A little DIY

Back in Melbourne for a day, I’m shortly to heft my gear and head for training at the Yarras. Nothing, I find, makes you keener for cricket yourself than a few days watching it. This is actually the first summer I’ve forsaken the pleasure of my weekend game in order to cover a Test series. I even had misgivings about covering the Ashes of 2005, because of the dent it would leave in my pre-season - a period of the year I always love, when hope has not yet been dashed against the rocks of experience.

I can usually justify watching good cricket by what I learn from it. In Brisbane, I was positioned in the media overspill upstairs, at 45 degrees to the action: a superior vantage from which to admire the degree to which Shane Warne varies his speeds and trajectories, and to watch how far forward Kevin Pietersen stretched in playing him. In general, I always come away from watching top-class batsmen resolved to take a longer front foot stride, and bend my front leg more – which, of course, I immediately forget. I also noticed at the Gabba a little ritual of Matthew Hayden’s after letting the ball go, moving rhythmically back and forward from his final position, testing the balance and security of the platform erected by his footwork. Someone at training tonight will probably wonder aloud why I’m doing the Nutbush.

Yet, notwithstanding that I’m in the twilight of a mediocre career, I’d never gratuitously run down the game the Yarras play. We enjoy our cricket – a quality conspicuously lacking from England’s tour so far. For a weekend cricketer who gets by on the occasional glimpse the possible, a spectacle like Steve Harmison’s travails on the first day at Gabba is always poignant. We might bowl that way because we can’t help it; he can. So much ability, so little pleasure.

Australian players in general are far better at preserving the spark of fun in their cricket. A pioneer in this respect, I think, was Mark Taylor. I recall a press conference at the end of the Perth Test in February 1995. Amid much sapient and sympathetic nodding, Mike Atherton had lamented the glutted cricket calendar, saying it made for weary players and lower standards. When the proposition that too much international cricket being played was put to his Australian counterpart, Taylor replied, with that distinctive upward inflexion: ‘No. And I think I speak for all the blokes. I love Test cricket.’ The answer impressed me: I wasn’t surprised when they went on to beard the joyless West Indians in their den. Indeed, I've never heard a captain, before or since, and with such sincerity, use the word ‘enjoy’ when talking about cricket.

Although I’m missing a bit of cricket this summer, I don’t entirely lose the community of my club, for the Yarras have a sizeable diaspora. While in Brisbane, I caught up with Em, Big Al, Churchyard, Sis and Knockbax; in Adelaide, I’m looking forward to the company of Bloodbath. The Yarras might not be the biggest, strongest or richest cricket club going around - but by golly we care about nicknames. In this respect, JL, Haydos, Punter, Marto etc also have nothing to teach us.