The Goldenest of Ducks
A whimsy by Sam Tarr
Tarr scowled on his way out to the crease. He wasn’t in a mood to take prisoners. Sure, the other guys were taking it easy at the boundary rope, but Tarr understood his responsibility. He’d be facing the first ball ever bowled to his team, and there was a point to prove. He was going to prove it. The first innings hadn’t gone so well. Someone dropping a catch off the very first ball the team, the club, had ever bowled was not the plan and the wayward deliveries of his new teammates had put pressure on his own bowling, but his line and length steadiness had kept the target down. Now they just needed him to dig in and give them a base. He got it. “They’re good guys, but someone has to do the dirty work here” he thought. Just stay in, then take it from there.
|
“And to think I only met them yesterday”, he muttered, windmilling his bat as he strode out. He caught the eye of fellow opener Richard... Richard Someone. Probably. Good bloke though. They’d all seen a reference in the online cricket commentaries of the Guardian newspaper, ‘come to Tallinn with a bunch of chaps you don’t know from Adam and form a cricket team. Eleven blokes, one game, become a team from nothing’. They’d laughed. But they’d come. And here they were, slightly the worse for post-introductory hangovers and pre-match G&Ts, but here they were. And Tarr had been elected to face the first ball for them. An honour. A duty. Someone had to do it, time to man up and show that a scratch team can stand up to whatever Estonia’s Old Barbarians can throw at it.
He sniffed the air, adjusted his box, nodded at his partner. Asked the umpire to stop laughing. His eyes narrowed. He knew the bowler, Babi. Lanky and lithe, he had been handy with the bat, but his silvering hair suggested he’d not be too menacing with the ball. Tarr essayed a couple of cover drives and nodded again at his partner. Twelve hours ago they’d have passed each other in a street as strangers, this morning the oppo didn’t believe they hadn’t been playing together for years. “On it mate”, Tarr growled, “for all of us, for the OBOccasionals, for making this damn thing happen”.
He sniffed the air, adjusted his box, nodded at his partner. Asked the umpire to stop laughing. His eyes narrowed. He knew the bowler, Babi. Lanky and lithe, he had been handy with the bat, but his silvering hair suggested he’d not be too menacing with the ball. Tarr essayed a couple of cover drives and nodded again at his partner. Twelve hours ago they’d have passed each other in a street as strangers, this morning the oppo didn’t believe they hadn’t been playing together for years. “On it mate”, Tarr growled, “for all of us, for the OBOccasionals, for making this damn thing happen”.
Babi ran in, a length ball, outside off. Tarr had it covered, he held a defensive pose. But the years had fooled him, the shot that had worked last he played it some many moons ago was an inch or so off, and the edge was nicked and he didn’t even need to look behind. His own team, this beloved team that was barely an innings old and yet still tighter than any he had ever played for, had looked to him. First ball the team – the club – had bowled had gone to first slip and been spilled; first ball the team – the club – had faced had gone also to first slip, but had been held. Tarr hung his head and started the slow march to the boundary. In his head only the Last Post, but at the rope only cheers and applause. It mattered not; a ball had been faced, whatever the consequence, and by that fact alone a team could confirm its existence. A team born out of a speculative request in the back pages of a newspaper for XI good men and true. Neither innings had commenced in glory; but they had commenced, and that in itself was a fact worth noting in the greatest annals of cricket. A drop and a golden duck – and the birth of a team and a club.