Dave Edwards - The Grade Cricketer: Tea and No Sympathy

First published in 2017

Copyright Dave Edwards, Sam Perry and Ian Higgins 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

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Australia

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ISBN 978 1 76063 131 4

eISBN 978 1 76063 968 6

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Cover design and illustration: Design by Committee

CONTENTS

Here I was, on a crisp April morning, standing on the side of the road outside my house, waiting for a bald maniac to pick me up. Nuggsy had already exceeded the maximum demerit points allowable for a car licence, having copped three separate speeding fines and a DUI over Christmas, but we could never break with tradition. After all, Nuggsy and I had been carpooling to cricket games for as long as I could remember. His yellowing 1994 Nissan Pulsar had clocked up 307,806 kilometres and taken us to hundreds of cricket grounds all across the state. It was precisely the kind of vehicle that would have belonged to a serial killer (if said serial killer had a Triple M Rocks the Footy bumper sticker and a garbage bag for a side window). Nonetheless, it was a pleasant sight to see him hooning around the bend on this Saturday morning, even if he was doing roughly eighty-five ks in a forty zone.

Nuggsys front wheel crudely scraped the kerb as he pulled to a stop. If he had a hub cap it would have probably incurred considerable damage. He yanked the handbrake with typical aggression, wound down the window and shouted, voice straining over the top of Screaming Jets 1991 hit Better.

Hop in, big fella!

I heaved my kit into the boot and made my way around to the passenger door. As always, I was greeted by six or seven empty Mother energy drinks on the tattered front seat, each containing perhaps ten or twenty millilitres of backwash. The car stunk like sweaty cricket kit, guarana, and Lynx Africa. Not for the first time, I wondered why cricketers always chose Africa as their preferred deodorant when there were so many other fragrances available in the Lynx product line. With a single arm movement, I swiped the 500-millilitre cans onto the floor and hopped in.

We doing drive-through?

Nah, weve got a bit of time, big dog. Lets eat in.

I couldnt quite put my finger on it but Nuggsy seemed different today. For starters, he wasnt poisonously hungover. It wasnt unheard of for Nuggsy to head straight to a game from a night out. Once he actually wore his whites out on a Friday night in order to conserve time the next morning. That night hed managed to convince a woman he was a state cricketernot for the first time, may I add. One thing led to another and he ended up getting, in his words, a thumping blowjob in the back of his car outside our home ground. He rolled up to the ground with a red wine stain on his cricket vest, still feasting on that perfect still-drunk-yet-not-hungover ratio that inspires irrational confidence in even the most introverted types. We all roared with approval as he provided us with an animated instructional guide to smashing a bird in a hatchback vehicle. He took 6-18 that day and bowled us to a historic victory. The woman in question, as was so often the case with these types of stories, was never heard of again.

But today, Nuggsy was stone sober and conspicuously quiet. I chalked this down to nerves, for it had been years since wed played in a grand final. As we weaved our way through the busy McDonalds car park, Nuggsy craned his neck around, eyes darting, as if plagued by a sudden acute bout of paranoia.

You alright, mate? I enquired, letting out a bemused snort.

Nah, just tough to find a park here, hey, Nuggsy replied, arching his back to look behind him as he edged forward in search of a spot.

It was a Saturday morning, after all, and McDonalds was already teeming with young families. Dozens of sprightly young kids in basketball singlets and cricket uniforms skipped in and out of the restaurant, clutching Happy Meals and thickshakes, flanked by dutiful parents. Meanwhile, two blokes in their early thirties clad in training kit were stinging for a pre-match Bacon & Egg McMuffin.

A pink Kia ducked out and Nuggsy, ever alert, swung his car forward into the vacant parking space. A disabled parking space.

Result! he roared, suddenly alive. Im the fucking king at jagging a park!

It was always about status with Nuggsy. Whether it was his cricket, his sex life, fantasy football or finding a park, Nuggsy had to attribute himself some sort of rank. I made a mental note to research the etymology of the term jagging. What did it mean to jag something? Only cricketers could invent meaningless verbiage and lend it primal aggression. In well over ten years, Id never seen him do a reverse park. Always headfirst.

We hopped out of the car and made our way into McDonalds.

Its on me, bud. The usual?

Umm, yeah. Thanks, mate.

Wed eaten together on hundreds of occasions, many times in this exact eatery, but not once had he reached for the tab. Nuggsy collected our meals and took the tray over in search of a seat.

Yep, over in the corner, theres a spot.

A white-haired gentleman was seated alone in a booth with his back to us, reading a tabloid newspaper. As Nuggsy approached, he placed a gentle hand on the mans shoulder, a move that appeared strangely personal. The man rotated his torso around with discernible difficulty and smiled.

Alan, wonderful to see you as always, a familiar baritone voice said.

Geoffrey Beveridge, a stocky man in his mid to late sixties, was the president of my former grade cricket club. I knew Nuggsy had kept in touch with Bevo over the years, but it was nonetheless a surprise to see him here at McDonalds, all alone, on the morning of our grand final. Bevo had held the position of club president for the past forty years, the longest stint in the history of the competition. This forty-year run was inclusive of his two-year home detention stretch for tax fraud in the early nineties, which served to enhance his reputation if anything. No one really knew if hed ever played the game, although like all senior club officials, he did little to quash rumours that he played a bit of state cricket in the 1960s.

Bevo was probably most famous for his habit of putting a five grand bar tab on at the clubhouse whenever all five grades got up. This was, and remains, the only time that blokes in first and second grade ever took an interest in what was going on in the lower grades. Bevo would walk around with his Bluetooth earpiece in and provide live updates on play at Hislop Oval #2, scrawling them on the clubhouse whiteboard. This was the presocial media era, of course. Now most grade cricket clubs provide rolling updates for their Twitter followers throughout the course of a day. There really is a lot of useless shit on the internet.

Aside from that, Bevo also had a well-documented proclivity for young Asian women. Every season we looked forward to Bevo debuting a new, scantily clad female friend at round one selection night. These relationships were all presumably forged via the internet since he only frequented two establishments, our home ground clubhouse and the bar directly opposite the clubhouse, Frankies (although he did spend an alarming amount of time in Southeast Asia). In short, Bevo was your archetypal club president: morally bankrupt, inexplicably wealthy and perennially involved in divorce proceedings of some sort.