CRICKET
CLV
By LIAM DURKIN
WHY do we do it?
The sport that makes everyone question their life choices each and every Saturday for six months of the year returns this weekend.
Just how many wasted Saturdays are coming up?
Probably a few.
Even the very best batsmen average 50.
Even the very best bowlers have a strike-rate around 40.
That means the best batsmen fail half the time they go out to the middle.
That means the best bowlers take one wicket every seven overs.
And that’s at professional level, never mind the standard that is about to be played in parks and recreation reserves across the Latrobe Valley.
International players are aided by sightscreens, lightning fast outfields and DRS.
Local players need to pick the ball out of trees, go aerial just to beat the lush grass, and pray to God they don’t get hit on any sort of pad.
International players will hit hundreds of balls every week. Training for a local player consists of batting in fading light for maybe 20 minutes a week facing blokes bowling off three steps, sometimes still in work boots.
The pros have strict diets to adhere to. Go to any pub on a Friday night and you are bound to find a group of local cricketers.
That the halftime cricket interval involves players indulging in party pies and sausage rolls surely gives way to any pretence of sport.
Or that someone can ‘play’ a game by sitting on the edge of an oval, or by standing in a field for hours on end.
If all this seems illogical, then that is precisely the point.
Cricket was designed to exhibit English superiority
Somewhere along the line though, after the journey that saw it brought to Australia, the convicts must have thought their own superiority warranted preference.
So they took a gentlemanly game and turned it into what has become a weekly war testing the very mettle of all who wish to take part.
Such is the nature of park cricket, you may only enjoy two really good days all season as an individual.
Those two days however are to be cherished. Have one, and it will leave you wanting to come back for more.
That’s because to have ‘a day’, generally means you have beaten a range of factors beyond simply hitting or bowling a cricket ball.
If batting, you’ve essentially won a contest where you are outnumbered 11 to 1; if bowling, some of those 11 have held up their end of the deal and actually held onto one for a change.
There is also the team element (any danger boys). If you make it to any meaningful stage during a season, your side is unlikely to have been burdened by weddings, music festivals or the spring carnival.
That’s where cricket is so reflective of life. Not just by what is happening day-to-day, but in the very mentality of its practitioners.
Cricketers by and large are an eclectic bunch, but most exhibit qualities that are highly sought after.
It does take courage for instance to stand in line and face a ball moving at more than 100 kilometres an hour. It takes patience and discipline to do it over and over again, just as it does waiting with anticipation in the field. Despite the before-mentioned pretence to fitness, players still need to be mentally fit enough to concentrate for up to six hours a day.
Physicality also requires adaptability. How many old warhorse bowlers seize up if they stop? Or have to field on the boundary because their shoulder no longer allows them to throw flat and hard?
That’s the type of cricket locals play.
People play because they still can. Not many ‘young persons’ sports allow men in their 50s and 60s to compete, and succeed, against players half their age. Fathers and sons are also afforded the chance to play alongside each other. For a lot of people, it’s the only way to get out of the house (“away from the missus”).
Not many (if any) sports subject their players to as much ritual humiliation though either.
Cricket teaches tolerance and resilience as a result. A low run of scores is often labelled as “character building”. Your spell of 0/20 off eight overs that included three edges and two plumb lbws given not out doesn’t rate a mention when the bloke bowling darts has cleaned up the tail and finished with 3/38.
Cricketers see injustice on a weekly basis, and sometimes even corruption when rules are bent to suit.
How many players on a teamsheet were really going to play during that washout? “He’s only getting a game because he’s good value in the sheds”.
In many respects, it is the perfect way to teach kids about life.
It’s serious business though.
I recall being in a coffee shop in Traralgon once, and overhearing a conversation between two middle-aged women complaining that their husbands weren’t getting a bat or bowl in the local C Grade team.
The standard of play can create something of an egalitarian contest.
Even the slowest bowlers get the best batsman out – and have done so plenty of times.
The most uncoordinated batters can be strangely effective. If you need to see someone off before they’ve bowled out, send in the bloke who is going to stand there and wear a few.
Again, few sports allow the nerdiest kid to get the better of the sportiest kid.
As the doyen of cricket writers, Gideon Haigh, said of park cricket: “it doesn’t matter if you’re any good, as long as you’re good enough”.
It’s arguably becoming harder though. The ease at which international players can come across means the quality of spin has increased dramatically.
No longer is spin used simply to give the quicks a chop out. Spinners are now taking most of the wickets, admittedly aided by slow surfaces (another element to factor into the challenges of park cricket).
This has meant the days of the meathead fast bowler are disappearing. There is still the odd bowler with genuine pace, but bats are also so good these days that a top edge can easily clear the fence.
International players also mean that locals are virtually coming up against fulltime cricketers.
For those who play football codes during winter, to suddenly transition to cricket in a fortnight leaves you at a significant disadvantage from the start.
Why do we do it?
For the two days we may get as individuals, and for the countless others we get as club mates.
