When I was growing up, it seemed that summer time meant playing outside, mostly because of the better weather but at least partially because daytime television was dominated by cricket coverage.
Our mother was (and is) an ardent follower of the national team and it didn’t take too many queries of “is it finished yet?” before we realised that TV was not a thing we would be enjoying during daylight hours.
It wasn’t all bad. We watched it sometimes, enthralled by the feats of legends like Lance Cairns and Excalibur, and Richard Hadlee.
We would listen for the umpteenth time to my mother’s story about when she worked at Woolworths and Paddles was her boss and how they used to sometimes take the piss out of him.
We learned about nightwatchmen and rabbits. We learned about maiden overs and ducks and LBWs, but the stuff about “silly mid on” and where exactly the “slips” began and ended never really sunk in.
So though it wasn’t my viewing option of choice, invariably some of it stuck with me. Later on in life I discovered the social opportunites that cricket afforded the young person, namely sitting in the sun drinking beer for long stretches.
But as a kid it was OK because when I grew up I would have my own house and my own TV and I absolutely would not have to have cricket on it all day if I didn’t want to.
Clearly I had not factored The Silver Fox into these plans. For lo, our TV has been tuned to cricket A LOT over the last couple of weeks. It’s just like being a kid again except I no longer bother to ask whether it’s finished yet.
But then we played Australia … and I wasn’t even that interested to be honest, although naturally I always prefer that we beat Australia. I have relatives there. I’m pretty sure the only point of keeping in touch with said relatives via Facebook is for the gloating opportunities this very occasionally affords.
But Saturday was a busy day for me and I had an engagement party to attend in the afternoon. But from what I could tell as I glanced into the living room, everything had gone splendidly in the morning. The Australian batting order had essentially gone into a deathspin and The SF could barely suppress his glee.
But during a quiet moment in the party where, it has to be said, I didn’t know that many people and I’d sort of exhausted all the current conversational opportunities, I had a wee check of Twitter and saw some very panicked tweets. Mentions of America’s Cup level of “choking” was being mentioned. What on earth was happening?
And so I started listening to sports radio online, with my phone held up to my ear like a transistor radio, and heard something terrible. We had only six runs to get to win … but only two wickets in hand. And then as I listened somebody got bowled and we were down to one.
I desperately looked around the party to see if anyone else was aware of the precariousness of our situation. In the end I couldn’t contain myself and simply strode up to the barbecue, where the groom-to-be was doing things with burger patties, and said “OK, this is potentially very bad”, and put the volume up on the phone as loud as possible.
And that’s how I, and three or four blokes, listened to the end of the cricket. All leaning around my phone saying things like “what the hell happened?” and “if we lose this we will look like complete [insert derogatory term of your choosing here]”. I actually bit my nails I was so nervous. And then Kane Williamson hit a six and it was all over and everyone could go back to enjoying themselves. Phew.
Well played, cricket. Well played. I may think that I’m not really interested in you but every now and again you show you’ve still got your hooks in me.
Do you find that you currently interested in cricket where usually you don’t give a (coin) toss? Is it weird to want to share a worrying sporting moment with people even if you don’t know them that well?
Originally published on Stuff, 03/03/2015
(Black and white cricket match image, no known copyright, Auckland Libraries via DigitalNZ, Featured image “Pollock to Hussey” by Prescott Pym via Wikipedia)