I Hate Cricket
Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2011 3:51 pm
Like the bush poet, John O'Brien, I was a blur on the scutcheon of my school.
My boys' high school badge has the proud motto " Recte et Fortiter" ( With integrity and courage " ) ; sternly standing in disapproval of malingerers like me.
At my school, sport was held to be an activity of great honour and attainment. Every Wednesday the whole school, masters and boys alike, engaged in the highly organised seasonal sports activities.
For summer sport I put myself down for swimming. As I had no ambition to join the water polo team or doing the 100 yards medley etc, I nominated for the swimming learners' class. This enabled me and my mates to bum around at the training pool, ducking and doing "bombs" and best of all, ogling the beauties from the girls' high school swimming sports group.
Even though I was not a suitable achiever for the swimming competition, I was expected to attend the aquatic sports carnival and sit in the stand in my uniform with striped tie and nice red blazer, to cheer on the brave athletes of our school.
Our swimming carnivals were held at the North Sydney olympic pool, so instead of being loyal school encouragers, my friends and I took off up the Sydney Harbour Bridge pylon and entertained ourselves by dropping twopenny bungers towards the ships below to see how far they went before exploding. They made some good bangs.
I managed to do several seasons in the swimming "learners" until the sports Master, Mr Mason, became unimpressed by my lack of progression from beginner to accomplished practitioner. Mr Mason's daughter was Michele Mason who won the silver medal in the ladies highjump at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. he was generally unimpressed by my lack of sporting achievement and coined a nickname for me; " Speedy".
He decided to give me the benefit of some character development and assigned me from swimming to the house cricket team.
What a horror! The cricket ground was unmercifully hot, I couldn't play cricket and there were no girls !
I wasn't well outfitted for cricket. I didn't have proper cricket shoes, just some flimsy sandshoes for sport. When I went into bat, I overheard the captain of the rival team instruct the bowler " bowl at his feet ". And he did.
I only lasted about three balls usually. This terrifying red cannon ball smashed into the ground near my feet, I couldn't hit it, I was too busy leaping away to save my feet from crippling injury. When the ball was bowled higher, I sort of swatted where I thought it might have been in its invisible supersonic flight, but to no avail; there was always a clattering and scattering of stumps and bails.
One good thing about getting out in batting was that I could sit under a shady tree for a while.
Fielding was much worse than batting. I had to stand interminably under a baking sun out on a sort of desolate prairie, where few balls came my way. When the balls did come , they flashed by about 20 metres away, and by the time I got moving, the ball was usually well over the boundary. If a high ball ever came, there was no way I would try and catch it. I knew that crickets balls were very hard and I might as well try to catch a plummeting iron meteorite, a cricket ball would just as easily smash my hands to bits.
So I remained a decidely unspeedy fielder.
The next summer season, Mr. Mason seemed to have overlooked me or perhaps given up in disgust, so I rejoined the swimming learners. " Hello girls, I'm back "
I still hate cricket. Can't even stand to watch it. And the bathing beauties wouldn't even notice my decrepit pensioner presence. Oh well, such is life.
My boys' high school badge has the proud motto " Recte et Fortiter" ( With integrity and courage " ) ; sternly standing in disapproval of malingerers like me.
At my school, sport was held to be an activity of great honour and attainment. Every Wednesday the whole school, masters and boys alike, engaged in the highly organised seasonal sports activities.
For summer sport I put myself down for swimming. As I had no ambition to join the water polo team or doing the 100 yards medley etc, I nominated for the swimming learners' class. This enabled me and my mates to bum around at the training pool, ducking and doing "bombs" and best of all, ogling the beauties from the girls' high school swimming sports group.
Even though I was not a suitable achiever for the swimming competition, I was expected to attend the aquatic sports carnival and sit in the stand in my uniform with striped tie and nice red blazer, to cheer on the brave athletes of our school.
Our swimming carnivals were held at the North Sydney olympic pool, so instead of being loyal school encouragers, my friends and I took off up the Sydney Harbour Bridge pylon and entertained ourselves by dropping twopenny bungers towards the ships below to see how far they went before exploding. They made some good bangs.
I managed to do several seasons in the swimming "learners" until the sports Master, Mr Mason, became unimpressed by my lack of progression from beginner to accomplished practitioner. Mr Mason's daughter was Michele Mason who won the silver medal in the ladies highjump at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. he was generally unimpressed by my lack of sporting achievement and coined a nickname for me; " Speedy".
He decided to give me the benefit of some character development and assigned me from swimming to the house cricket team.
What a horror! The cricket ground was unmercifully hot, I couldn't play cricket and there were no girls !
I wasn't well outfitted for cricket. I didn't have proper cricket shoes, just some flimsy sandshoes for sport. When I went into bat, I overheard the captain of the rival team instruct the bowler " bowl at his feet ". And he did.
I only lasted about three balls usually. This terrifying red cannon ball smashed into the ground near my feet, I couldn't hit it, I was too busy leaping away to save my feet from crippling injury. When the ball was bowled higher, I sort of swatted where I thought it might have been in its invisible supersonic flight, but to no avail; there was always a clattering and scattering of stumps and bails.
One good thing about getting out in batting was that I could sit under a shady tree for a while.
Fielding was much worse than batting. I had to stand interminably under a baking sun out on a sort of desolate prairie, where few balls came my way. When the balls did come , they flashed by about 20 metres away, and by the time I got moving, the ball was usually well over the boundary. If a high ball ever came, there was no way I would try and catch it. I knew that crickets balls were very hard and I might as well try to catch a plummeting iron meteorite, a cricket ball would just as easily smash my hands to bits.
So I remained a decidely unspeedy fielder.
The next summer season, Mr. Mason seemed to have overlooked me or perhaps given up in disgust, so I rejoined the swimming learners. " Hello girls, I'm back "
I still hate cricket. Can't even stand to watch it. And the bathing beauties wouldn't even notice my decrepit pensioner presence. Oh well, such is life.