Anyway, so, we batted. It was a 60-over game, which was probably why I was in it (“Keeps it tight. Too slow to get people out, though.”). We made 226. Brad McNamara, only seventeen himself, somehow born with a flawless technique, stroked an elegant 60. Greg Douglas, the hardest hitter of a cricket ball in all of Sydney, hit a fifty too, landing several meaty blows against left arm spinner Freddy Freedman. I went in last, though not for long. Mark Waugh ambled in to bowl with the laziest run-up imaginable, but then suddenly the ball was fizzing past me, the pace coming from God-knows-where. I lunged forward to my first ball, and missed. An unimpressed voice came from gully: “f***ing second grader!” Nothing to lose, so I turned and answered, “Steve, it’s worse than that, I’m a second grader who can’t bat!” He did not smile. Mark’s third ball flicked the very outside of my pad and disappeared to fine leg. I was half way through running the leg-bye when the umpire gave me out.
