#171 I bowled my heart out for Australia...

On Christmas Day, in a family backyard, I bowled my heart out for Australia.

At 45 years of age, I was seven years older than the late Robert (Bob) “Dutchy” Holland OAM who debuted for the Australian Men’s Test Team, donning the baggy green for the 1984/85 series against the mighty West Indies who were the world’s cricket powerhouse of the era.

The pitch was grassy, the wickets an outdoor chair, and there were vociferous appeals bordering on unsportsmanlike conduct, particularly when there is, without question, no leg before wicket in backyard cricket.

This was a battle taking place across the country with spirited and highly competitive matches where time at the crease mattered and rules applying only to a single backyard determined your fate.

This is the way Christmas day has always been for me.

But there was a difference – we were treated to a bucket of balls rather than one half-taped tennis ball with electrical tape pinched from dad’s toolbox.

Instead, there was a selection of swing kings, rubber and plastic seamless varieties, half-taped tennis balls, and practice ‘rocks’ with pronounced seams.  

And another difference – there was no requirement to collect the ‘pills’ when they cleared the fence because kindly neighbours, who are gifted Cadbury Favourites as reward for tossing the balls back, fetch the ‘cherries’ like trusty sheep dogs returning their flock to the pen for sale.

And instead of an All-Pro made from Kashmir willow, it was a Size 6 Kookaburra and a Gray Nichols technique bat employed to defend the castle, prevent the follow-on, or build a lead.

Christmas Day is about cricket, but it is also about family and food.

For my family, providing on Christmas Day is a ritual that is months in preparation.

Once upon a time our family called the butcher to order a ham, but now the butcher calls us asking for a preferred size a month or so before Santa makes his way through the backdoor.

There is always enough food to comfortably feed the neighborhood even though I came from a very small Australian based family. Many years later I realised that the oversupply of food was more to do with ensuring provision rather than gluttony.

A Christmas ham and turkey along with roast vegetables and gravy remain the staple although I have noticed in recent years that seafood has slowly crept onto the menu perhaps indicating that change is afoot.

Change is important and how we deal with it even more so, yet I think a seafood buffet in place of the staples is years away.

However, 25th December 2021 had me in a different mood. There were still funerals to be conducted for victims of the Hillcrest Primary School tragedy. As I wrote recently, “The collective sadness of a community and collective grief of a profession is indescribable, yet it is the heartache of those who have lost children who punctuate our grief and remind us of those whose pain is beyond comprehension”.

Principals, teachers, and support staff form strong bonds with children that last for years, sometimes a lifetime. Sadly, it is often tragedy that is the reminder of these important relationships when we should appreciate that difference that individuals make in our lives on a far more regular basis.

I regularly paused to think about those families who had lost so much, a child, in what should be days of celebration and relaxation. I also paused for the teachers who shoulder pain and regret and despair standing alongside families to help them grieve; delivering eulogies at the funerals of those who died way too young.

Their grief is incomprehensible, and I know we will need to care for them and the school community for years to come.

There were also cricket games on the dust bowls of ‘Nagpur’ a few days later when camping on the East Coast. A pitch formed on a dirt road and compacted with the heavy roller after continuous caravan traffic condemning the classic forward defence to magnificently manicured private school pitches because blocking the ball from hitting the stumps was the only strategy in play.

And for anyone who chose sunscreen on their feet to protect themselves from Tasmania’s radiant sun during the most competitive of cricket matches, we were left with a black v branding due to slip-sliding in thongs on the dirt desperately hoping not to be rendered unplugged.

Christmas Day and the period up to New Year’s Eve remains my favourite time of the year. For our family it means friendship and camping. A time to try and slow down and forget about the stresses that have built up during the year, the negative moments and discussions, and debates at work that you deal with as par for the course, but always have a cumulative impact on your mental health and wellbeing. 

Christmas time is for all of us. Hug your loved ones and hold them tight, remembering that there are those among us dealing with sadness and in need of support that many of us have time to give.