eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781927262887 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Upstart Press |
| Publication date: | 10/20/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Greg McGee originally came to literary attention when he wrote the iconic New Zealand play Foreskin’s Lament. Since then he has had a successful career writing for television, but again broke into the literary consciousness as Alix Bosco winning the inaugural Ngaio Marsh award for crime writing. He has been published internationally.
Read an Excerpt
Brendon McCullum
By Greg McGee
Upstart Press Ltd
Copyright © 2016 Brendon McCullumAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-927262-88-7
CHAPTER 1
A Pie, a Pint and a Punt
I just love his confidence. The world was there to be taken and that was the way he saw it. He saw every day as an opportunity to do something special ... It wasn't always successful ... Cricket is an awful game because you fail so regularly compared to your successes. Even the greats do it. To have that attitude is fantastic.
— Craig Cumming, quoted in the New Zealand Herald
I'm not into memorabilia; I don't keep scrapbooks. I love sharing memories over a beer or wine, reliving old glories and embarrassments, stories and characters, but stuff that other people might find precious, I've just given away. My friends know that about me. When I scored 302 at the Basin Reserve against India in 2014, a good friend grabbed the bat off me, made me sign it for my son Riley and told me he'd keep it safe, because he knew that otherwise it would sit in my garage and I'd end up giving it away on a whim to whoever showed an interest.
Maybe one day the sight of that abused piece of willow will help rekindle memories of an extraordinary couple of days. Maybe one day I'll thank my friend for his foresight, or maybe Riley will. But I doubt that I'll need it to conjure up memories of those or any other days of the life I've spent playing cricket, because cricket has been my life, pretty much.
I was the kid in South Dunedin who lived for Saturday mornings, when I'd pull back the curtains and hope it wasn't raining. The bedroom I shared with my older brother Nathan faced south-east, so once I'd drawn back the curtains, then the net curtains, I could see over the top of the fence, the curving pylons at Forbury Park Raceway that held the lights for the night trots, and above them the sky over St Kilda beach. I was often disappointed. 'Scottish mist', the locals call it. I grew up not taking summer for granted. A day of sunshine was precious, because a day of sunshine was a day of cricket.
Since I was four years old, until very recently, summer meant cricket. Thirty years of opening the curtains and hoping for sunshine. In Dunedin, if you were a cricketer, you had to be an optimist. I love that cartoon in which a psychologist half fills a glass of wine and asks the patient whether it's half full or half empty. And the patient grabs the glass and drains it — problem solved!
My father Stuart played for the Albion club and Otago. He lived for cricket too, played for the love of the game. Everyone did then, because there was no other reason. You couldn't get rich playing cricket. Otago paid an allowance which, according to lore, paid for a pie, a pint and a punt. Stu loved all three.
Saturdays, Mum would pack the chilly bin and we'd play our own cricket in the morning, mostly at Logan Park down by the University Oval, then go to the old man's cricket in the afternoon, Mum lugging the chilly bin and deck chairs from ground to ground. We'd be away from 7.30 in the morning till 9.30 at night, dressed in our whites the whole day.
From the age of four or five, I began to know my town by its cricket grounds, as Mum and me and Nathan traipsed after Stu. The Albion home pitch was Culling Park, a few blocks away in St Kilda. But every other weekend, we'd go west, over the big hill to Bishopscourt in Kaikorai Valley, or to the North East Valley ground at the bottom of the motorway, or south, way south, over Flagstaff to Brooklands in Taieri. To the east, not far from home, was the coldest ground on earth, Ocean Grove, sitting up on the cliffs behind Tomahawk, looking out over the sandhills of St Kilda to a sea which, Mum said, went all the way to Chile. Of course it did, where else would those freezing winds be coming from?
Mum would set out the blanket and the deck chairs, and Nathan and I would go and play with the other cricket kids on whatever grassy margin we could find. That would be our day. Go and play, come back for a sandwich or a ham and cheese roll out of the chilly bin, watch a bit of Dad, go and play, come back for more food. Until close of play, when Mum would pack up and go home, leaving us to play on in the twilight. Dad would be having a beer in the clubhouse and occasionally he'd bring out a packet of chips and some fizzy drinks to keep us going while he had another pint. Paradise.
My appetite for cricket was huge. I was part of the eternal arguments between kids the world over about who got to bat first, but I was keen to field too. I loved to keep wicket. Always, even when I wasn't much taller than the makeshift stumps, that was me, crouched down, trying to get the bowler to lure the batsman out of his crease so I could swoop in and stump him.
I had an almost suicidal urge to be close to the action: when I was about eight, I must have been fielding at very silly mid-off because I got clocked above the eye with the bat as the guy was completing a cover drive. I remember waking up on the grass, with Dad and some of his mates looking down anxiously at me. I can't have been too bad, as we didn't go home any earlier.
Apart from the occasional bumps and bruises, the cricket was idyllic. The rest of my life, a bit patchier. Nathan and I were protected from the worst of the economic hard-scrabble of my parents. Dad always had a job, but his career aspirations revolved around cricket. Some people have told me he could have played for New Zealand. But he'd never let his ego get in the way of his joy in the game, the camaraderie. He was a team man, must have been: he was twelfth man for Otago almost as often as he played for them, more than 70 times, so clearly he liked being around that environment with the guys even when he didn't make the team.
Stu could bat. One of Dad's contemporaries told me recently that he'd fancied himself as a tyro fast bowler, until he bowled to Stu, who hooked and pulled him for a boundary off every ball.
Stu was a sales rep and was on the road a lot. Between that and cricket he was away six months of the year, and the burden of bringing us up mostly fell on Mum. She had RSI in her forearms and couldn't work, so there was just Dad's income. Somehow, between them, even when they weren't happy with each other, which was quite a lot of the time, they made sure we had most things. Mum was emotional, but not in an 'I love you' kind of way. She was just there for us, but particularly for Nathan. She had to be.
Nathan, aka Mattress, had it tough when we were young. He had really bad asthma so he was on a nebuliser the whole time. They said he would never play sport, because he also had Perthes disease, which affects the head of the thigh bones, and he spent the years between about four and six with his hips in plaster, so he got around with a sort of waddle. On top of that, he seemed to be allergic to almost everything. Not surprisingly, he needed a lot of Mum's attention. And that'd sometimes really piss me off, because when we got into those brotherly fights — when he said the sky was green and I was certain it was red — Mum would always side with him. The sky was always bloody green because 'he's been really sick'. So I may not have been the most understanding younger brother, but I kept telling him, 'Keep your pecker up, Mattress, you'll be all right, mate.' And sure enough, he was, though it was a hell of a battle for him. Still waddles, though.
Our home was in Waterloo Street, down on the South Dunedin flats, between the hills and the sea. Ordinary little house, corrugated iron roof, weatherboard walls. It had a postage-stamp backyard, a perfect rectangle, just big enough for a short run-up and a swing of the bat. You had to play straight, whereas out on the street, you had a big leg and off side. Waterloo was a backstreet, so there was never much traffic.
It was a great neighbourhood to grow up in. Everything was three minutes away. In one direction, Forbury Park was between us and the wild dunes of St Kilda beach. When the night trots were on, the glow of the big lights from the park would look like a spaceship. A couple of blocks south was St Clair Primary, where we could sit on the roof of a shed by the cricket pitch and watch the horses come up the home straight. And a couple of blocks north, King's High School.
When I got to King's as a third former, I was knee-high to a grasshopper but John Cushen, the geography teacher and deputy principal and former fast bowler for Otago, saw something in me and selected me for the 1st XI. I was so young that he had to ask Stu and Mum's permission. Stu was never going to say no, so I got used to playing with older kids, and socialising with them. Maybe, as a result of those early years, I've always had good friends who are older than me, and my socialising habits were pretty precocious too. The potential problems, from my parents' and teachers' points of view, definitely came from some of the off-field activities.
After every game, for instance, the 1st XI boys would go and have a few beers at someone's house, usually a seventh former, so I would get invited. Stu and the old lady would give me three beers to take along and that was all I was allowed.
I started batting at 11 in the order as a third former, and worked my way up to four, but I was never really a batting star, even when I became captain of the 1st XI in the sixth form. Wicketkeeping was my passion but being captain meant I could take the gloves off and have a bowl too, medium pacer.
I played age-group for Otago and met the boys from the poncey schools up the hill, Otago Boys' and John McGlashan. Most of their top players got coaching from Dunedin cricket guru Billy Ibadulla.
Billy ran a cricketing school at an indoor facility in one corner of Kensington Oval, and some of the kids from up the hill would go to him several times a week. We couldn't afford him, but somehow Nathan and I got the occasional lesson from Billy. I'm still not sure how that happened, whether Billy said to Dad, 'What the hell, bring them in, Stu,' or whether Dad found some cash or pulled a favour.
It was an indication that I was taking my batting more seriously, but even with Billy's occasional help, I never scored a century in schoolboy cricket, and I didn't really think about having a future in the game, just immersed myself in the moments.
And it wasn't all cricket: my appetite for sport was huge, and in winter I would play for the soccer 1st XI on a Wednesday, then 1st XV rugby on a Saturday. The training for each team was on alternate days, so that was the week.
I loved competing, but it was being with the guys that I loved the most. I wasn't a great fan of spending time by myself; I wanted to be around mates, laughing and joking. Soccer and rugby gave me different groups of mates, because there wasn't that much crossover. I liked that — the rugby guys were kinda tough and rough and egotistical, whereas the soccer guys prided themselves on their skills and probably thought of themselves as a bit more educated.
I also had my old mates, like Thyson and Joe. Joe's father, Eion Willis, Big Willow, played hooker for Otago and used to run the tent village at the Southern club ground, Bathgate Park, before All Black tests at Carisbrook. From the age of about 13, we'd be able to sneak in there and have a few beers.
By the time I was 14 — Mattress was 15 — my parents thought it was safe to go away on a trip to Hong Kong and England for six weeks. Home alone! A woman, Patricia, would come in and cook us a meal a couple of times a week. Mattress had his learner's licence, so before Stu and the old lady left they got him a dispensation from the police so he could drive me to sport in the old lady's car. They also left us enough money to last the six weeks. Within the first three days, I persuaded Mattress to drive us down to Sammy's bar and we blew the lot on the pokies.
The last thing Stu said before he left was that his company car was not to be touched. One day I had to go up the hill to Corstorphine and Mattress didn't seem to be around, so I thought, bugger it, and grabbed the keys to Stu's company car. I'd never driven anything before, but it had an automatic gearbox and seemed pretty straightforward. So I'm doing well, stopped at the lights at a major intersection, when I see Mattress pull in behind me in Mum's car. He's frantically waving his hands at me, tooting his horn, flashing his lights, so I stick the company car into reverse, to back it up a bit, give him a bit of a fright. That worked: he looked like he was shitting himself. So the light turns green and I plant hoof. Unfortunately, it's still in reverse, and I ride up on the old lady's bonnet and damage both cars in the one manoeuvre. I'm not sure how I got out of that one.
It won't be a surprise that I wasn't a top student, but I did my best and was pretty much a model student until the sixth form, when Thyson and I got suspended for holding parties. They were bloody good parties — we'd hire out halls, a band, a DJ, security, and sell tickets through different kids at different schools. We even put on the after party for the seventh-form formal, a big event on the Dunedin social calendar. We were going great guns until it all came undone at the first ever Highlanders night game, when Thys and I and a couple of others had rung in sick, taken the afternoon off, and were way past our best by the time a couple of teachers saw us at the game.
But we couldn't have been too bad, because Thys and I were co-head prefects the following year, as first-year seventh formers. I failed Bursary, but was captain of the 1st XI cricket team, captain of the 1st XV rugby team and also played for the soccer 1st XI.
By that time, I was getting around a bit, having played age-group cricket for Dunedin Metro, Town and Country, up in Oamaru at King George Park against North Otago, and Central at Alexandra, and South Otago down at Balclutha, and then in the South Island regional tournaments for Otago in Nelson and Ashburton. I was about 16 when I first made the New Zealand Development team, not as a batsman but as a keeper, and it was as a keeper that I went to the Under-19 World Cup in Sri Lanka in 2000. The following year, I was actually captain of the Under 19s that played South Africa here in the Youth Test Series, and I got three tons in three tests. That was the first time I realised that, hey, maybe I can actually bat.
After that, I did my big OE — I left home and travelled all the way to North East Valley, which was about as far as you could get from Waterloo Street without leaving Dunedin. I was 18 and shared a scungy flat with some mates. For some reason, I wasn't getting on with the old man. It wasn't that bad, maybe just a rebellious stage I was going through. Mattress was still happy at home, but I wanted to get out and do my own thing.
I thought initially that I'd left school, having hit the heights at King's the year before, but my first job, stacking shelves at the Foodstuffs warehouse, was a bit of a reality check and I lasted a week. I looked back at the pleasures of school and thought to myself: 'You know what? I reckon I'm not quite done with that.'
King's hadn't named the head boy by the time I got back, and they asked me if I wanted to be co-head boy again with another good mate, Luke, but I didn't really want the responsibility. I was happy to go from captain of the 1st XV to vice-captain too, just stepping away from any real responsibility — very good decisions, as it turned out, because it was a big year socially in that squalid flat.
I was doing a catering course at school, but really didn't get to class much. Most of my sporting downtime that year was devoted to Flatting 101 and, funnily enough, there seemed to be hundreds of kids, mates and students from the uni who seemed to be taking exactly the same course!
Mum and Dad weren't so happy with my shifting out, but I think they knew I always had that streak, that once I got something in my head and wanted to go and do something, I needed the freedom to do it.
The drinking age had just been lowered to 18, so I was finally legal. That flat was the coldest dump I've been in in my life and I reckon the four of us took up smoking partly to keep warm. That's an addiction that's stayed with me ever since. I've tried to kick it, but never quite succeeded.
Another thing that kept me warm was rugby. Despite a feeling that I was on a bit of a downward trend because of my extracurricular activities, I got selected for the South Island Secondary Schools side. I was playing first-five and Dan Carter was on the bench — talk about a late developer!
Dan replaced me in the second half of the first game. The second and third games he started at wing and I started at first-five. That game, against Northern A or B, was my last game of rugby. I got Man of the Match, but all I can remember is getting sidestepped in the last minute on a wet track by Ben Atiga, who ran on to score under the posts to win the game.
They spoke to me about the New Zealand Secondary Schools side, but I was too old for that team — they were going to a world cup where the age limit was different. Maybe if I'd been eligible for that team, things would have turned out differently.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Brendon McCullum by Greg McGee. Copyright © 2016 Brendon McCullum. Excerpted by permission of Upstart Press Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Writer's Note,1. A Pie, a Pint and a Punt,
2. Flat Track Bully,
3. Musical Chairs,
4. Wright and Wrong,
5. False Dawn,
6. Warning Signs,
Picture Section 1,
7. The Coup that Wasn't,
8. The Invisible Tablecloth,
9. Hardly Cricket,
10. Madness,
11. Home and Heart,
12. Reset,
13. Indian Summer,
Picture Section 2,
14. Rich ...,
15. ... And Famous,
16. Hit 'n' Grizzle,
17. Dark Forces,
18. Winning Away,
19. Fair Facts and Foul,
20. RIP Phil,
Picture Section 3,
21. The Power of XI,
22. Prelude,
23. Something Special,
24. So Near ...,
25. Plain English,
26. Sweet Spot,
27. Trial and Tribulation,
Picture Section 4,
28. The Lucky Country,
29. The Jury's Out,
30. Why?,
31. The Last Trophy,
32. Close of Play,
33. The Aftermatch,