We Had A Win

Although we’ll all be at work today, sore-backed and heavy-legged from the accumulating lactic acid, I reckon we’ll all reserve a little time to think mistily of yesterday...

Gideon Haigh

I love cricket this morning.  I mean, I never dislike it, and usually like it a lot.  But yesterday my Yarras C-grade team played well, won at home, and... honestly, is there a better feeling?  Don, our skipper and club secretary, gave us a solid start.  Jubby, a returning player, played his first game in four years.  Christos, a newbie, got a wicket with his first ball at the club.  BG, who I recruited many years ago, bowled a beautiful opening spell.  Kirky, whose kids aren’t sleeping, made 50.  Lachie, whose dad came to watch, was chagrined to make a duck, but then had the ball doing all sorts, which he reinforced with some judicious sledging (‘One more ball and you can go for a valium mate’).  Plus I put on 70 with our keeper Tommy, and we all sat around the dressing room afterwards struck by the unspoken absurdity that, as cricketers who have played myriad games between us, as mature males with families, friends, jobs and responsibilities, there is still simply nothing we would rather be doing at the weekend.  Although we’ll all be at work today, sore-backed and heavy-legged from the accumulating lactic acid, I reckon we’ll all reserve a little time to think mistily of yesterday.

Of course, it’s not always like this.  We’d played this same club a few weeks earlier at their home ground.  They’re a good, friendly bunch.  It was a hot day, a desiccated pitch.  Two of our elderly stock went off with muscle injuries in first six overs, so we were reduced to nine, and we were duly flogged as the ball kept lower and lower. We sat around that tiny dressing room afterwards not quite with opposite thoughts to yesterday - rather with sentiments along the same continuum.  It’s a win simply to get out there in this day and age - to set a whole day aside for something so open-ended and speculative as a day’s cricket.  You’re buoyed by everyone else’s commitment, and they by yours.  We anatomised and commiserated and joked, while also knowing that when you cap it off by finishing ahead everything is unmistakably better.  As, finally, it did yesterday.  Where it can feel like penance to clean up after losing, for example, we breezed noticeably through putting the covers away and the ropes up.

I wrote a book about my club a bit over twenty years ago.  It was fun.  But I’ve never gone back to repeat the effort because I worried that writing about it might change what I so enjoyed.  That has felt an ever better decision.  We commonly ruin things these days by watching ourselves in the act.  The club, by contrast, is somewhere we’re still fully present.  We’re with each other not our phones.  We spend deep interconnected time - what’s more interconnected than a cricket team? - and compare notes on our lives.  Saturday night I caught up with an old Yarras coach and his partner.  Sunday night I had a date, and the boys were totally on board: ‘Come on Yarras, let’s get these last few so Gid can get to his date on time!’ Tommy then dropped me off so we could talk a bit more about our partnership.  Funnily enough the date involved going to see another Yarras clubmate performing in an amateur theatre production.  He was great!  Friday I hope to see another club mate play his guitar.  For many years, the Yarras has given me permission to be far more gregarious than I naturally am.

I might write a little every now and again about the Yarras on Cricket Et Al: it’s cricket, and it’s a big part of my life, as it has been for thirty years. But maybe, for fear of ‘professionalising’ it, not so much.  Still, you can take for granted it’s out there, win or lose - with winning just ever so slightly better.