I often wonder what my childhood would have been like if I did not have older brothers. Had I not, I doubt I would be a professional cricketer. I can’t point to the moment in time that the game I now call my job took a firm grip on my imagination and is yet to let it go. If I was an untalented junior, would I still have held the same love for the game as I did growing up? Perhaps other interests would have climbed like a vine and strangled the enjoyment I derived from standing in the unrelenting Sydney sun for endless hours, waiting for my turn to bat.
In those days, cricket was nothing more than family time for me. We would play for hours every evening before dinner, often in fading light – Dad always hovering over the brotherly contests in the doorway, handing out advice, but more importantly being the fourth kid and usually causing more trouble than the rest of us combined. The pitch a cobbled brick verandah, the stumps a kitchen chair that had to be replaced by meal time. And the pitch was thin and long; there was no room for fielders, just a wicket keeper. Lucky there were only three of us. The threat of broken windows and the associated perpetual debt ensured not many attacking shots were played. There is no doubt this influenced my development into what is affectionately known as an ‘accumulator’ of runs. Perhaps if I was a country boy, I would have been more of an attacker and an Indian Premier League millionaire. As I developed, the game started to consume every waking thought.
Well over 20 years later, it still does. I often lie awake at night during cricket season, either dreaming of next day’s glory or fretting over failure. Most jobs can be left in the office, but it seems, rarely this one. When it does become a little overshadowing, your myopic view can taint your memory of what is motivating you to get out of bed. When you are playing well though, you feel like an amateur in the park, simply playing as a kid would, without a single thought in your head, not a trouble in the world. It is the potential of these days that encourages you to turn up and face your fears.
What then happens when the light finally dims on your career? All you have known ceases to exist in a matter of moments. You are thrust from expert to novice, stepping into the ‘real’ world with no experience and perhaps a few grains of knowledge. That is the risk of being a professional sportsman. If you don’t make it big, you don’t really make it at all. Retiring can be like putting on an invisibility cloak. Perhaps it would have been easier not to have fallen in love in the first place.
Ed Cowan is the author of In the Firing Line: Diary of a season, published by NewSouth.
