Like many young boys and girls, my childhood was wrapped in the warm embrace of the summer of cricket.
Classic catches in the pool, bowling to elderly relatives at Christmas, throwing a ball against a wall to the staunch defence of my well-oiled Kookaburra bat — I lived all the clichés of cricket.
My first memory of the fight between bat and ball was watching a rolling mop of blond-tipped hair tweak, turn, razzle and dazzle opposition Test batters.
I remember sitting on the floor in my grandparents’ living room watching the television and turning to my pop and asking, “Who is that?”, as the rotund man on the screen wheeled away celebrating yet another wicket.
“Shane Warne,” was the reply.
As I turned back to continue watching, little did I know that from that moment forward my springs and summers would revolve around one thing — goddamn cricket.
It’s at times a cruel and fickle beast and I was reminded of this during my second game of cricket in six years last Saturday.
Having been a medium-puss bowler for my whole cricketing “career”, I recently changed to off-spin to start my cricket rebirth.
The decision was purely through a hatred of the run-up and jealousy over how much fun spinners seem to have while waiting to bowl at training.
While my newfound interest in spin has given me a more relaxed training workload, I have yet to master one of the main and most important tools in any off-spinner's kit: spinning the ball.
Be that as it may, last Saturday I was given the benefit of the doubt to roll my arm over.
Three of my first four balls were full tosses that went for a collective nine runs which didn’t help my case and had the two batters licking their lips at the prospect of a hopeless pie-chucker.
However, with one ball remaining in my over — and possibly for the rest of the 80-over day given my first five attempts — I managed to not bowl a knee-high full toss.
Instead, through sheer dumb luck the ball bounced before it reached the batter — who had swung the willow well for the previous hour — snicked his outside edge and was caught in the slip's mouth thanks to his jaw having hit the floor.
Surprised celebrations soon followed before a one-word sentence was bellowed from the opposition changerooms 100m away and echoed around the ground.
I’ll give you a hint: the word starts with an F and rhymes with yuck.
It was a fair response to the brutality of cricket.
See yourself through the new ball and opening bowlers, be patient, wait for the useless spinner to come on and then cash in — the batter had planned it out perfectly.
Who could have predicted that I would hit the pitch after my previous porridge?
However, no matter how hard and horrible your day playing cricket was, there is always someone who is going worse.
For one — name withheld — teammate, he was already putting his spikes and kit on Facebook Marketplace during the tea break.
In fairness, a 10-ball over will never make your love for the game grow.
Like myself, the anonymous teammate was bowling off-spin and began with a nervous and hearty grip on the ball.
So strong was the grip that his first delivery of the over landed behind his feet to the chagrin of the bowler and deep-bellied chuckles of a few teammates.
Disregarding the early fault, he came charging back in only to bowl a bumbling double bouncer that the batter kindly defended.
This was followed by a pair of no-ball full tosses before a boundary, a two and then another full toss no-ball.
At the conclusion of the 10-ball over an experienced batter did share with the wicketkeeper that it was possibly the worst over he had ever seen bowled.
However, while his hopes were momentarily dashed, the downtrodden teammate then took a career-high two catches for the innings and, all of a sudden, he will be back next week to do it all again.
That’s the thing about cricket, like golf, it only takes that one moment to develop and grow that little ball of hope we all have in our hearts.
By taking a wicket, hitting a six, holding onto a screamer or getting a run out the cruel mistress that is cricket drags you back, kit and all, for another 80 overs the following weekend.
Next Saturday has to be better though, right?
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