[real life] cricket | "the riddles on the page..."
I don't really know what I want to say, I just know I want to say something...
I'm heading out to my Mum's this morning, so I'm going to grab my old bat from school cricket (which also happens to have been my Dad's old bat) and take part in this tribute. Social media at its very best. Even if it is just providing feeds (tumblr, twitter, instagram) of images for me to sob over while I try to eat my cereal.
It honestly feels like much of the country (much of the cricketing world) is wandering around in that awful haze of futile devastation, where nothing makes sense and it's all awful and sad and it doesn't even matter that we didn't know him, because we totally DID know him, he was a farm boy from rural New South Wales who just wanted to play cricket for his country... Tomorrow it was going to be his twenty sixth birthday and Thursday he was going to be back in the national test team and just, a vertebral artery dissection. He didn't stand a chance.
Effectively, and with his mum and sister and best mate watching, he died where he stood, playing a pull shot, forever 63 not out.
Here in Australia, cricket is our national sport. In winter, there are soccer kids, and footy kids, and netball kids, and rugby kids, but in summer, we're all cricket kids. And with the global nature of the game these days, international matches and the changing of the seasons means our national team basically plays year round. Cricket is also safe. So we thought. The consummate Gentleman's Game where matches last five days and the worst thing that might happen is a cameraman falls off a segway or a drunk dude in the crowd drops a six but doesn't spill even a drip of beer.
Perhaps the amount of padding required by a batsman (helmet, pads, box, gloves, rib guard, arm guard) should have been a bigger clue? We got complacent. As a sport, as a nation of sports lovers, we literally 'oooh ahhhed' bowlers who broke the 100mph barrier and declared all batsmen with a dance in their step to be The Next Don Bradman.
Once, a few years ago, when he became the youngest player ever to score 100 runs in both innings of a test match, bringing the first up with ridiculous, consecutive sixes, we declared Phillip Hughes to be The Next Don Bradman.
And we got complacent.
We are not complacent anymore.
In the wake of this tragedy, this freak accident of timing and mistiming, helmet designs will be reexamined and the practice of bowling bouncers and playing hook shots and pull shots will be scrutinised. But they are discussions for another day.
Today is all about a kid from the bush who just wanted to play cricket for his country...
I'm heading out to my Mum's this morning, so I'm going to grab my old bat from school cricket (which also happens to have been my Dad's old bat) and take part in this tribute. Social media at its very best. Even if it is just providing feeds (tumblr, twitter, instagram) of images for me to sob over while I try to eat my cereal.
It honestly feels like much of the country (much of the cricketing world) is wandering around in that awful haze of futile devastation, where nothing makes sense and it's all awful and sad and it doesn't even matter that we didn't know him, because we totally DID know him, he was a farm boy from rural New South Wales who just wanted to play cricket for his country... Tomorrow it was going to be his twenty sixth birthday and Thursday he was going to be back in the national test team and just, a vertebral artery dissection. He didn't stand a chance.
Effectively, and with his mum and sister and best mate watching, he died where he stood, playing a pull shot, forever 63 not out.
Here in Australia, cricket is our national sport. In winter, there are soccer kids, and footy kids, and netball kids, and rugby kids, but in summer, we're all cricket kids. And with the global nature of the game these days, international matches and the changing of the seasons means our national team basically plays year round. Cricket is also safe. So we thought. The consummate Gentleman's Game where matches last five days and the worst thing that might happen is a cameraman falls off a segway or a drunk dude in the crowd drops a six but doesn't spill even a drip of beer.
Perhaps the amount of padding required by a batsman (helmet, pads, box, gloves, rib guard, arm guard) should have been a bigger clue? We got complacent. As a sport, as a nation of sports lovers, we literally 'oooh ahhhed' bowlers who broke the 100mph barrier and declared all batsmen with a dance in their step to be The Next Don Bradman.
Once, a few years ago, when he became the youngest player ever to score 100 runs in both innings of a test match, bringing the first up with ridiculous, consecutive sixes, we declared Phillip Hughes to be The Next Don Bradman.
And we got complacent.
We are not complacent anymore.
In the wake of this tragedy, this freak accident of timing and mistiming, helmet designs will be reexamined and the practice of bowling bouncers and playing hook shots and pull shots will be scrutinised. But they are discussions for another day.
Today is all about a kid from the bush who just wanted to play cricket for his country...