The wooden fence at the back of the yard is already splintered and broken above where three white lines representing stumps have been painted. Every day Michael bowls against the fence and the fence is slowly falling apart. He has been bowling at the fence all summer and now he can see through the opening onto the green lawn of next door’s back yard.
From the moment he first saw the game played it was the fast bowler that caught his eye. Michael thinks of nothing else but fast bowling through the long school days, and dreams of fast bowling at night. Just one dream. And always the same. In this dream he bowls the perfect ball. He experiences its perfection from beginning to end. It is a delivery so perfect that it becomes known all over the suburb as the ball that Michael bowled. The scene is always the same. The red train at the local station is just pulling out from the platform, the mill cats are tumbling over each other in the Saturday-afternoon sun, a vase of flowers at the base of the war memorial bows to the footpath in the heat, the milk bar owner in the main street pours lemonade into a glass for a lime spider, while on the dusty schoolyard oval in the shade of the great pines, Michael bowls the perfect ball and everything stops. The train delays its departure. The milk bar owner turns from his lime spider. The mill cats look up from their games as word ripples through the suburb that Michael has bowled the perfect ball. And the witnesses, those who were there, will grow in number throughout the day and through the following weeks, till everyone will claim to have been there and witnessed the ball that young Michael bowled. And all will agree, from the moment the ball left the boy’s hand, to the moment it lifted the off stump from the ground, that it was the perfect ball and that the boy had a gift for speed.
It is his ambition that one day he will live his dream. That one day he will feel the ball leave the tips of his thumb and fingers, know from the moment it does what is about to happen, and look up from his delivery stride to see the schoolyard crowd and everybody on the street that runs alongside the oval, pause in wonder as something of distracting perfection enters the everyday world of school bells and midday shopping. And even those who don’t care for the game will nod to each other on the footpaths, acknowledging that it is an event.
But before that moment can be lived he will spend his days bowling against his back fence, until that part of the fence upon which the three stumps have been painted will shatter completely and a new set of stumps will need to be drawn in.
Every day Michael kneels on the lawn with a small house-painting brush in one hand and draws a white line across the grass. On the lawn there are always two opened books lying in the sun. The pages of one contain a series of eight photographs, a series of newsreel stills that show, frame by frame, the great Lindwall’s action. Lindwall is shown approaching the crease. Michael sees the bowler gathering himself for the delivery stride. Lindwall hits the delivery stride, sliding through on the point of his right boot then transfers his weight to the front foot. The next frame is the boy’s favourite. Lindwall’s arm is high, his back is arched, and the ball is about to be released. It is in that moment, in the split second before the ball is released, that the bowler is privileged. His balance, the feel of his feet on the ground, his rhythm, his aim, the arch of his back, the movement of his shoulders and the snug sit of the ball in his fingers will tell him in advance about the quality of the ball he is about to deliver. Already Michael is living for that moment when he feels the ripple of the perfect delivery passing through him and he tastes that moment just before it happens. When it is his and his alone, before sharing it with the crowd. In the next frame the ball is released and the remaining two photographs show the smooth, even pacing of Lindwall’s follow-through.
Michael has studied these photographs again and again, he has read the great Lindwall’s book on the art of the fast bowler. Throughout the summer the ball will hit the back fence above the stumps, and the crack of the impact will reverberate around the neighbourhood like a rifle shot, telling everybody that young Michael is at it again. He has underlined in pencil the most important points in Lindwall’s book. At the top of the run, facing the back fence with an old cork ball in his hand, the boy’s impulse is always to run in as fast as he can and bowl the ball with all the speed he can gather. But the book tells him to begin slowly, and so, against all instincts, he takes off slowly and doesn’t overstretch at the delivery stride because the great Lindwall doesn’t.
On these afternoons, while he is slowly increasing his speed, he is vaguely aware of the sounds around him; the children in the yard of the adjacent house, a dog somewhere complaining each time the ball hits the fence, and his next-door neighbour, Mr Barlow, hacking his lungs up into a bucket on his back porch. But these sounds are unimportant. He hears them but they don’t concern him because they don’t matter.
There is only one sound that matters. The sound of speed. The old cork ball barely leaves his hand when he hears the snap of the impact, sees the ball ricochet off the edge of a fence paling, fly onto the side fence and bounce onto the lawn in front of him. He is aware that the neighbourhood will be listening. He is always aware of the raised eyebrows all around him and the muttered comments that the kid will destroy the fence before he’s finished.
During these hours Michael lives in a world of rhythm and action. He aims in turn for each of the painted stumps; the leg, the middle and the off. And he is not content until he hits each of the nominated stumps like the great Lindwall, who impresses the crowds at exhibitions by calling the stump that he hits before bowling the ball.
Occasionally the yelling next door disturbs his concentration. Mr Barlow will have finished coughing his lungs up and his wife will yell at him. She is famous for it. And it is always the same. The house is wrong. The street is ghastly. The suburb is stuck out on the edge of the world. She is ashamed of the address. Ashamed of him. And won’t somebody tell that kid next door to stop. She will be yelling all of this while the ball hits the back fence again and again. Then she will cry like she always does, and everything will go quiet once more.
Throughout these repeated episodes of yelling and crying and coughing Michael’s eyes are focused on the three stumps painted onto the fence. There are times when he feels almost nothing, neither the weight of his being nor the strain on his legs and back. Times when he is completely oblivious of the instructions flowing from his mind to his body, when he is almost a spectator to his own bowling. And the picture that he sees, from the curve of the back, to the grace of the bowling arm describing its delivery arc and the velvet follow-through, is an exact replica of the great Lindwall in frozen action. And what he sees is made all the more powerful by the certain knowledge that, at the end of such a perfect delivery, there will be damage.
At times like these he is sure he has the gift of speed. And if he does he must nurture it, for in his bones he knows that true speed is a gift. Not something to be squandered and lost. Knows that when a gift is given it must be received with care. And knows that, if he nurtures it properly, it will be speed that will one day carry him along his street, out of the suburb and into the world of the great Lindwall. This is the importance of being fast, for the kind of speed that turns heads can do all that.
But for the time being he will practise every afternoon in his yard until the fence is shattered and another three white stumps will need to be painted on the remaining palings next to the damaged section. He will follow the instructions of the great Lindwall until action becomes second nature, and the instruments of bowling – his legs, arms, eyes, heart and head – are all one.
When this happens, he will bowl the perfect ball and it will become known as the ball that Michael bowled. The red train will stay just that moment longer in the platform before departing, the mill kittens will cease to gambol, the milk bar owner will look up, suddenly distracted from his lime spider and the dream will meet reality. And even those who don’t care much for the game will pause on the footpaths and streets of the suburb in general acknowledgement that this is an event.