Batting in fading light as death and cricket flow together

There is a confluence of death and cricket at this Test match that is difficult to ignore. It’s that time of year.

Dean Jones‘s baggy green and his favourite bat on the stumps at the MCG

There is a confluence of death and cricket at this Test match that is difficult to ignore.

It’s that time of year. The proximity to Christmas; the season to reflect, count our blessings and mark departures.

Dean Jones’s baggy green was hung on the stumps, his favourite bat and sunglasses put in place at tea on the first day. His boyish face and explosive batting highlighted on the big screen in the stadium so special to him.

The great Victorian left one instruction for his family should the worst occur, not that anybody believed death was imminent. “Get me to the MCG,” Jones said.

Those of us who grew up with Deano are still struggling to comprehend his passing. His mortality confronts those who shared his era.

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Just before Christmas, news came through from the northern hemisphere winter that England Test great John Edrich had died and as we adjusted to that we learned Robin Jackman had also joined the roll call.

A chap called Michael Simkins wrote on social media of his attempt to explain the significance of Edrich’s passing to his wife.

“He’s like Joni Mitchell to you,” he told her.

“Can he sing?” she asked.

“No,” he replied. “Can Joni face Michael Holding in fading light at Old Trafford?”

Pete and Gideon see Australia facing an uphill battle in the second Test after Ajinkya Rahane’s classy century and a lacklustre day in the field. Also, Gideon reveals his first foray into journalism and gets to meet his hero. LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

Mohammed Siraj, the Indian seamer who made his debut on the biggest stage, had a heart wrenching start to this tour of Australia.

Isolated in his hotel room during the quarantine period, he received news that his father Mohammed Gaus had died.

His father was an autorickshaw driver who had plied his trade in the traffic around Hydrabad’s Banjari Hills, a poor man in an area the Economic Times labelled the “most expensive zip code in India”.

Siraj only began playing with a leather cricket ball when he turned 21. Soon after he was scooped up by an IPL franchise, which paid him more money for a few months work than his father could earn in two lifetimes.

A dutiful son, he built his family a home and that’s where he wanted to be when the tragic news came through.

Two team members had to seek permission to break quarantine and comfort the grieving bowler in his room.

Siraj rang his grieving mother in India in the home he’d built them.

“She told me, ‘Son, everyone has to go some day. Today dad has gone, tomorrow I will have to go, you will also have to some day. Dad always wanted you to play for India, so you stay there, and do that. Perform well for India’,” he explained

“The person who used to support me the most is gone, it‘s a big loss for me.

“He always wanted me to play for India and bring glory to the country. So my mindset henceforth is just that I fulfil his dream. My dad is not there in this world, but I know that he‘s always there with me. I’m going ahead thinking that.”

Captain Virat Kohli put his arm around Siraj and gave counsel from a position of experience.

“Stay strong for dad’s dream,” he told him.

As with most sportspeople, a parent has often been the guiding light and for Kohli his father, Prem Kohli, a criminal lawyer, was the one who urged him to make the most of his talent.

“I‘ve seen a lot in life. Losing my father at a young age, the family business not doing too well, staying in a rented place. There were tough times for the family … It’s all embedded in my memory,” he said some years ago.

“My father was my biggest support. He was the one who drove me to practice every day. I miss his presence sometimes.

“I was playing a four-day game at the time and was supposed to resume batting the next day when this happened at 2.30 odd in the morning. We all woke up but had no idea what to do.

“I literally saw him breathe his last.

“We drove him to the hospital where unfortunately they could not help revive him. My family broke down, but I could not cry and there was no emotion. I could not register what had happened and I was blank.

“I called my coach in the morning and told him what had happened and that I wanted to play because leaving a cricket match was not acceptable to me no matter what.

“While my teammates were consoling me in the dressing room I got overwhelmed by the emotion and broke down.”

Later, Kohli told his family he would focus all his energies on playing Test match cricket to honour his father.

Maybe it’s the time of the year, maybe it’s the time of man — as Joni sang in one of her classic songs — but all this talk of cricket and fathers has prompted some personal reflection.

My father brought me to my first game of cricket at the MCG when I was seven or eight. I saw a young Sunil Gavaskar, who is here now with the Channel Seven commentary team, play in a World XI that included the great players of the time.

Dennis Lillee was my hero and I will never forget the image of him running in with shirt billowing, long locks bouncing late in the day.

My dad made my first bat from a broken fence paling and spent endless hours playing backyard cricket after coming home tired from work — as many long-suffering parents have over the generations.

Mick was a renowned local footballer, but had plied his craft as a wicketkeeper for Emu Gully. He told me stories of attempting to wind up a game in time to beat 6 o’clock closing, of standing on his stumps the one time he closed in on a century.

He also claimed to have been playing cricket during my birth, which was not so much an abrogation of responsibility as a good use of time at a time when men were not welcome at such events.

We came often to the MCG, we spent days at the Centenary Test. We travelled on the train from Bendigo, once in his mate the plumber’s work van — me and that man’s son bouncing among the tools of trade in the back.

There were no seat belts, but there was some consideration paid to our safety: we were forbidden from pointing the .22 rifle that rattled among the piping at each other.

A good lesson in gun etiquette for country boys.

Before the Australians left for the UAE in October 2017 a short break in Canberra with my wife was interrupted by a call around dinner time that my father was gravely ill.

I rang his doctor who I played some senior cricket with and he advised I jump in a car now because dad probably would not last the night.

We wove through the kangaroos outside Canberra and Violet Town in darkness and arrived around breakfast time to find Mick propped up on pillows but alive.

It was clear he would not live much longer but he’d defied impending death so many times it had become a family joke.

There was no point hanging around, I got on the plane and went to the UAE, but got a call in the middle of the night some time after telling me that he had died.

The first Test had only been going a few days.

The night before my siblings had put the radio near the bed while I commentated with Adam Collins and Geoff Lemon from the match.

It was hell of a long way from playing a Test match, but brought me some comfort to know that I was at the cricket as he died just as he’d been playing it while I was born.

Pardon my indulgence, but it’s that time of year.