*****

A couple of years after finishing University I resolved to knuckle down, to get a career, to start thinking about doing all those things that real grown ups do. Big screen TVs, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers, a starter home, leisure wear, DIY… you know, life. For a couple of years I made the best efforts I could, saved some money, had a real job. I was almost a fully functioning member of society.

But I wasn’t quite. I had the itch. I needed to make a move, I required action. Butcher cricket action.

Late in the summer of ’14, t-shirt production line drone Jackson Stewart had asked if I was going to do it, to follow in the footsteps of my skipper and head south east (for around 10,000 miles) to Hollymount Park.

“Ah maybe next year, we’ll see.” I was evasive. Andeh Clarke hadn’t fared so well and he was the most dominant bat in Disley history, what made me think I could do any better? (Spoiler alert, I didn’t really).

Stew Reynolds – no relation – shook me from my malaise. If not me, who? If not now, when? By mid-September it was decided. I was to become a Butcher (no Lomas, not that kind). The only problem was, with a real job comes real fine print, and real fine print means you work your notice. A January arrival it had to be.

Weeks before coming out to Wollongong I had asked Clarke, “what is it like?” Not in reference to the schnitties, the culture, the weather or any of that. No, the question was about the cricket. Having only gotten my cricketing act together in the past 18 months, I was making quite the stride to take on the second half of the Cricket Illawarra 1st Grade season. Would I score runs? How much harder could it be?

Jackson and Clarke had both been typically verbose in their descriptions. “It is harder, but you’ll be alright,” pretty much sums up their input. Thanks lads, insightful. Maybe they knew no last minute tips were going to get me a mountain of runs.

*****

No sooner than had I made the Descent to Heaven (© Dillsy) down the Bulli Pass and arrived in the ‘Gong, I was thrust into the fray with a pair of T20s on the same day. It marked the beginning of learning that down here cricket is the same game we know and love on the shores of Albion, but yet it’s not the same game. Let me walk you through a few of the major differences:

– When they say a wicket is a “road”, they sincerely mean that the 22 yard stretch you play on would be acceptable to lay down on the Princes Highway. The tracks are way harder, the ball is with you earlier, quicker off the pitch. Not drastically, but just enough.

– The players are younger, leaner, more athletic. First grade cricket is a young man’s game. No easy two’s to the old guy, no talented but immobile players down here. They make you earn every single one.

– The teas… the teas. The less said about them, the better. A quality tea was harder to find than a sight-screen or boundary rope. It’s as if the game itself is the most important thing in Australia, and not the administration, or eating surrounding it. Bizarre. Everything beyond the pursuit of the sport itself is apparently superfluous.

What is the same however is that rare kinship found in team sport. There is a special bond that comes from spending your summer Saturdays with 10 other blokes who know the pain of fruitlessly slogging on with an expensive sport, purely because you got a score or some wickets a few years ago. Beating on, boats against the current. Next year I will bowl faster, score more runs, concentrate harder.

*****

I’d been to ‘Straya before, spending months here in 2007 as an 18 year old kid on his gap yaah, idling away my youth, wrapped in a backpacker bubble. Go to a hostel, meet other Europeans, move on. Rinse and repeat. This time I was amongst it, accepted into the heart of a cricket club, living the Australian dream. Meat pies and all. (Yes Australia, we have them in the UK and they are better.)

More at home fielding in two shirts and a jumper, the first few games in early January were physical tests. The heat and humidity were stifling. Against University I came off feeling like I had batted through one of the games historic marathon innings. I had in fact only been at the crease around 10 overs.

A few starts showed I could just about hang around, a few contrived ways of getting out showed me I couldn’t hang around long enough. One game sticks out, at home to Corrimal – the last day of my antipodean season:

Slow left arm orthodox comes in round the wicket, I press forward and knock the ball back. Drinks have just gone and it’s time to dig in. We’ve had a wobble and are 30odd for 3, I’ve also run out the in-form batsman (sorry Cobra). Good from me.

In again comes the bowler, again I press forward to the over-pitched delivery and hit it for six. Come on Reynolds, time to bat long. You’re doing it, you’re batting in Australia, you are going to save the innings and win the game, this is incredible.

An over passes and once again in comes the left arm spin bowler, quicker this time, flatter towards the leg side. I’ve slightly over balanced but manage to keep the feet grounded. I hear the sound of bails falling to the ground. What’s happened here? I turn to the square leg umpire to confirm that it was the gloves of the keeper that disturbed the stumps. His head is down. Corrimal are celebrating, smiles and high-fives.

“You’ve been bowled mate, now f*** off,” the wicket-keeper helpfully informs me.

Oh. Right.

I should go.

*****

It goes without saying I’d like to thank Salakas, Neilry, Killah and everyone at the Butchers for having me over the past few months. I’m very proud to have been a part of growing the relationship between our two clubs, one I hope carries on for years to come with players from both sides making the exchange – that is before they come to their senses and realise there is no finer place on God’s green Earth than Cheshire in the English summer. Then again, the Northern Districts of Wollongong aren’t so bad either.

Much like many of my innings for NDCC, the season was over as quickly as it had began. Worth every mile travelled, without question. Anyway, when I’m old and telling this one back to the grand kids, who’s to say how good a player I’ll have become?