Australians Prepare For The Big Day

The Christmas Day Backyard Test

With a tough but unsuccessful show down against South Africa out of the way and a grinding win to start the three Test series against Sri Lanka, attention down under now turns to the toughest and most anticipated game of cricket any Australians will face in any calendar year. Not only is the contest gruelling but the expectations placed on the players is immense in a game that literally stops the nation in the way that the Melbourne Cup pretends to.

The pitch is ready, most of the gear untried until the day and yet another group of visiting players will be aiming for impossible success. Forget any allegations that Sri Lanka might have raised about ball tampering, because this is an event where the rules are largely made up as the game progresses.

Boxing Day at the MCG may be a cauldron of unemployed Santas, hollowed out water melons and mates from the local cricket club in Mexican hats and the "G" will no doubt have its share of Richie Benaud impersonators, Shane Warne face masks and low cut bikini tops filled to overflowing to break the boredom for TV cameramen, but all that action will be a day late.

The cricket match which will be talked about among your grandchildren happened the day before. Australia will once again go out mid afternoon with a belly full of turkey, garlic and lemon stuffing and awash with red wine and cold beer, to play backyard cricket.

The kids will have many hours up on the adults, having already had several turns at bat with the new willow that Santa left for them under the tree. They will have strapped on the batting pads several times before discarding them after cousin Aaron ran them out when they tripped on the oversized bloody things. They may have already risen to family fame by hitting their grandma on the head with the new six stitcher as she chowed down around the family BBQ (or was that just me?). I used it only after the three tennis balls had been lost ... well technically, two were lost and the dog took the other one ... but despite clear and reasonable circumstances, the pack of frozen peas on Nanna's head overrode all other considerations by a  narrow minded parental team and I was shown the red card by a mother who constantly mismatched sporting punishments.

Of course killing Nanna was nothing compared to bowling my Uncle when I was 15. No one had ever got him out before. His straight bat and bent elbow facing the bowler were beyond famous. He had scored a hundred for St George with Les Favell doing the same at the other end. He would go on to be named in the Saints team of the 1940's in a book by Mike Coward. We are talking the greatest thing to rise from working class Banksia. Apart from his quiet "well bowled" the gathering of the clan fell silent. It was as though I had stolen Christmas.

I digress.

It is from backyard cricket that champions have risen on their way to additional greatness and not just Bradman and his mixed medium rehearsal in the backyard at Bowral. Easy for him. Us blokes in the city were a bit short on corrugated tanks and besides, it did him little good against Bodyline. If only Jardine had become disoriented by Yabba's remarks and had instead insisted Larwood bowl rainwater tanks at the little bloke, an international controversy might have been avoided, a mini series not made and 60% of all cricket books not written.

As always with Bradman, there are more humble examples of youthful eneterprise and Steve Cannane presented many of them in his book First Tests. It was a treat for the ordinary joes who did all the same things in the backyard as Victor Trumper but failed to reproduce the same form in Billy Jones' backyard or anywhere else for that matter, outside the paling fences of home. Cannane names and fames your best Australian XI and tells you the ordinary things about their backyard cricket.

Our backyards shaped us as cricketers, trained our strokeplay to be timid here and bold there. My pitch lay on a diagonal which ended at one corner of the fibro house after passing over a concrete path just short of a good length. For a reason known only to my father, the paths in our backyard were all four inches (convert it yourself you clever younguns) above the surrounding grass. Perhaps it avoided a lot of digging or perhaps Dad was just damned good at formwork but it was certainly a unique feature and importantly, provided lift to the bowler who could exploit it.

Brisbane might have been improved with a strip of rough concrete four inches above the surface, just short of a good length.

I did the D thing again.

The wall at the back of the house had three panels, then there was a doorway at ninety degrees, right where point would have been and then a trellis spread to cover point. My mate, Big John Hildred, could have two of either of the panels or the trellis. He always took the trellis and the third panel, giving me only the narrow doorway which was four. My leg side was blocked by trees, shrubs and the Hills Hoist, all of which were catchers if struck on the full. I couldn't pull or hook, as the fence was only a metre away at square leg and the old man was sick of making excuses as he paid for panes of glass. How could I be blamed if they built their houses with the windows facing me at mid wicket. Needless to explain further, I played a lot of drives but always smashed away at the square cut, looking for that doorway.

As a seasoned lower grade batsman twenty years on, I never hooked, drove either side of the wicket like a demon and was often out cutting.

Anyway ... in a few days, after the thrill of discovering almost nothing on your carefully constructed Christmas list amongst the bright paper and impassable sticky tape and explaining to your pubescent fifteen year old why Auntie has bought her nephew another book instead of an iTunes voucher, you'll stick the turkey on, fill up on eggs and bacon and fight the kids for use of the DVD player. You'll ring parents, prompting the kids when they are asked if they liked their present and listen to a shopping list of problems you are sure could have been left until the New Year.

On Christmas Day, lunch will happen pretty much as described - too much turkey, too much wine, too many false laughs at bad jokes which survive bon bon explosions, even though the small plastic things went plopping into the punch. Then, exactly at that moment you'll feel sleep has been earned by the previous eleven months, your sons will shout, "come on dad, you promised, let's play cricket."

It always starts gently. The girls all get a bat and second and third chances that their brothers and male cousins will complain bitterly about. After batting, each of the girls and their mothers who insisted they be allowed to play, will slowly disappear in a fit of fey, either too hot or too tired or worst of all, too sweaty to continue. The boys will bat with great intent and you'll wonder why they didn't apply themselves last Saturday for the U/16's you coach. There will be jokes with your brother and brother-in-law, as each of you feign impartiality as their sons fail to become Greg Champion's champion. A few second chances will creep in and the first representations made over rules and rulings. One or too of the younger sons will be miffed but will be talked down by a father who speaks of reconciliation but has shit in his eye.

By the time dads get to bat, there are neat piles of stubbies around the stumps at the bowlers end. One courageous daughter has been retained to umpire but spends most of the time texting someone she gives assurance to her father is Stephanie. Being on your home turf, its understood you will bat last. The brother-in-law looks good for a while until young Brian routes him with one that skids of an errant peg and takes his off stump. Unhappy, he reluctantly hands over the bat to the brother, murmuring his disapproval of the natural object rule ... "should the ball strike a natural object and be deemed to have caused a dismissal, then tough luck, its not a Test match." The brother plays his best innings since he was 12 - according to you, with praise lavished on him as you remove him lbw for 26 ... the daughter raising the finger whilst sharing giggles and blushes, still allegedly with Stephanie, who rang about twenty minutes ago. He leaves, barely masking his unhappiness.

So to you: master of the house, curator and holder of the world record for your backyard. By now, stubbies have fallen into disorderly conduct, some appearing among the strawberries, some standing where placed, as extra fieldsmen, one upside down in the peg basket and bizarrely, one half full and hanging in the knotted arm of a yesterday's business shirt, hung on the line last night to prove you still know how the washing machine works. You start with a steady rhythm of ones - there are no twos or threes on the cramped space that's left on your suburb block - and pass your brother's 26 with a straight driven four threaded past the Chinese Elm. After forty minutes, you have your fifty and the complaints have started. "Come on Geoff. Hit us a catch."

Now you are upping the tempo, as brother and brother-in-law are treated harshly, breaking the unwritten code of backyard cricket that says, no matter how badly another bloke bowls, you don't embarrass him in front of his son. This is why fathers can't wait for their daughters to bring nerdy boys home for Christmas dinner. By 80, the rankled men are coaching their sons off long runs and screaming in banshee voices as the tennis ball, half shaven and with a seam of blue electricians tape, whistles past your head. You wife appears to calm the mood and create mirth, putting the almost empty, up-turned salad bowl on your head and holding it in place by knotting a rolled tea towel under your chin. They laugh, you complain ... but leave it there. At 94, two short of the record you survive a controversial appeal for caught behind after two fours off successive balls from a now super-nova angry nephew. Your claim that the ball didn't carry to the electric wicket keeper behind the stumps falls on deaf ears. You even remind everyone of the second chances you have insisted on for others as proof that you never cheat but in the end, its your backyard ... and everyone, which now includes the wives and daughters, have returned now to field in order to mute any chance of the ground's first century.

There is consultation as your brother takes a toilet break you suspect he didn't need, the field is shifted, and brother and brother-in-law discuss options with your nephew, now a wild Pamplona bull, desperate for revenge in that way strapping 15 year olds are when taken to the cleaners by an aging uncle who is already playing two grades below them on Saturday afternoon. As he runs in, you wife steps forward, stops him, adjusts your salad bowl helmet and gives you a big, sloppy kiss. It was sweet for a moment until you realise it stemmed not from love or wishes of good luck deserved after twenty five years but had been hatched by the strategists behind the bowler's end. You scowl at her and she shrugs. This has become tactical cricket.

The nephew would have gladly removed a panel in the back fence to lengthen his run but as it was, he arrived at the crease at full, Usain Bolt velocity, leaping into the air like Lillee and delivered with a demonic grunt more in keeping with women's tennis. You can hear the ball coming, pick up the late electrical tape in-swing of an attempted yorker and all of the years of torment and frustration of always being a backyard bien s'amuser burst forth in a refusal to clamp down and send ball and a "well bowled" back to the bowler. One Shane Watson stride later and a free swing of the bat and the last the ball is seen, it has bypassed the back fence and is still climbing over the roof of the house beyond. The young bowler howls your demise, does the Anderson airplane and the Brett Lee saw manoeuvre but the older heads quickly tally the six and out and resign to the necessity to wallow in your glory. A proud son would be heard bragging to cousins at their place on New Year's Eve that both halves of the tennis ball were found in the different front yards of houses across the road from the house beyond the back fence.

You think on this - few who have played in a Christmas Backyard Test wouldn't. You ponder and muse ... or do you dream and wake smiling mid afternoon on Christmas Day, full of turkey and red wine, to the urging of your sons, "come on dad, you promised, let's play cricket."

" ... and this year Dad, for once, try not to get a duck!"

That talented middle order batsman from City United in Tamworth, Bill North, who struggled for years to find form and then went off to the world to find himself because it was easier, provides the video report below from his days as the Sports anchor on Prime Television News. It stars the affable and immensely talented Peter Mead and his family, explaining and demonstrating some of the salient points of the backyard game.

These days, Bill lives in an extremely outer eastern suburb of Melbourne called Peru. He loved the place so much, he returned to it with a fervour. Its about as far from Tamworth, NSW, as Ben Hilfenhaus is from the Australian middle order but the big man with the lantern jaw and a sense of humour so dry that he's had to install a watering system, keeps tabs on the game he loves through the Internet and would you believe, thecricketragics.

Howzat?