I’ve often wondered when the right opportunity would arise to put all of this down on paper in one go. As someone who always wanted to be like everyone else, I guess it makes sense that I follow the lead of my former Green Shield coach, Andre Maddocks, in sharing my cricket story. Dre, we have so much more in common than I ever knew.
Cricket and I began our relationship for much the same reason. My parents weren’t cricketers, so it took me following the cool kids at school into the Mount Colah CC Kanga cricket program (run by the legendary Bruce Kimberley OAM) to get started. Soon enough, I was bowling spin because the leader of the pack did that too.
While Mum and Dad didn’t play, I spent Christmases with my uncle, himself a spinner with a hard luck story (aren’t we all …), refining my craft under Pop’s watchful eye. Off-spin bowling became something that I was better at than the other kids, so of course I fell in love with the game. For an uncoordinated kid to have a superior athletic skill was a lifeline and for years I extracted every ounce out of my minimal talent. What began with copying the TV in the reflection on the window and steadily killing a gum tree with a cricket ball became sustained on-field success as a teenager. My love of cricket became all-consuming but began with social currency.
At Mosman CC, the selectors threw me a Green Shield lifeline as a 15-year-old in 2007-08. Somehow, I made the team after being knocked back at Northern Districts, my home club, and North Sydney. I trialled with my bowling hand in bandages after getting second degree burns in science class. After Greenies wound up in January ‘08, I went straight into 4s. The next year, while Greenies captain, I played Second Grade at a club that had been gutted following the mass centenary year departure of veterans.
As a naïve, nerdy teenager (I attended Normanhurst Boys High, an academic school, where I was known as “Warna” for being blonde, loud and bowling spin) playing well above his level, I quickly became the small fish in the pond once again. At the club I was the youngster who couldn’t bat or field. In the NSW pathway programs, I was by far the least talented in a group that included the likes of Cummins, Abbott, Zampa, Sams, Patterson, Sandhu, Bertus and even Parramatta lock Nathan Brown.
But as with any teenager, I never saw the warning signs of steamrolling through school, sport and extracurricular pursuits with an eye on everyone except myself.
By the time I finished school in 2010, I was buggered. I sought a fresh start at the Parramatta Cricket Club where, despite enjoying a handful of First Grade games, a Second Grade minor premiership and a dominant PGs premiership, I never really felt like I fit in. My insecurities meant I rarely helped my own cause. I was forever frustrated, searching for answers and above all else, unhappy. In senior cricket at two clubs I never had the social currency or confidence an insecure person like me craved. I just wanted someone to put their arm around me.
Things came to a head in 2013-14. In the same season that First Grade T20 success gave me the chance to train with Sydney Thunder, I couldn’t get out of 2s in the two-dayers (and was lucky to hold my spot). I was working my first full-time job - chaotic and inconsistent shifts at Fox Sports - while completing my journalism degree and juggling an on-and-off relationship. To cope with it all, I had spent a few years punting every cent I didn’t need for petrol, or eating like a horse. I was huge, broke, overwhelmed and suffering in silence.
In early 2014, I turned up for a PGs game against Northern District at Old Kings Oval, a team filled with current or future mates from the Hornsby area, completely spent. At the top of my mark, I wasn’t sure whether the ball would get to the other end.
And the first ball did, but almost on the second bounce. A couple went over the batter’s head. In my sole over, I actually dismissed my now mate Lachlan Ford stumped down the leg side with one that fair dinkum missed the cut stuff.
I’ll never forget walking off the field after that over, dazed and confused. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Eventually I worked out that I had the yips, but had no idea it would take me six years to bowl an off-break in a Grade cricket game again.
In that time, I fell further before I rose again. I quit a good job, desperately searching for happiness and a way to dig myself out of a hole. Two redundancies in a year followed, the second when lured in by a dodgy businessman, which didn’t help either.
But three things picked me back up. Firstly, it was reconnecting with people from Mount Colah CC in the Hornsby area, and our more talented mates who were running around at NDs. I spent four years in the club’s A/A2 side, batting and part-time seam-up bowling (which was still a bit yippy in itself), re-wiring my brain that cricket was meant to be fun. Occasionally I mustered up the courage to bowl in off-break in a park game (seriously, it was an ordeal) and was shocked to realise that, however funny it was when “Mr Yippy” returned with his unwelcome advice, my mates were still there the next game. I began to not be defined by others’ view of my success, and my own view of the game changed forever.
In that time, I also did a stint as club vice president and briefly sat on the executive of HKHDCA while coaching a few of their underage DCA representative teams, all incredibly fulfilling volunteer pursuits. As a side note – recently I was told about some neuroscience that suggests it is near impossible to feel unhappy when doing something nice for others. Contributing to community sport is as good a way as I’ve found to achieve that, but it doesn’t have to be a big formal undertaking. Try it!
Secondly, I caught a lucky break with work. Through a combination of good fortune, the right timing and a strong show of faith after a bumbling interview, I landed a job at Cricket Australia as Communications Manager for the Big Bash Leagues. It is eye-opening, all-consuming and full throttle, and I am in love. It may surprise you that not everyone there is a cricket tragic – you don’t need to love hitting the top of off stump to manage travel logistics or resolve IT issues. But a combination of tragics and creative thinkers, all of whom are hard-working subject matter experts, is what makes it such an incredible place to work. Like other major sports, the effort to stay afloat during covid has been nothing short of astonishing, made possible as well by the hard work and patience of the kinds of people who read this website.
But thirdly, most-importantly and the moral of this story – my life has turned around through finally regaining some control of my mental health. Over the past decade, counselling started and stopped for various reasons. Sometimes related to addiction, other times related to complete and utter exhaustion. But in April 2020, when lockdowns began, I returned home from Melbourne (CA HQ is over the road from the MCG) and made a commitment to sorting it out. My counsellor and I spent an hour per week on the phone unpacking anything and everything. On the second week, she remarked that this sounded like an anxiety problem. About six months of behavioural therapy later – and she wasn’t the first counsellor over the years to suggest it – my counsellor finally convinced me to get to the GP and try anxiety medication.
My life changed in 48 hours. At first I was angry at the complete waste of my youth. Then I saw the opportunity – an instant return to Grade cricket! What a glutton for punishment!
More than a decade too late, I followed my mates (including some from our now disbanded MCCC team) to Northern District CC for the 2020-21 season with a newfound calm, enthusiasm and confidence. There, I discovered the most extraordinary community organisation I’ve ever been part of. High performing on field and caring and community-minded off it. I am not shocked at the club’s unprecedented success last season. I never intended to be a journeyman, in cricket and life, but am glad to have finally found home.
Phil Melville, Ben Fisher, Matt Taylor … the veteran army from NDCC 4th grade side 2020-21
As Andre remarked in his piece, “there are probably 5 or 10 guys at every club, every year, just trying to stay afloat”. The Grade Cricketer boys provide a satirical take on this condition. There is a degree of that Grade Cricketer in all of us. Some of us are just sick for it and can handle averaging 20 by making 20 every week. Some people are driven to improve at all costs and usually they do. And the rest of us let it eat us up inside.
When asked the question, “what does cricket mean to you,” we all talk about summer, mates, family, beach, Boxing Day, beers after play etc. Yet many of us spend so much time kicking cans about a game we elected to play. I’m glad to finally say, a few weeks shy of my 29th birthday, that I spend less time in that bucket than ever before, despite my unhealthy love of winning that will never go away. I’m still a nervous starter – I have to bowl at least my first over of off breaks around the wicket, regardless of who is on strike – but life doesn’t start and end on Saturdays.
My feelings about cricket were inextricably linked to my mental health. As a young guy on the rise, it usually just clicked. I will forever treasure the Baggy Blue cap from the U17s, my personal zenith from an age where you played underage red ball cricket against other states. But when all the warning signs began to show, I ignored them. It robbed me of the best years following my true passion. I’ll never play First Grade again, but that’s fine by me - no amount of losing sleep over my spot in a cricket team will ever be worth it. If you’re in that spot, don’t do it alone. There will always be another cricket game and, as a wise person once told me, the sun will still come up in the morning.
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