Who ate all the Jelly Beans?

Brett Eriksson | June 01, 2023

It was a 40-degree day in Newcastle for day 2 of the final round of the Australian Under 19 cricket championships in 2001.

NSW v South Australia in a fairly star-studded line-up. NSW had Dan Christian, Aaron Bird and Jason Krezja and South Australia had the great Shaun Tait, Callum Ferguson and Mark Cozzy Cosgrove. Many ended up playing for their country.

Jason Krejza went on to play for Australia

As we started the day South Australia had the upper hand as NSW were chasing and in big trouble. With a full day to go, we were playing for the draw. For those of you in the know about cricket, this can go 1 of 2 ways....you’ll be knocked over by lunch or it becomes an extremely slow and boring day.

As the latter ensued, the guys started to look for other sources of entertainment as not much was happening in the middle. Groups of 2 or three would go for a “lap”, which can kill up to an hour, the more superstitious wouldn’t move from their seat, and a couple of us would end up in a chat with Brian Taber, the former Australian Test wicketkeeper and selector.

Brian Taber

Tabsy, as he was affectionately known, was sitting by himself and he had a large bag of Jelly Beans next to him. We thought it was a little odd but we didn’t question him and he didn’t seem to mind us eating them. I reckon between the 3 or 4 of us we knocked over almost 1kg of jelly beans in an hour and a half...

Back to the cricket and by now our opening batsmen Jason Krezja had amassed 180 runs in a day and a half and Tait was running out of steam into his 30th over.

We might do this!!

Remembering it was 40 degrees, drinks breaks were more frequent than on the hour which meant the 12th man was busy with spare gloves, water runs and any lollies in sight for sustenance. I’m pretty sure at one point I saw our 12th man stirring the cordial with a cricket bat handle, anyway, I digress.

At this point I noticed our manager David Moore starting to look a little distressed...he’d just walked off the field after the last drinks break before the end of the day and I assumed he’d lost his wallet or car keys based on the panicked look and demeanour. With 10 minutes or 2 overs till stumps he took off for a “lap”, clearly irate.

In the last over of the day Krezja reached his 200 off 524 balls, no 4’s and no 6’s - in all honestly an amazing effort and we’d held on for the draw. This still didn’t seem to appease our manager was now looking as though he’d just found out his wife had left him for his best mate.

We sat in the sheds laughing jovially at the fact we’d got out of jail and David “Freddy” Freedman our coach seemed very happy with our efforts.

And in he came - our manager, D. Moore and yelled at us to sit down and shut up. I thought, here we go, “This bloke poured his blood sweat and tears into the last 2 days to get you blokes out of the shit” he screamed “and what did you blokes do to help him?”

Now confused everyone’s heads dropped. Then he yelled “I’ll tell you what you did- YOU ATE ALL THE FUCKING JELLY BEANS”

Now realising that Tabsy’s jelly beans weren’t his.....I burst into laughter as one can do at the most inappropriate times. My outburst had set off a chain reaction of giggles in the change rooms most notably in Dan Christian and I was swiftly kicked out of the sheds and told I was never going to represent NSW ever again. I didn’t play for NSW again.