10

PRE-SEASON

My emotional cycle was always the same at season’s end. I’d commence a destructive appropriation of the seven stages of grieving. Hate. Relief. Peace. Restlessness. Hope. Optimism. Love. But once August arrived, I’d be ready to go through it all again.

Nuggsy suffered from more extreme bouts of these seven stages of grief, though. He revelled in the highs, pledging to get in shape over the winter, tighten up his action, work on his mental game and take on a leadership role at the club. It was part of the reason that he and I had left the club at the same time, inspired by the possibility of starting afresh. We’d come to this new club together, a dynamic duo, ready to take the grade cricket world by storm. Unfortunately, Nuggsy’s lows were fucking low. It was strange that while he never punted during the season, he would always ask me for around $700 between August and September, having bombed out on several ill-advised catch-up bets. Even though I knew he’d already asked some of the other lads around the same time, I could never say no to Nuggsy. For all I know, he was running through the club earning around $10,000 and putting it on red at the casino. Unsuccessfully.

It starts with the group emails. Every winter, usually around mid-June, some bloke will send out a group email to everyone at the club to schedule the start of pre-season training. Inevitably, a small number of desperates with nothing else to do will turn up to run along a beach, or something equally romantic. A niggling competitiveness permeates throughout the ranks — and silly little competitions like ‘beep tests’ and beach runs only serve to exacerbate this underlying tension. I always felt slightly guilty about never going to these pre-pre-season sessions, but I’d often cave to the peer pressure, depending on the stage of cyclical grief I was in at the time. Of course, one’s ability to run marathons means fuck all in a dressing room. If you’re able to bench 150 kilograms — one single rep will do — you’re a lot closer to playing first grade than the bloke who can run consecutive threes without gasping for breath. In the alpha world of grade cricket, chest and pipes are everything. Apologies if it seems like I’m repeating myself here, but facts are facts. If you’re going to waste your time trying to improve your physique in the off-season, you need to be doing the right kind of exercises. David Boon, Ian Botham, Arjuna Ranatunga, Inzamam ul-Haq. You think these blokes were running on a cold and windy beach in June? No, they weren’t. So why should I?

If I really wanted to improve my cricket, I’d spend the pre-season ironing out my myriad weaknesses — the short ball, in particular — rather than attend a stupid beach session in the middle of winter. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that 25 minutes of cardio won’t stop me from averaging 16.2. I’ve played cricket for over 20 years of my life, yet I still cannot hit an on-drive. The short ball still causes my heart to skip a beat. Cricket is surely the only sport where you get worse, technically, with each passing year. But rather than use pre-season to work on these weaknesses and better myself as a cricketer, I prefer to take comfort in half-an-hour of throwdowns outside the off-stump. Throwdowns provide you with a temporary hit of serotonin. Essentially, they’re comfort food for cricketers: incredibly moreish, but entirely lacking in nutritional value.

While pre-season training is designed to give you confidence ahead of the upcoming season, it can actually have the reverse effect. There are no turf wickets prepared because the footy season is still going, so you’re forced to train on synthetic wickets. This is absolutely terrifying. Anybody can bowl a bouncer on synthetic grass. It’s never a good look when the new bloke training in his whites and tennis shoes has you in all sorts of trouble with a two-piece ball that he’s been shining since March. By the time the turf nets are finally ready, you’ve lost all faith in your own ability to hit a cricket ball. You know you’ve had a bad pre-season when the coach’s 13-year-old son has you in all sorts in the third net with his loopy leg-spinners.

Nuggsy and I developed the term ‘August hands’ to describe what it’s like trying to catch a ball in early spring. It’s fucking cold in August, so it takes about a month or so until you can take a grab without the ball stinging your hands. The air is cold, your palms are freezing; some dead-eyed dickhead is drilling balls at your ankles, a ferocious look splashed across his face. The ‘August hands’ theory is also applicable when you get hit on the thigh. The hard ball skids off the synthetic wicket, striking you on the softest piece of flesh on the human body. This is pretty much the only time that I wish that I trained legs at the gym. I have no qualms splashing $120 on the ‘test match quality’ thigh pad, but what for? I always manage to get hit in the three-centimetre gap between my thigh pad and my actual batting pad.

Pre-season carries with it a sense of obligation. Everyone knows that if you don’t turn up, you’ll definitely start in a lower grade. It was the sole reason we were all there. Sure, I could have the greatest summer of my life in fourth grade. I could hit 900 runs, take 30 poles, field at first slip all day and win a premiership with my mates, but I’d still rather bat 8 and not bowl in second grade. Why, you ask? Because I want to look my friends and family in the eye and tell them that I play second grade, even if they have no idea what that actually means. Because if you think about it, second grade is just three teams away from state cricket and four teams away from being in the Ashes squad. But as the weeks roll by and the weather picks up, everyone gets excited about cricket again. The more athletic players trickle back from their rugby, Aussie Rules and soccer seasons. The groundskeepers roll out the turf training wickets; the club administrators call for outstanding registrations to be paid. I’ll admit, even after all these years, nothing excites me quite like the build up to round one.

During this most recent pre-season, I was as excited as I’d ever been. My goals were set and my creams were ironed. I even washed my training shirt. In terms of selection, however, my only real goal was to avoid humiliation. Anything above fifth grade was a victory, as far as I was concerned. I was openly bullish about my chances of playing in a high grade — as I mentioned earlier, I’d learned to hide all my insecurities under an alpha sheath — but deep down I knew that anything could happen. I thought back to the time I’d hit a stunning 88 not out in a trial match, only to miss out on all five grades. I’d run out of the room in tears and never returned to the club. However, I’d learned from this experience not to take anything for granted.

As always, teams for round one were announced straight after the final Tuesday net session. We all gathered in the clubhouse for this annual event. The club had put on a special $10 ‘curry night’ in order to wring a few extra dollars out of us; bottled beers generously discounted from $6.50 to $6.00. Five long wooden tables had been set up for us to dine at. It appeared that all the first graders — existing and prospective — were sitting together at their own unofficial table; ditto the second and third graders. A select few lower graders would be invited to dine at these tables, too, provided they were able to add value in the form of humour or chop stories. The conversation coming from these tables was loud, heavily punctuated with laughter. There was no sense of fear or apprehension. They ate and drank heartily, safe in the knowledge their grade cricket futures were secure. The remaining two tables were sparsely populated, though; it seemed as if nobody really wanted to sit there, to do so would be to admit your own shortcomings as a grade cricketer. I spied a free spot on the unofficial ‘third grade table’ and made an undignified beeline for it, just getting there ahead of another bloke equally unsure of his own standing. We locked eyes as I wiggled into my seat; defeated, he slowly made his way over to one of the other tables, a forlorn look on his face. There, his dinner companions would be Anand and Sanjay, two young Shires cricketers hoping to hit the big time, and Steven Hopkins, a bespectacled, pot-bellied 34-year-old bloke who’d just moved over from Adelaide on a work contract. Fucking grim.

An elderly club official had been given the task of reading the team line-ups. His voice was painstakingly slow, giving further credence to rumours that he’d suffered a significant stroke in the off-season. Regardless of his state of health, he had us in the palm of his hand. I edged forward in my seat, yearning to hear my name. I needed this more than ever. The first grade announcement came and went. Second grade, too. Suddenly, a pang of fear shot up my stomach and into my chest. It could have been the dodgy curry, but more likely, an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. It had happened before and now it would happen again. My grade cricket career would end here
and now.

To my relief, these fears proved unfounded. I had been selected to bat 6 in third grade. Not good, but not bad, either. Average. The middle. The perfect metaphor for my middling grade cricket career. Batting 6 in third grade — the middle batting position in the middle team. Is there anything more fucking median than that? I didn’t care, though. I’d been selected in a moderately respectable grade cricket team. Anything else was just semantics.

Two 30s and I’ll be back up in second grade!

I relaxed into my chair, safe in the knowledge that I had lived to fight another day. I was still a relevant grade cricketer; I still had more to give.

Shit, I might even have a few beers and celebrate this properly.

Yes, this was going to be my season.