Longneck
April 2013
Oh! Darling
I know it’s un-Australian to celebrate losing but the test team’s recent ineptitude in India evoked fond memories for me. In December 1978, I was a nine-year-old cricket tragic. As a staunch traditionalist, I had initiated a one-boy boycott of Ian Chappell and his traitorous World Series Cricket mates. My heroes were the principled second-stringers, blokes barely capable of strapping on their own pads let alone duelling with dour Mike Brearley’s all-too-competent Englishmen.
My favourite player was Rick Darling, more jack-in-the-box than human being. But, scandalously, the selectors didn’t pick Darling for the first test of the Ashes series, instead sending out Graeme Wood and Gary Cosier to open the batting. Wood ran Cosier out on the fifth ball of the innings. Peter Toohey (who?) came and went, bowled by feral-haired Bob Willis. Inside the first hour, Wood snicked Chris Old to wicketkeeper Bob Taylor. Australia was 3 for 14. A few days later, they lost. Serves ‘em right.
The selectors got religion before the second test in Perth, promoting Darling to open with Graeme Wood. Our hero rode his luck as wickets fell all around him, combining bravado with the shakes (how could he even grip the bat?) to reach 25. But on the second last ball before stumps, he charged down the wicket for no sane reason and ran himself out, more misadventure than suicide.
By some miracle – delivered in the form of the demonic-eyed fast bowler, Rodney Hogg – Australia won the third test. But that was small comfort to me, because Darling was run out for 33 in the first innings – ‘scatter-brain scamperings’, as the great journo Mike Coward wrote – and caught for 21 in the second.
In the fourth test in Sydney, Darling played with childlike abandon and adult responsibility. He reached 91 before he flicked at a ball on his pads only for Fatso – sorry, Ian Botham – to take a low catch at leg slip. I crouched before the television, too stunned to cry. Even now, more than thirty years later, I can summon up the utter desolation that engulfed me. Darling trudged off, nine runs short of the century that would have set him up – I still believe it – to become Australia’s greatest ever batsman (far better than holier-than-thou Bradman).
On day one of the fifth test, Dad and I positioned ourselves on the grassed mound at the River Torrens end of the Adelaide Oval, almost directly behind the bowler’s arm. How miraculous everything seemed beyond the television screen: the pitch so long, the oval so big, the ball so tiny, the wicketkeeper set so far back, the sauce in the pasty so red.
After England collapsed for 169, Australia batted in the last session. Bob Willis – an astonishing sight in the flesh, storming in off a long run, hair ablaze, arms flailing – bowled a ball to Darling that speared back and whacked him below the heart. He collapsed … and appeared to stop breathing. John Embury, the English off-spinner, administered a precordial thump, dislodging the chewing gum stuck in Darling’s throat; an umpire gave him mouth-to-mouth (or so the story goes); physios, ambos and an eminent surgeon invaded the field; God stuck His head out of the members’ bar.
‘You’re an animal, Willis,’ a shirtless bloke sitting near me hollered.
‘What a stupid thing to say. Stupid,’ a bloke with an English accent replied. The word ‘stupid’ echoed around the ground, leaving me hooked on crowd banter forever.
Darling arose – it wasn’t even Easter Sunday – and next day resumed batting. After a couple of brave slogs, he tried to hook a Botham bouncer and ‘You’re an animal’ Willis caught him at deep-fine-leg. The Poms would say that they set him up but that’s how he played: he loved hooking so he hooked.
I adored Rick Darling for the reckless joy he displayed at the crease, combined with nervousness so extreme it bordered on terror. But I was too ambitious to imitate him. Instead, I modelled my technique on Greg Chappell. Elegance incarnate, I played straight for the first twenty minutes of every backyard innings. My on-drive was a thing of beauty. I wouldn’t have dreamed of swallowing my gum. I would have played for Australia, too, if only I hadn’t been so scared of the ball.
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