Monday, November 21, 2011


Hit the bloody ball!

It’s a rebuke that I wear as a badge of honour, even today:

It’s early September in about 1974. It’s that amazing turn in the weather when spring activities like kite-flying come into their own in Gelvandale.

But I’m not contemplating the afternoon’s action of trying to hang some other poor bugger’s contraption.
I’m kitted out in new white pads and have taken my mark with the bat at the end of the concrete nets in Roan Crescent, nervously watching who will take the first run-up to bowl at me.

I was never a good batsman. Nobody showed me how to move my legs. So when the fast balls come thundering in – all my mates trying their best to impress the visitor that they can bounce the ball like Jeff Thomson – I certainly am not keeping my eye on the release from the bowler’s hands, reading the pitch and moving into position to play. Instead, I am all over the place, throwing everything but the kitchen sink at trying to keep the ball from my wicket.

I'm useless at the crease.

So, it's a pretty exasperated visiting coach who shouts out: “Hit the bloody ball!”

The coach is Basil D’Oliveira. “Dolly” to us when he is out of earshot - perhaps because we feel a kinship with him; but “Sir” in his presence – because hasn’t he been to Buckingham Palace and isn’t he now a proper Englishman?

Certainly, we're familiar with this South African hero who has achieved such greatness, breaking through apartheid restrictions to show the world his skill. We've been warned not to tell too many people that Dolly is going to coach us for fear that the security branch will arrive to pick him up. And maybe pick us up too? If there is any fear in our bellies, we never betrayed it, stoically walking from school to meet D’Oliveira, getting a brief talking-to before being told to pad up.

Instead, number 9 batsman that I was, I put my head down and my guard up. And wait for the rebuke to ring in my ears as I am flummoxed by yet another delivery.

Dolly was not a particularly friendly chap, he was stern, short-tempered even. And he did not pad up for a stint in the nets so we never got to experience the elegance he displayed with the bat. I would have loved to toss my left-arm spin at him. I fancied my chances of getting him out.

But he knew how to hit the bloody ball and make us all proud!