricket and went to war and then died. I can’t equate all that commemoration with the joyful act of smacking a cricket ball.

  Wally has his fruit scraps neatly arranged on the side of his plate.

  ‘Let’s get back into ’em, eh?’ he smiles.

  We walk out of the dressing room and down the steps to the ground. I want to savour this moment. I’ve seen footage of Bradman and Ponsford walking together just like Wally and me, padded up and casually trailing our bats.

  But as the dining room door closes behind us, it’s clear that something’s changed.

  It’s hot, unbearably hot, and as we emerge from the shade of the grandstand the air tastes different. It even smells hot, somewhere between smoke and baking concrete. But something else feels wrong, and it takes a moment or two to work it out.

  The light’s changed.

  It’s heavier. No longer blinding and reflective, it’s taken on a malevolent hue, a tint towards brown or orange that’s loaded with menace. Wally’s pressing forward through the gate and onto the outfield, swinging his bat now. He hasn’t even noticed. Task driven, a commentator will say years later.

  There are no birds. Before lunch, there were seagulls all over deep midwicket, settled on the grass, rising reluctantly for a struck ball. Now they’re gone. So too are the mynas and sparrows in the street.

  Within a few deliveries, Wally’s gone too. Uncharacteristically wafting at a wide one, he nicks it through to the keeper and never looks back as he leaves. No doubt he’s satisfied that his half-century brought him the right kind of attention.

  The next batsman wanders out, looking, as I did, at the sky. Instead of heading for the striker’s end he ambles up to me, a big grin splitting his features under the cap. He thrusts a hand forward in greeting.

  ‘Mate! Craig Wearne!’

  I don’t know how I didn’t encounter this bear over lunch.

  His handshake is overpowering. I look down at his grip and see the oversize bulge of his forearm protruding from the shirt. His face is all puppydog giddy. Never have I seen a human being so desperate to be loved. Remembering after a moment that I’m no longer batting with Wally, I allow myself a smile.

  He waddles off down the pitch, saying g’day to each fieldsman he passes. None of them returns his greeting. As he walks, I’m conscious of how he fills his clothes, even his sneakers. He’s not fat, in the simple meaning of the term, but there’s so much of him.

  When he reaches the crease he doesn’t take guard or look at where the fieldsmen are placed. He thumps his bat happily into the turf and looks up to see where the bowler is. As the ball streaks towards him he plonks a foot down the wicket and misses by at least the width of the bat. He’s laughing at his own impetuousness, so he doesn’t hear the fieldsmen sledging him. Next ball he plays a very self-assured glide through gully, and it runs away slowly as a fieldsman pursues it.

  I call him through, charging down the pitch at him before I realise he hasn’t moved. We’re nearly standing next to each other.

  ‘Craig! Go!’ I scream. The fieldsman’s gaining on the ball.

  He looks at me calmly.

  ‘It’ll get there. Relax.’ He still hasn’t moved. The fieldsman lunges and slides. The ball finally tumbles into the gutter under the advertising boards.

  ‘See?’ His face isn’t boastful. He’s just happy things worked out.

  The next over, I finally reach fifty and he runs down the wicket and hugs me. We’ve known each other for eight minutes.

  ‘We’ll remember this,’ he says, suddenly dead serious. ‘You and me. This is special.’

  I don’t know where to look.

  It’s getting steadily darker, and now the umpires are looking skyward. It’s hard to tell what’s going on because the sun’s moved behind the grandstand and the MCG next door. The sky’s tint has become an orange glow like an eclipse. The umps confer briefly then ask me if I want to go off. I don’t. Craig, who hasn’t been asked, makes it clear that he too wants to keep batting.

  As the bowler wanders back to his mark, a stiff breeze picks up, swirling papers and leaves across the ground. It’s cold, cold air, instantly chilling the sweat on my back, and for a moment it’s a relief to feel the layer of hot air stripped off my skin. Then I’m cold like the heat never existed. I’m screwing my gloved hands against the rubber grip of the handle, trying to regain my concentration, when I realise that all the fieldsmen, and the umpires too, are looking up.

  There’s a wall collapsing across the sky.

  A plume, a cloud, an avalanche: none of these things. It looks like smoke but it’s a deep, rich brown colour. Alth
ough it floats across the sky like cumulus, it looks unbearably heavy. By unfortunate coincidence, we’ve been doing Pompeii in Ancient History, so I assume we’re all about to be petrified under ash. I’ll be found by archaeologists in cricket pads, smothered under the considerable bulk of Craig Wearne.

  People are running for the grandstand. I look at Craig, who looks back at me, momentarily unsettled. Then we both run after them.

  Outside the world drowns in haze. The stumps are still out there, lonely sentinels. But the far boundary is gone. Punt Road is not only invisible from here but silent too, like someone stopped a printing press. We sit around in the dining room under the stern gaze of the old bearded gents. One of the officials comes over.

  ‘They’re saying on the radio it’s a dust storm. Topsoil blowing down from the Mallee. Take a couple of hours to clear, but they reckon no one should be outside till it’s gone. So we’re abandoning the match.’

  Amid the chatter and complaints, he eyeballs me.

  ‘Well batted, son. Terrific.’ He’s looking over his glasses at me, like he really means it.

  I find Wally in the dressing room, carefully repacking his gear.

  ‘Would’ve been nice to win it,’ I venture.

  ‘We’ve made our point.’

  I feel a surge of irritation at this. ‘Don’t you want to bury those snobs?’

  He thinks for a moment before responding.

  ‘Not really. It’s rep cricket. It’s there for people to get a look at us, and they got a look at us.’

  Why doesn’t he feel these things? He’s placing a rolled-up towel into each pad as Mum did for me. Which reminds me, my pads are on the floor where I left them.

  Walking down the same flight of stairs I’d earlier used to go for a dart, I look at Wally with his bag slung over one shoulder, me with mine, and for a moment I could imagine autograph hunters awaiting us at the foot of the stairs. Passing through the gateway at carpark level, the light has brightened a little, though there’s still a heavy haze that shrouds the canopy of the big trees.

  There’s a huddled group waiting for us, but they aren’t autograph hunters.

  The skipper of Eastern Suburbs, now dressed in brand-name track gear. Hundred-dollar gym shoes. He’s gelled his hair and he’s leaning casually on the bonnet of a car. Beside him, their keeper. Beside him, the sledger from short leg.

  As soon as we emerge from the gateway, the keeper scuttles round us and seals off the exit. I hear Wally sigh in a way that says this is going to hurt. He puts his bag down, and I know he’s not thinking right now about the thrashing that’s imminent nor harbouring any concern for his kid brother’s safety, but weighing the prospect of getting through this without having his gear smashed up before his eyes.

  We’ve stopped walking. The skipper and the short leg have got up off the car bonnet and are advancing on us.

  ‘You fucking dirty bogan cunts.’ That’s the skipper, charmer of private-school mothers. ‘Did you try to backchat my friend here?’

  He’s looking at me. ‘Fuck, seriously, you’re a weed. What were you thinking?’

  Short Leg hasn’t spoken. Suddenly he leaps forward and swings a punch at Wally, who’s slightly closer. He staggers as he pulls up from the swing and extends a leg to try to kick Wally, who does the obvious and grabs the leg. They both tangle themselves faster than fishing line, but Short Leg’s got the better of it and he’s landing a few on Wally’s head as he clings on grimly. There’s clothes tearing and scuffing sounds from dragging footwear. I’m cursing Wal’s insistence on fighting fair—there’s ample opportunity to grab his balls or bite him, but oh no, not Brother Wally. And I shouldn’t be watching this because it means I’m not watching the skipper.

  Next thing, I’m lying on the gravel, face up with a clanging sound in my right ear where he’s hit me. I can’t work out how it took me down so easily, and how the world is swinging and tilting. It makes no sense, and then I see him coming again and I know why. He’s got a cricket bat. Wally’s cricket bat, raised above his right shoulder and coming down.

  I roll left and it smashes into the ground, but that only delays the inevitable, because he’s got it golf-style beside my head now and he nine-irons me hard in the ear.

  This one hurts. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut as he starts getting into my ribs with those expensive boots; again and again, grunting slightly with the effort each time. I watch him wind up the backswing for another kick when he’s struck from the side with enormous force by a flying human who isn’t any of us. From inside my private cloud of pain and disorientation I struggle to recognise the bulky stranger.

  My new best mate, Craig Wearne.

  The skipper’s winded by the impact, lying on his side a few metres from me, gasping like a goldfish. And Craig has left my field of vision. He comes past again seconds later with Short Leg under his arm in a headlock. He’s just trotting, calm and unhurried. His left fist is holding a ball of Short Leg’s hair, and Short Leg is half-running and half-letting himself be dragged.

  I find myself feeling quite sorry for Short Leg.

  Craig’s taking him to the same car on which he and the skipper were leaning. He lifts his captive out of the headlock and for a moment holds his head with both hands at arms’ length. Then he crashes the head down onto the bonnet, face first, so hard that the metal flexes in a loud whoonk.

  Short Leg’s resistance, such as it was, has ceased but Craig takes the head up again and brings it down again. This time he lets go, and Short Leg slides bloodily down the slope of the metalwork and slumps against the grille. The skipper’s seen all this and is crawling to nowhere in particular, away from me and the blood on the car.

  These are just impressions, dabs of paint. My head’s spinning. Craig overtakes the skipper in a few bright steps and takes hold of him under both armpits, ramming him forwards and directly into the grille, just beside Short Leg. The sound is snapping plastic this time, and the meaty slap of the skipper’s palms on the asphalt.

  With the two of them bunched there as though the car had hit them, the happy man-child ambles back towards me. For a second I don’t know what to expect—is he going to beat us all to a pulp? But his eyes fall slightly to my right. He picks up the fallen bat and weighs it with a lazy swipe through the air.

  Then he turns towards Short Leg and the skipper, who still haven’t moved.

  I can’t look. I have a rough idea how it’s going to sound, but I can’t look. As I bury my head I hear Wally’s voice, faint and far away.

  ‘Don’t.’

  Wally’s got up and is shuffling towards Craig with a hand extended.

  ‘Don’t hit ’em. Thanks for, for…Don’t hit ’em.’

  The transformation in Craig is immediate: whatever animal trance had occupied him is gone, and he carefully helps Wally to sit down again, gathers the scattered gear and replaces it in the bag. The two Eastern Suburbs players find their feet, edging away. The keeper’s nowhere to be seen.

  I watch our saviour squat down before Wally, take him in both hands and look into his eyes.

  ‘You good?’ he asks. ‘Okay?’

  Wally nods faintly.

  ‘Remember this, mate,’ he gives Wally a little shake. ‘Remember this. I’m your friend now. Anybody fucks with you, they’re fucking with me.’

  Grade Cricket

  They’re waiting at the lights. Indicator going click-click, click-click, brief orange flashes like snapshots of my situation. Sheet lightning in the darkness.

  One shin bloodied.

  The torn threads of the jeans leg standing to attention where the hole is.

  A pair of ordinary brown shoes mobbed together under the cable ties.

  The carpeted backs of the seats.

  Could I rotate myself into a position to start kicking at the tail-light? Would it achieve anything, other than persuading them to stop the car and finish me off quickly?

  In the middle of a string of hot days, January 1986, it’s my turn to get up
early and water and mow the pitch. I don’t know how I got roped into this, why it has to be done at dawn. Wally’s got some theory about water burning the grass if you do it in the middle of the day—I don’t see why it can’t be left until the cool change comes through and waters everything. So I’m up, stumping around in thongs making breakfast. TV’s on in the living room to get the team for the one-dayer in the evening.

  Desiccated white bread toast and a smear of marmalade because I can’t find the cereal. Toast’s got me thirsty so I look for the milk, and there’s the cereal. Mum’s put it in the fridge again.

  There’s a female voice coming from the TV; the news, Florida. Special bulletin, she says. And then I hear the distinctive monotone of mission control.

  Obviously a major malfunction.

  They run it again and again, the urgent repetition of the footage blurring live images into recorded vision. I wander into the living room and see the curlicue of smoke in the sky, the Medusa’s head. On the ground, people weeping, hugging. Americans, all of them born to witness. Five-minute monologues straight to camera, even as they weep.

  I’m chewing the toast mechanically.

  The eastern light creeps past the edges of the blinds and into the house. Outside, traffic is starting to move, thinned by summer’s lethargy. They’re running official shots of the crew, focusing on one woman over and over again—Payload Specialist Christa McAuliffe, a civilian mother of two, blown to smithereens on live television.

  Mum’s in the shower as I pass the bathroom door. She hums sometimes when she forgets herself. Large water goes crack on the tiles. Small water sounds like rain.

  Out the back I run the handmower over the pitch. The stubble of dried grass spins out from the blades, whirls in the air for an instant, landing soft on my feet as I pass. They’d formed an arc, the astronauts. A beautiful parabola in the sky projecting them at impossible speed heavenward. And something failed. Did they fail? Or the machinery, the fine orchestra of milled steel and glass and cables and fluids, was it that? Altitude and cataclysm. I’ve never considered their relationship before, certainly never heard of Icarus.