Whistler’s Century
I love sport because it brings out passion in people. I love it because it brings people together and forges communities.
But I love cricket because my grandfather did. Because of Pa.
The day I drove back to Wangaratta to see him was the first day of the new school year. As I passed a local primary school there were five or six kids playing cricket. They were laughing as one kid hit out to cow corner. I imagined it was their first day and they were using cricket as the icebreaker.
That day at the hospital we played most of a game of checkers before he got too tired. Even as scattered as he was, he was still pretty sharp on the board. He told me that he had always liked playing tennis against women, because unlike today (see Serena William’s average first serve speed) the ladies had, in his day, just lobbed the ball over the net as a service. That made it easier to cream it back. He was a competitor, through and through.
I was suddenly glad we hadn’t played tennis.
When I was younger games were what Pa and I did. Dominos, cards, checkers but mainly cricket. Mum would pick me up from school and we would drive to Granny and Pa’s for a swim and afternoon tea. Afterwards we would set up our little pitch next to the pool garden, using little markings in the concrete as wickets, a kid size bat and an array of tennis balls.
We would wander between watching the TV in his air-conditioned office and playing in the pool garden. He would bowl Hussey-esque tweakers and had a knack for hitting the edge of the row of bricks just outside off-stump. Any innings could be cut short by the one that jagged in or skewed away. It began in me an unfortunate enduring mindset; hit it while you can.
Pa’s cricketing indoctrination of my youth didn’t stop with playing backyard cricket; there were the hours spent watching and more importantly talking about cricket. Pa had seen Bradman at Lords and seen a T20 international so he was a more than qualified professor of the sport. He had a mind for history, but more importantly a flair for storytelling.
Wrapped in around the stories of yesteryear’s cricketing legends I’d often hear him recount an innings of mine. An innings in which I had gotten away with going the tonk would become an act of perfectly controlled hitting or a catch I’d taken an excellently timed dive (not the uncontrolled flail it usually was). He was as one eyed as they came when it came to the grandkids and sport. He came to watch almost all my games in Milawa. He would give me a cheeky laugh after watching me sky one trying to hit the cover off it, or (far too often) get run out assuming I was as fast as the Australian batsmen.
I never felt more special than when he was describing these innings in which he thought I’d played well, even when I hadn’t. If I ever managed to make it to the retirement score in junior cricket it was as though I had made a hundred. As I got older and Pa’s hearing degraded the news would be translated through my mother. My highest score of 77* was met with a translated ‘Fantastic!’
It was fantastic.
I feel like I was part of his story. As corny and overly dramatic as it sounds it was like he owned a part of every run I made and I hope he felt that way too. Not that he didn’t have enough runs to his own name; he was the captain and opening bat for the Everleigh village cricket team. With an unusual turn of self-deprecation he described himself as neither a batter nor bowler, he always said he was ‘not much of either’. I don’t put much stock in that.
In one of my favourite Pa stories he, his father and brother got to play in the same local cricket team. Pa described how although he was ultimately a patient batsman (at least compared to me), his father was even more so. The team fell for a song and so Pa and his father were at the crease on a pitch that, as per village cricket in the 50’s, was more paddock than pitch. Pa describes how his father, in his mid 50’s, held in without playing a single attacking stroke for as long as he could.
The story isn’t notable and definitely doesn’t come with a climax, I’m pretty sure they lost and Pa went out shortly after his father but I would have loved to play in that match. Family, cricket and community — it‘s perfect.
Pa has bought all of my cricket gear for as long as I can remember. Last year I decided that the pads that I’d stolen from my eldest brother, which he in turn had stolen from his school team (they were tagged with ‘Geelong Grammar ’93 10B’) had started to somehow amplify the pain of a shinned full ball. Despite the fact Pa was 89 and could hardly walk, Pa announced that we were going to get new ones. Together we went into Wangaratta. We walked in (slowly) and he instantly went for the most expensive pads I’ve ever seen. Happily my C Grade Sunday shins, Pa and I settled for the second cheapest. I was impressed when on their first wear the Turf Strokers noticed them and sledged their resplendent whiteness. They asked if my Mum had bought them for me. They were pretty close.
Like all children (and grandchildren) I struggle to place my family in the scope of history. They are just placed here in my life and context rather than in their own.
Cricket transcended that; it was a connection to a younger Pa. A Pa that watched Bradman at the home of cricket and a Pa that at 17 was ready to fight on the Eastern front. Cricket connected the Pa who in his 20’s had waited for the short ball to the Pa that still hit a solid straight drive well into his 70’s. Last year on Pa’s 90th birthday I said that he just had to hang on until his 100th birthday so he could make his first ton. I imagined a plastic bat and perhaps by that point a wheelchair. I wish we could have gotten there together but I am glad he got as close as he did.
The point of all this is to say Pa, thank you for the backyard cricket games. I’ll never forget them. Nor you.
