It was an object without peer. The Stuart Surridge cricket bat was right up there with a light saber in terms of sheer awesomeness. Indeed, had Luke Skywalker been clutching one of the Surridge family’s finest, he probably could have knocked Darth Vader off in half an hour rather than needing the best part of three whole films.
It was an object without peer. The Stuart Surridge cricket bat was right up there with a light saber in terms of sheer awesomeness. Indeed, had Luke Skywalker been clutching one of the Surridge family’s finest, he probably could have knocked Darth Vader off in half an hour rather than needing the best part of three whole films.
Cricket games at school were always an ordeal and the trial began with the selection of teams. There is no indignity greater than watching as each of your classmates is chosen ahead of you. As the numbers dwindled, the belated sound of my name would send a surge of relief coursing through my veins. I was rarely last, but always a very great distance from first. In addition to hand-eye co-ordination, those at the top of the order had one thing in common – they had proper cricket bats. These were so much more than mere lumps of wood with a handle. They were works of absolute art. When they removed their cricket bats from their bags it was like Arthur unsheathing Excalibur.
Some of my classmates preferred the ‘Gray Nicholls’ cricket bat, with its revolutionary weight-reducing ‘scoop’, but not me. I was only interested in Stuart Surridge. At the time they seemed to cost a fortune and, frankly, there was little in the way I played to suggest this might be a wise investment. The ‘SS’ was a very solid piece of sporting equipment. Whilst West Indian cricketers could throw these bats around like toothpicks, to a nine year old, it was like trying to swing a bag of cement.
There was no greater test of primary school friendship than to ask to borrow the cricket bat of your classmate. Such requests were often met with a narrowing of the eyes and a shake of the head, as a quick assessment was undertaken in which the benefit to the team was weighed up against the risk that a lack of skill might be contagious, possibly ruining the bat forever. Unless I wanted to use the cricket bat provided by the school – an anonymous piece of balsawood that sent reverberations running up your arm when you struck a ball –I would have to bring my own bat.
My first bat was a hand-me-down, which would have been all right if I’d had an older brother. Rather, the first cricket bat I owned was handed down from a far greater height. It had belonged to my father and the only bat at our entire primary school to have been classified by the National Trust. Time had turned it a ripe, brown colour. The grip on the handle was made of thread rather than rubber and, over the years, it had become as slippery as a pair of bad suit pants. Attempts to hoist the ball over the infield would often result in the bat escaping from my fingers and travelling at speed towards the forehead of whoever was standing at mid-wicket.
My team-mates took their revenge when we fielded where I was either placed so far away that I needed to catch a bus, or so close as to defy the instinct for human survival. The position of ‘silly mid on’ is something of an understatement. So far as I was concerned, this was a position better described as ‘human piñata’. Or, if you prefer, ‘target practice’.
Cricket was such a serious affair. Kids lugged huge bags full of equipment to school and back, dragging them through the car park. There were pads, gloves, helmets and ‘boxes’ – in spite of the fact that we were using a tennis ball and, truth be told, in primary school there’s not much to protect. I didn’t bother asking to borrow any of it. If you can’t borrow somebody’s bat, they’re unlikely to loan you their ‘box’.
I never really enjoyed those matches. I vastly preferred the games we had at home. Despite the numbers, we never divided ourselves into teams. It was always a case of one batsman versus everybody else. To this day, after family meals, there is a procession from the house to the back of the yard where the pitch lies waiting. When last I played, I was with my brothers, father and my nephews. It made me smile as I watched them haul their bags of gear across the paddock, before putting on pads, gloves and helmets. My turn to bat came when I took a catch, not because I was picked. I then disgraced myself by sending the ball sailing over into the paddock with the long grass, meaning that it could only be retrieved by sliding under an electric fence. Say what you will about cricket, but the addition of an electric fence adds a new dimension. The next half hour was then spent walking up and down through long grass trying to find a brown ball rather than a brown snake. It gets the pulse racing in a way that regular cricket rarely does.
I guess that’s the difference with family – there is no selection process. You don’t have to wait until somebody picks you. They accept you regardless. This Christmas, I’ll sure to head up to the nets. I’ll pick up that old brown bat and do my best to belt the cover off a tennis ball. But whether I send it into the long grass or have a swing and a miss won’t matter at all. It’s being part of the game that really counts.