In the beginning there was cricket
Growing up in Australia it is hard to avoid cricket
Whether you like it or not it is there in the background and it permeates your life, no matter how hard you might try and resist. I imagine it is the same for football in England. You can fight it and ignore it but you know it’s there and it shapes so much of national life.
I became aware of cricket in the mid-eighties. My dad had always enjoyed the sport, as had his dad and wider family. I can’t recall my dad ever playing the sport but by the time I was aware of the sound of leather on willow he was struggling with a brain tumour and a regime of drugs that impacted heavily on his body. I started to follow cricket and watched it on TV in 1986 when I was ten years old. Eventually my dad took me to the Adelaide Oval, still one of the worlds great sporting venues, to watch South Australia play. I was captivated at an early age, dreaming of playing cricket myself, dreaming of batting and making hundreds. I later took up cricket at school and fitted nicely into the third eleven. You see, I wasn’t that great at cricket. I wasn’t awful, don’t get me wrong, but I was no world beater. My lack of fitness (I was pretty overweight!) coupled with crippling shyness and lack of confidence meant I was probably never giving myself the best chance to develop.
I was an awkward and shy teenager so playing cricket was a big step for me. But I loved it. Despite my stomach squirming and rolling every time I took the field I took to the sport, eventually becoming a decent bowler for my level and becoming known quickly as a stubborn batsman. My team at school was terrible. There is no other way to put it. We were the laughing stock of school cricket in our league. We were consistently thrashed, but I was always determined to do my best. I bowled my heart out each match, sometimes with luck and reward, and I always prized my wicket when batting. I was often difficult to dismiss but never made many runs. I never really had the technique or confidence. Playing an attacking shot required a leap of faith I simply didn’t have.
I played through my high school years in the parklands of Adelaide, sweltering in the Australian summer sun. During all these years I knew I was different. I never wanted, or knew how, to articulate it, but I knew it. Gay boys were almost nowhere to be seen, even though I was at an all-boys secondary school. I thought queers were meant to be rife at an all-boys school? There were a couple I knew of at mine but none others as far as I could see. If stuff happened, experimentation, eyes gazing, I didn’t see it. I copped some abuse from a couple of boys, both older than me, one of whom I’m sure was gay himself. But it was mild, I was friends with the two brightest boys in my year, and oddly enough I think that afforded me some protection.
Being gay, even if not admitting it to myself let alone anyone else, made me feel awkward when it came to sports. I didn’t like the changing rooms, the PE teachers, the causal insults that flew around. But while I was in the closet, I could protect myself from them. I could ignore them. So I kept playing. I played cricket and even had a shot at Aussie Rules Football. Again, I wasn’t great but boy did I give it a go. I wanted to at least walk off that field with pride in my performance. Cricket though was my lifeline. I watched it all the time but I wanted to play it even more. I wanted to improve, and it was a way of escaping. I could escape demons that were brewing inside. I could fight them by ignoring them on the cricket field.
It was leaving school which triggered my decline in playing cricket. I was depressed; I wasn’t dealing with my sexuality at all well, becoming more and more withdrawn into myself. I was piling on weight, and my university studies were not going to plan. My aspirations to study psychology waned quickly after starting the degree, the quantitative basis of the course did not agree with me. I changed university, changed degree and tried to deal with stuff better. I started playing some cricket again. Things improved with my studies, I connected better with people, and cricket started becoming part of my life again.
My dad died suddenly at age 48. He had been ill for many years, he was struck down with a brain tumour in 1981, but we all thought his condition was under control. He struggled, sure, but he was okay, he could live day to day. He seemed fine. He wasn’t fine. Perhaps he knew that he wasn’t fine, whether consciously or subconsciously. Following his death, we discovered he had sorted some things out, tidied up some of his affairs, perhaps in anticipation of the inevitable. He wanted to retire on health grounds, the wheels were in motion, but he was too late. His life support system was switched off on 19th October 1996.
The following day I played cricket. I don’t remember where or how the game went. All I remember was taking a catch in the gully and for a split second everything was okay; everything was normal, dad was still alive and watching me from the boundary rope. As I walked off the ground I didn’t know that I wouldn’t play cricket again for ten years. It drifted from my life again. By the time I came out some three years later, I never expected to play cricket again, I had banished it from my mind, what was the point — gay men didn’t play cricket did they.
