There can always be a light
Brad Murphy | April 21, 2023
Originally published - 22 September 2019. Still a wonderful story
This is a story that I needed to come straight home and write as it was as “feel good” as you can get.
After an excellent kids holiday coaching clinic in Toowoomba this morning followed by watching the end of the mighty Bulls win over NSW on the television I ventured down to Macgregor Cricket Club with my son Christian and a young visiting Welshman, Nick, to hurl a few sidearms to them in one of the nets just before sunset.
Macgregor has three sets of nets and on this occasion the two top sets were locked which only left the two on the bottom oval up for grabs.
Walking over the rise and down the hill we could see a couple of young lads having a hit in one net and in the other was a young guy steaming in and bowling very sharp underarms at a set of stumps by himself.
The young guy would bowl the ball and then follow through and fetch the ball before repeating this drill.
As we got closer I recognised the lad as one of the members of the Qld Blind Cricket Club whom I have had a fair bit to do with over the past decade or so. They are a great club and so passionate about the game.
Now none of this is particularly unusual I guess – no nets available for us – but what happened from there was a lesson in perspective for all three of us.
The lad, 21 year old Jock Young who lives close by at Macgregor immediately offered to vacate the net to allow us to use it and advised that he would happily move to the centre wicket to practice. This would mean he’d be bowling on an open field and then running at least 80 metres to fetch his plastic blind cricket ball, every single time.
Nick, the Welshman, is 21 and here for 3 months to improve his game by training each day and playing club cricket and my son is 17 and also keen to work on his batting so we were looking to have a half an hour of sidearms after yesterday’s grade cricket round.
I immediately suggested to Jock that we join together and he could bowl to the two young blokes and we could all get some practice before it gets too dark.
Jock was so humble and unselfish that we had to insist he bowled to us rather than run a marathon out in the middle, so the session began with me also rolling a ball along the deck at the batsmen and Jock getting some serious momentum up with his excellent underarm technique. It was indeed worthwhile practice for the batsmen but more worthwhile for other reasons.
As anyone who has ever experienced a game of blind cricket will tell you – it’s easy until you actually have to front up and face the music. Although the ball doesn’t come through the air, it’s not very easy picking the line when it is travelling at a good pace and bouncing low. It is actually a similar feeling as facing a sighted bowler of normal delivery at pace. It is a real challenge.
As the darkness came upon us fairly quickly, Jock who is considered a fine line between a B3 and B4 blind cricketer, told us a little bit about himself but in doing so he just kept steaming in, foxing balls and seriously working up a sweat. Now in normal circumstances any one of the three of us would have complained about how tough it was to see but seriously, how could we do that when in Jock’s company – not a problem for him at all!
On we went with Nick and Christian both getting cleaned up on a couple of occasions with some severe worm-burning deliveries from Jock whilst feasting on my puerile rolls along the pitch.
Jock is a serious left arm pace bowler in his own right who took the game up in 2016 and as well as playing as much cricket as he can with the QBCA club. He is about to qualify as a lawyer and hopes to become a barrister. He’s also writing a book, loves playing golf and is a man of many interests.
At the end of the session and only when Jock said it was too dark, we bode our farewells and Jock told us we had made his day by practising with him.
I can tell you that I could have easily shed a tear thinking of how good that 45 minutes was in teaching three fellow cricketers a valuable lesson in perspective.
So thanks Jock – it was you who made our day mate!
