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On the bus ride to the oval, Ashley fills me in on all the important batting stats for the tournament. She could rival Charlie with her knowledge. I have no idea where they keep all that information in their heads. I make a mental note to introduce them properly so they can go on about stats together as much as they like.
After a warm-up and pep talk from Karen, we walk out onto the field for our first match against North Queensland. Brydie nudges me and says, “Check that out.” I look over to where she’s pointing.
On the far left of the covered stand is a group of people all wearing white t-shirts. They’ve got letters printed across their shirts that spell out ALIC H FAN CLUB. They wave madly and I wave back to show I’ve seen them. I wonder if they know they’re missing an ‘e’ and then I realise it must be Ravi. I haven’t seen him yet but I guess he must be around here somewhere, working on the broadcast. Just thinking about the fact that our games are being streamed for anyone to watch makes me nervous, and I take a deep breath and swallow hard.
“You’re popular,” Ashley says, jogging up beside me. “But they forgot the rest of your name.”
“They’re my club team mates,” I reply. “And they probably haven’t got enough supporters to write my full name.”
Ashley waves madly at them, and points at me and bows in my direction, making my friends go nuts. Seeing her having fun shakes me out of my nerves, and I jog over to my first fielding position at deep point.
“You got this, Wannabe,” Charlie calls to me from the sideline as I roll my shoulders and shake out my legs.
I roll my eyes at her using Paris’s dig from this morning, but I give her a thumbs up and set myself, ready for the first ball.
***
We bowl well during the power play, and then start to get some wickets in the middle overs, eventually getting seven wickets and keeping North Queensland to 132 by the end of the innings.
One of those wickets is mine, and I’m reasonably happy with my one for fourteen off of my two overs. I could have bowled a bit tighter, but it’s okay for my first game. It’s also not a bad total to chase first up but coming in at four today means I might not have a chance at getting runs if our openers get going.
We get off to a flying start and we don’t lose our first wicket until we’re into the eighth over and have 57 runs on the board. We lose another quick wicket almost straight away, and then I’m in. Even though I can’t seem to get on strike early, my batting partners are at least getting some quick runs to keep the run rate ticking over.
When I finally find myself at the striker’s end, I poke around for a few balls before I finally get one away to the boundary, and my friends in the stands cheer madly. I glance over to them and can’t help but grin. It turns out to be pretty cool having my own cheer squad.
My boundary helps me get my eye in, and after that, I’m seeing them like beach balls. Brydie and I smash out the run chase in the next six overs, and I finish the innings off with a six straight back over the bowler’s head. I could’ve just poked a single, but I’m hoping to impress our coach enough to push me up to open the batting, so I tried not to hold anything back.
I finish the game with 45 runs off of 24 balls, with seven fours and two sixes, which I’m happy with. I would have loved the chance to get more runs but that’s what happens when you keep your opposition to a small total. Plus, it’s a really good sign for us that our opening batters are firing early. And anyway, I’m just lucky I got a bat.
“Nice finish,” Karen says as she packs up the team bag.
“Thanks. They gave me a lot to hit,” I reply.
We have a quick debrief about the game, do a warm-down and then we get to head off to watch the next match, which is Charlie’s Wests versus Paris’s Cities North team.
Cities North are the favourites for the tournament because the team gets extra professional coaching, paid for by their parents. No other rep team can compete with that, which is probably why they’ve won the tournament for the last five years running.
My team heads over to the stands where Troy and the rest of my friends are sitting. They cheer when they see us coming.
“Where are the rest of my letters?” I ask.
“They’ll be here tomorrow, don’t worry,” Troy says. “We had to find someone to take Ravi’s place.” He grabs my kit bag and hauls it up into the stands.
The rest of my rep team sits in the lower seats but I climb up to sit with the boys.
“Nice innings,” Linc says in his typically non-emotional voice as I climb up and find a seat.
“Thanks. Wish I could have scored more runs though.”
“You should be opening,” Troy says.
“Maybe they want Alice as a finisher,” Linc says. “That’s basically the job you did for Wolves during the season.”
“I’m just happy to get a bat,” I reply, though secretly I agree with Troy. I wish I was opening so I could have the chance to score more runs.
“Who’s playing next?” Linc asks.
“Cities and Wests,” Ravi says, climbing up into the stands.
“Hey, aren’t you supposed to be working?” I ask.
Ravi drops down into a seat and lays his head back, closing his eyes. “I only have to do a couple of hours a day, and I started at six this morning.”
“How’d it go?” I ask.
Ravi lifts his head up and turns to me, grinning. “Amazing,” he says. “I got to play in the control room. It’s so much cooler than the one at school. Tomorrow I’m learning how to hook up the mics for the commentators.”
“There’s commentators?”
Ravi points to a demountable across the other side of the oval. “Who do you think is in there?”
“I just figured it was for the officials,” I reply, but now I’m intrigued. “Who’s in there?”
Ravi shrugs. “I don’t know. I haven’t met them yet. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
“Who’s going to win this one?” Linc asks as we watch Cities and Wests begin their warm-ups.
I shrug. “No idea, to be honest. I only know one player in Cities and she’s a fast bowler.”
“Any good?” Troy asks.
“Fastest I’ve played against, except for Adam,” I reply, remembering the thunderbolts she sent down at camp. “And she’s not a nice person.”
“Ooh, a villain,” Ravi says, rubbing his hands together. “There always has to be one.”
“No there doesn’t,” Linc says.
“Yes, there does,” Ravi replies. “Sport is at its heart a game of good versus evil.”
Troy snort laughs. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“Don’t you?” Ravi asks. “When you’re playing, you’re the good guys and your opposition are the bad guys. And think about how every professional team you support has a rival that you absolutely cannot stand to lose against. They’re your villain.”
The boys start a discussion about superhero movies then, but I focus on the teams warming up, hoping to catch Charlie’s eye to wish her good luck. Finally, she glances up at the stands and I wave and give her a double thumbs-up. She waves back and salutes with her gloves on and then jogs over to her team. Charlie’s been adamant that she doesn’t care about making the State team but the way she’s warming up, I’m not so sure. And I’m glad she seems to have shaken off the nerves she said she had the other night. I hope she has a good game.