Jeff Thomson is annoyed
Jeff Thomson, running late, rolls over, sits upright, thdiscount patagonia shoesinks of the many annoyances and injustices in his life, remembers how he hates liars and cheats, gets out of bed. He often drinks Scotch instead of beer because beer hangovers wake him up feeling bloated and lethargic. This morning he is in a lousy mood, cranky, but loose, which for Thomson is the optimum state of being for a day s fast bowling. Without a glance in a mirror, he stuffs his white clothes under an arm and leaves the house on the last dapatagonia clothing cheapy of 1973.
The first inkling that this day s cricket may not be like other days comes when opening batsman Rob Jeffery shapes to play a hook shot. Jeffery is young, 20, and in the space where his two front teeth should be are two false teeth, the real ones having been knocked clean out when, aged 16, he hooked and top edged fast bowler Dave Gibson of the Waverley club. Please pick up my teeth, said Jeffery, seeing the teeth sitting pitchside, as he was helped off. Today he has a mouthguard on, no helmet; the cricket helmet s invention is four years away. He, a left hander, notices that when Thomson bowls, the ball gives the impression it is following him. Jeffery s plan, same as Jeffery s plan always is, is to step back in his crease and hook behind square. He goes to do exactly this, thinking I m in position but this ball s on to me quicker than what a ball s ever been except the thought is barely half hatched, some kind of skating premonition, because this ball actually is on him, on his right shoulder, bulleting into it, a blast of agony, then Jeffery feels his legs crumpling from benpatagonia discount code us airways0eath and his body toppling backwards on to the stumps.
Until this instant, the nine batsmen yet to bat have sat at ease, on the grass, sort of watching, sort of not bothering. Now, heads lift. Some players hop to their feet. The captain Barry Knight, who played 29 times for England, feels his mind coil back to a day it hasn t alighted on in years Ilford, 1957, Essex against West Indies, quiet morning, the kid Roy Gilchrist bowling. Next ball whipped clear of batsman, stumps, wicketkeeper and rebounded, with an echoey pock, off the sightscreen.
Jeffery, safely on the sidelines, does not take his pads off, just sits, pads on; minutes later he sees, with a surprise, he s shaking.
John Pym got the best view 22 yards away, non striker s end of the Jeffery ball. Pym, unlike Jeffery, is no step back and attacker. If an hour and a half s batting is up and the ball a bit bruised, Pym s job is done. He has faced Thomson many times. Since the last time, he has read something batsman turned classy journo John Benaud wrote: something about 23 year old Jeff Thomson having turned himself into the world s fastest bowler. So that week Pym asked Barry Knight to lug the bowling machine into the practice nets and switch the setting to a click under 100 miles an hour. One oh oh.
Straight away, even before Jeffery s been hit and gone, Pym realises, Unbelievable. This ball s coming down at least ten per cent faster than the machine. Pym concocts a strategy: he ll hover on tiptoes, weightless, poised to duck or weave or block, and he will not swing his bat back at all because there is simply no time. Then the Jeffery ball explodes before his eyes. Pym s thinking now, I ve got to do something, otherwise I m gunna be target practice here. He re schemes things: he ll afford himself a wafer backswing, six inches, enough to deflect the screaming ball behind square leg or through the slip cordon and no glorious uncertainty of cricket way known will a fielder risk laying a hand on it. The first time he tries this the bat jabs back five of the preconceived six inches when how is this happening? the ball s too fast for his swing, it has clipped the bat s inside edge, leg stump s cartwheeling. Pym is walking off, disbelieving. Not fair the feeling punches him in the guts, then, Oh well, at least I m alive.
Thomson has been annoyed all season. This is round ten, at Bankstown Oval, of the Sydney first grade competition of 1973 74. It is Mosman against Bankstown, two suburbs separated by Sydney Harbour Bridge and 20 odd miles of motorway. Every cricketer in this city hears it said that the state selectors won t cross the bridge to see Bankstown s players. Thomson, the fourth of Don and Doreen Thomson s five sons, grew up on Market Street, Bankstown. Two thirds of Bankstown houses are fibro cement constructions. In Mosman, the verandah posts are sculpted timber, and the roofs terracotta tiled, red tiled roofs of comfort the poet Henry Lawson called them, and jacaranda lined avenues wind up hills and in semi circles.
Bankstown bat first, scoring 186. Sometime before play the pitch, uncovered, was gently rained on. When the ball bounces, it puts a dent in the mud like surface, and as the mud slowly dries these dents are effectively cemented in, patagonia discount code us airways2which is the recipe for a pitch that s pockmarked and lumpy, but later on in the afternoon, not yet. Thomson, the No. 8, crouches bent kneed and fidgety, hacking his bat up and down in readiness like a weed cutter s rusty shears. Yet his 29 out of 186 is Bankstown s second top score. One swing of Thomson s sends the ball orbiting high above the fieldsmen, 20 metres beyond the fence and into the nearby high school, a furious swipe.
Reasons for annoyance centre on an October evening when the New South Wales XI for the season s opening interstate match was about to be announced. Leg spinner Kerry O Keeffe told Thomson you re not in it, oh, that d be bullshit, Thomson replied, but then the selectors confirmed it. Thomson s previous first class game had been for his country against Pakistan. None for 100, he d taken; with a broken left foot, he d bowled. Now he was considered not good enough for the state. Thomson carries inside him an urgent sense of right and wrong. Sometimes he leaps wrongly to the conclusion he s been wronged; this time, no doubt, he d been wronged, right? He rang his Bankstown captain Dion Bourne to say meet me down at Bankstown Sports Club.
The pricks, said Thomson. He talked about how upset he felt, about knocking people s arms, legs, heads flying. He said it again. Pricks.
When Thomson bowls, the climax of a weird shuffling trot that verges on pony like, his feet perform a last second cross shoe slide, then his right leg tilts and braces, his elongated left leg kicks out horizontally at the batsman, and his left arm points skywards, fingers and thumb at full stretch so completing his temporary self transformation into a human slingshot and by this stage his long hair is standing up on end, his white flannels tend to be flapping out around his backside, and his eyes fix so insistently on their target that the muscular torsion this involves is visible when freeze framed, hollowing out his cheeks and sending a crooked leer ripping across his face. It is no other word works beautiful.
Thomson s dad, Don, bowled with the same action. Years away Thomson s own boy, Matt, will have the same action. Two other sons do not bowl often but when they do it is with the same action.
Imagine adding annoyance and a miscarriage of justice and a simmering two month thirst for vengeance to that action. At Coogee, Drummoyeuc patagonia boys girls kids red fall fleece snap t jacket youth sz m12 giftne and Marrickville ovals, the wickets and casualties mounted. Agafull patagonia adventure tourinst Balmain, he clipped a chunk of Balmain wicketkeeper Kerry Thompson s ear off and the ball kept going. A little piece of your ear s missing, Dion Bourne offered helpfully, down near the fence with the ball.
The Pym ball was an inswinging yorker. Next in is Billy King. Same ball to Kingy, silly mid off Barry Thebridge wanders over to tell Thomson. He won t get behind em. Thomson does not really need to be told. People have been underestimating Thomson s IQ for years. They still underestimate it. But he ranked in the top five students at Condell Park Primary and had his pick of high schools and one day in the future, in Perth, he will win not only the Fastest Bowler in the World competition but the $A1,000 bonus prize for most accurate.
Thomson bowls the same ball again. This time it is off stump that s cartwheeling.
Greg Bush, the non striker, who overheard the Thebridge Thomson conversation, smiles at Thomson: Pretty impressive.
The hat trick ball climbs off one of the dents in the pitch and misses Barry Hyland s shoulder. Hyland is batting at five instead of his regular three because he is wearing new glasses. When Thomson s next over begins it is Bush on strikepatagonia discount code us airways1. Bush turns and peers round. Something he has never seen: the slips and wicketkeeper are stationed nearer to the sightscreen than the pitch. This is Bush s sixth first grade match. At 18 he balances studying law with playing cricket, the thing that he loves, and 14 years from this day he will encounter the massive Barbadian Wayne Daniel on a wet Manly Oval wicket. Daniel will rifle a ball up his armpit, and he will hear Daniel s mouth in his ear, Hey, man, what you get behind the ball for, man, you re mad? That will seem like nothing next to facing Thomson today. No chance of a backswing: time only for a short armed bunt. Even so Bush, a left hander, is managing to discern patagonia discount code us airways3the blur coming at him, and because Thomson is angling the ball across and away from him he feels comfortable. He gets away two scoring shots: a forward punch off a full toss, when Thomson slips a little in his run up, and a backward jab off a short one.
Hyland s new glasses are worrying him. Bush pokes towards gully, tries for a single, Hyland shouts no. It is overcast but not cold. The honking traffic is loud and the atmosphere dead. A hundred people, rough count, are present. The sightscreens are too low to cover the bowlers arms. Bush has a reputatiopatagonia discount code papan for not scaring. Next ball, the ball after Hyland s no , is the first ball on the line of Bush s body. It pitches on leg stump, neither full nor short. One small step lands Bush squarely behind it. This ball leaps. It has its own mindpatagonia discount code us airways. Bush thrusts his gloves and bat handle up, up to about nose level. But the ball is like a wave breaking, over the top it crashes. Bush staggers and falls. He puts a hand to his right eye. Have a look, he hears. He looks: blood on the glove. Thomson walks back to his bowling mark, and stands. Bush s eye, people notice, looks to be sort of hanging, not sitting correctly in its socket, the most shocking and grotesque cricketing injury, everybody knows, that they ever have seen or will see.
Bush s team mates, on the boundary, heard the thud, then a crack.
Garie Beach, Norah Head, Maroubra, The Entrance: at a string of far from stress escape hatches along the coast of New South Wales, Thomson and his friend Lenny Durtanovich, later Pascoe, would surf and talk to girls. Thomson cannot remember a time in his life when he did not want a boat. As a kid he asked for toy boats, while dreaming of the real thing. Later, older, still not a boat owner, he and Greg, the third brother, would select sopatagonia everlong review mirrorme ocean rocks to stand on, and fish off them, sometpatagonia everlong review noiseimes through the night, a metal spike to cling to when the surf turned treacherous on top of them. Thomson played many sports, not just the working class ones. In his Bankstown backyard flattened by five boys footfall he gouged holes in the grass, and put soup cans in the holes, to create a golf course. Beach excursions with Lenny happened Saturdays days of no school, or work, days of invariably turning up late for cricket.
Durtanovich and Thomson were Punchbowl High partners in shooting pigs, catching fish, pulling birds, taking wickets. Durtanovich shook out eight for 21, Punchbowl v Birrong. Thomson smashed that with nine for three, Punchbowl v Belmore. Occasionally Thomson would catch sight of Alan Davidson or Graham McKenzie bowling on TV like watching fuckin paint dry . Davidson s inswinger dipped devastatingly late. McKenzie had a Mona Lisa of an outswinger. Not impressed, was Thomson: pace and more pace was more fun and also bothered batsmen. He was six when he bowled his first bumper. At 12 he d get through 50 eight ball overs on a Saturday, spread across Under 14s, 16s and C grade, jogging from venue to venue on days Dad didn t drive him. At 14 he bowled a ball that sent a wicketkeeper flying. Once, when Wes Hall ventured to the far patagonia guide jacket clipout western Sydney sticks to teach Australian children how to throw, Thomson threw further than Wes.
Twenty was a complicated age. Those fond of Thomson and not many who glimpsed a layer beneath the bloodthirsty persona were not believed that if not for the Bankstown postcode he d have been opening the nation s struggling Test attack with young Dennis Lillee of Western Australia. Instead that summer, 1970 71, Thomson was dropped from Bankstown first grade to third grade for an afternoon (he took ten for 31) when club officials tired of the surf/girls preoccupation and the lateness.
Thomson s attitude to cricket was: I mean, you have to play all afternoon, so what s the hurry to get there?
In the mipatagonia guide jacket-x case studyddle of Bankstown Oval lies a red pool. David Colley, the incoming batsman, sees it on his slow walk out. Greg Bush s blood. Sort of squeezey looking, like squirted sauce. Sick feeling in the stomach. Red blood on white creaseline. Try not to step in it. Colley gave Bush a lift to the ground that morning. Try not to get your friend s blood on you. Blood on the creaseline, behind it, in front of it. Red splash in the line of all three stumps. Got to know where middle stump is. Colley asks the umpire for middle and marks the spot with his boot. Red on white boot.
Colley s presence today has been playing on every player s mind. Colley is one of three fast bowlers Steve Bernard and Gary Gilmour are the others in the New South Wales team. Tapping his bat in blood he hears voices from behind. This is the one we want, Thommo, this one s yours. They think Thommo should be picked for New South Wales before Colley. Thomson thinks Thommo should be picked. What else is Thomson thinking? the usual stuff against Mosman pack of jerks ; fancy bats ; elegant and clever . Colley himself got thinking, before heading out to bat, I ll try to stir Thommo up. Make him bowl short and go crazy and try to kill me. Might be my best chance. So he put his New South Wales sweater on. Thomson sees the sweater. The day is, still, not cold. The fieldsmen standing closest think they see white in Colley s face. Colley, inside I m not going to dog it is fixed tight on a plan, to go back, and across, get yourself behind the ball when it comes.
The ball is fairly full and swinging in. Colley is a long way away, maybe a metre away, the place where he s backed away. Leg and middle stumps are out of the ground. Colley sees nothing too quick hears nothing, and seconds later will remember nothing of this. Still, now, he cannot find the memory, and nearly 40 years have gone.
Lying on a stretcher in the corridor between the teams change rooms, Bush hears a roar, and knows: Colley out, first ball.
