Free The Rules of Backyard Cricket by Jock Serong Page A

feeling quite sorry for Short Leg.
    Craig’s taking him to the same car on which he and the skipper were leaning. He lifts his captive out of the headlock and for a momentholds his head with both hands at arms’ length. Then he crashes the head down onto the bonnet, face first, so hard that the metal flexes in a loud whoonk .
    Short Leg’s resistance, such as it was, has ceased but Craig takes the head up again and brings it down again. This time he lets go, and Short Leg slides bloodily down the slope of the metalwork and slumps against the grille. The skipper’s seen all this and is crawling to nowhere in particular, away from me and the blood on the car.
    These are just impressions, dabs of paint. My head’s spinning. Craig overtakes the skipper in a few bright steps and takes hold of him under both armpits, ramming him forwards and directly into the grille, just beside Short Leg. The sound is snapping plastic this time, and the meaty slap of the skipper’s palms on the asphalt.
    With the two of them bunched there as though the car had hit them, the happy man-child ambles back towards me. For a second I don’t know what to expect—is he going to beat us all to a pulp? But his eyes fall slightly to my right. He picks up the fallen bat and weighs it with a lazy swipe through the air.
    Then he turns towards Short Leg and the skipper, who still haven’t moved.
    I can’t look. I have a rough idea how it’s going to sound, but I can’t look. As I bury my head I hear Wally’s voice, faint and far away.
    ‘Don’t.’
    Wally’s got up and is shuffling towards Craig with a hand extended.
    ‘Don’t hit ’em. Thanks for, for…Don’t hit ’em.’
    The transformation in Craig is immediate: whatever animal trance had occupied him is gone, and he carefully helps Wally to sit down again, gathers the scattered gear and replaces it in the bag. The two Eastern Suburbs players find their feet, edging away. The keeper’s nowhere to be seen.
    I watch our saviour squat down before Wally, take him in both hands and look into his eyes.
    ‘You good?’ he asks. ‘Okay?’
    Wally nods faintly.
    ‘Remember this, mate,’ he gives Wally a little shake. ‘Remember this. I’m your friend now. Anybody fucks with you, they’re fucking with me.’

Grade Cricket
They’re waiting at the lights. Indicator going click-click, click-click, brief orange flashes like snapshots of my situation. Sheet lightning in the darkness.
    One shin bloodied.
    The torn threads of the jeans leg standing to attention where the hole is.
    A pair of ordinary brown shoes mobbed together under the cable ties.
    The carpeted backs of the seats.
    Could I rotate myself into a position to start kicking at the tail-light? Would it achieve anything, other than persuading them to stop the car and finish me off quickly?
    In the middle of a string of hot days, January 1986, it’s my turn to get up early and water and mow the pitch. I don’t know how I got roped into this, why it has to be done at dawn. Wally’s got some theory about water burning the grass if you do it in the middle of the day—I don’t see why it can’t be left until the cool change comes through and waterseverything. So I’m up, stumping around in thongs making breakfast. TV’s on in the living room to get the team for the one-dayer in the evening.
    Desiccated white bread toast and a smear of marmalade because I can’t find the cereal. Toast’s got me thirsty so I look for the milk, and there’s the cereal. Mum’s put it in the fridge again.
    There’s a female voice coming from the TV; the news, Florida. Special bulletin, she says. And then I hear the distinctive monotone of mission control.
    Obviously a major malfunction.
    They run it again and again, the urgent repetition of the footage blurring live images into recorded vision. I wander into the living room and see the curlicue of smoke in the sky, the Medusa’s head. On the ground, people weeping, hugging. Americans, all of them