Our Resolute Summer

The complexion of Australian cricket is changing but summer’s essence still holds...

Sam Perry

It’s late-November in Australia, and the seasons are wrestling. In Sherrin states there’s lots of chat about Harley Reid going one in the draft. Bailey Smith’s taken out the 2K time trial at the Bulldogs. “But was it under the watchful eye of Luke Beveridge?” you ask. Yes, that can be confirmed. Are blokes training? Or are they training the house down?

It’s similar in Steeden States: Addin Fonua-Blake wants to come home, Benji Marshall’s gone to Jarome Luai’s actual home, and Michael Maguire is named coach of NSW. As with the AFL, the NRL’s grand final concluded nine weeks ago. The Australian men’s cricket team won the unlikeliest of World Cup’s only a few days ago, and they fight tooth and nail to pierce the ubiquity of off-season footy chat. It’s noted by Kerry O’Keeffe a week or two later, saying he deplores footy’s creep into November. He ponders whether Australia’s lost its love of the game.

But somewhere in December a shift does occur here. As if by unspoken decree, a silent nod, like migratory birds the sporting conversation flees from the focus and detritus of footy transfers, contracts, trades, training, round one (not to be confused with opening round), and adjusts to the cricket.

The signs are everywhere. We start to notice the TV campaigns, which have been running for weeks. It used to be on a different channel, but we’re adjusting. There’s Punter in a suit looking authoritative-yet-friendly-and-accessible. Same too Gilly at the other channel. I’d love if they could somehow work together. I don’t think about this stuff in June.

The Tests are sold to a score of dramatic gravitas. The BBL is a flash of epileptic colours and crunching guitars. The new suite of ads will soon follow: fresh vignettes accompanying familiar messages like shut up and take my money. Cars will work their way through tough terrain, heroically steered by a man with a beard and a strong jawline. His automobile will represent purity of feeling, an escape from the complexities and rigours of things like the city, and spousal relationships. There will be beers, or brave alternatives to beers. For some these noises grate, but it’s undeniably part of the symphony of the cricket beginning.

Our TV aesthetic in particular stands out overseas. Last week The Telegraph’s Chief Cricket Correspondent Nick Hoult tweeted that he was receiving the “full Aussie Big Bash TV experience”. In this case, eskies were down in price at Bunnings. From my perspective, that’s a great result in an El Niño summer. I worry about bushfires.

There are lo-fi indicators that cricket’s here on smaller screens, too. On social platforms, those nailed to relevant algorithms and adjacencies will be fed a cavalcade of moments from clubland. Great feats, weird dismissals, bad behaviour, performed by the club faithful. For those with helpless cricketing egos, we survey the standard and on the privacy of our own couch, or bed, or bathroom, we wonder how we’d fare. The answer is invariably positive, despite deep evidence to the contrary. Again, it’s very much an exclusively summer pursuit. The algorithm knows. Ten years ago, this didn’t exist at all.

Parks, bricks and mortar are on board. Our local real estate agency has just replaced its footy-themed billboard with a cricket motif. There’s the ten-strong real estate team, snaking back like diagonal dominos, heads at 45 degrees over pointed shoulders, pictured at the local ground, each kitted out with an item of cricket gear. The honcho has the blade, another’s wearing pads, and the intern poses in what would otherwise be described as professional attire, except that she is wearing a Masuri helmet. But I can see what they’re saying. “We like cricket, too”. It’s funny and kind of endearing.

At our local park, evening dog walkers stroll to the sights and sounds of the local team training on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the long summer light. The club turnout always looks good. Who knows the stories that lurk beneath the first and second net, the throwdown net, the ball machine net (“Club has money. Must be nice!”), the fielding drills. The things you wonder while walking your dog. The lower graders play on Sir Walter Buffalo grass. The 1^st graders on Kikuyu. I prefer the smell of the former, to be honest. But there’s no value for your shots.

Illustration by Fisher Classics www.fisherclassics.com

On Friday nights, the local Under 17 competition takes place at the same park. Last week Yarraville hosted Caroline Springs. Both teams have young men and young women. 16 year-olds commencing their weekend by playing cricket. Doubtless many go again on Saturday morning, too. The faces of parents and players are mainly South Asian. Fathers stand pensively at the boundary’s edge as a Caroline Springs teen rips through Yarraville’s top order. The Dads are actually behind the bowlers arm, there’s no sightscreen and they should probably move. You automatically scan for things like this as a former amateur. I think one of their son’s was just dismissed. Dad’s not happy. I don’t say anything about their positioning.

Juniors of my vintage and locale never had cricket on Friday night. If we did, I probably would’ve played. I only ever remember playing with one girl, and there were never more than a handful of South Asian kids and parents involved. Yarraville v Caroline Springs shows great progress.

I confess to having clutched pearls over cricket’s global direction and what that might mean for the Australian summer. Fewer quality Test teams visiting, the hastening creep of overseas franchise cricket, the onflow effect to our prized “pyramid”, with long-form cricket at its apex. Do Australians really like T20 cricket? How do we watch with the IPL if we’re asleep? Is Test cricket like the fixed landline business, five minutes to midnight, and we’re squeezing all the remaining juice?

It's nice to remember that cricket here has a spirit that runs deeper than the latest professional evolution. Yes, the locus of power has shifted and rival codes want to eat into cricket’s traditional territory. But then again, global cricket is so dizzying and perennially “on” that the idea of a season at all now seems novel, and something to be grateful for. We see it here not in the solemn, strategic matters of the professional game, but in the senses that accompany it. And to that question about Australia’s love of the game, it’s worth remembering that there’s a difference between interest in the x’s and o’s of every fixture, and what it means to connect with “the cricket” itself, something that runs far beyond whatever news lines emerge from Perth, starting Thursday.