Hat Trick! (10 page)

The highest score made on debut (someone’s first match) in women’s cricket was by Michelle Goszko. She scored 204 in the First Test against England in 2001. She was playing for Australia.

‘
C
’
MON
, Jimbo. We’ve seen enough. Your dad’ll pull through. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, watching this.’

He wiped the tears from his face.

‘Jimbo, wait here. I’m just going to check the scorecard, and make sure it was Craven. Okay?’

He nodded and watched forlornly as his father was helped from the field. I raced over to a group of players, standing and waiting for their batters to arrive. The fielding team had headed off in a different direction.

I wondered whether it mattered if Jimbo’s dad actually saw me. Would he remember my face? Would anyone else? Surely not. But I certainly wouldn’t be doing anything stupid or freaky that someone might remember. Just in case.

‘Can you hear me?’

I froze.

A harsh, gravelly voice had whispered in my ear. I spun around.

A tall man wearing a hooded cloak was walking
away from me. Had he been talking to me? Everyone else was looking at Jimbo’s dad, who was sitting on a chair, with ice and a blood-soaked towel wrapped around his face.

I turned away quickly. No one else seemed to have noticed him. And yet how could they miss him? When I turned back again he had disappeared.

I raced over to Jimbo. My heart was thumping.

‘Jimbo!’ I yelled. He turned.

Then suddenly there was the creepy man again—between the two of us. Again he seemed to have come from nowhere. He had his back to me and was walking towards Jimbo. He looked so out of place in the park here, but still no one saw him. The few people scattered around the ground kept on with their picnics or their walking. The man was tall, but the weird cloak he was wearing made him look bigger than he was. He definitely looked sinister. He kept his head down and his back to me.

I stopped. Jimbo wasn’t moving either. He raised his eyebrows slightly, as though he was asking me if everything was okay.

No, Jimbo! Everything’s not okay! I tried to will my thoughts across the space between us.

‘What do you want?’ I asked the man, my lips trembling.

‘You’re going to help me, you hear?’ he said, but without turning his head. His voice hissed and spat. He was only a few metres away. A horrible stench came from him.

‘Y-y-yes,’ I stammered.

The figure stopped and turned slowly.

I seized my moment. I yelled at Jimbo, then started reciting the first line of the poem. I wanted a glimpse at the man’s face, but the need to escape was more urgent.

I kept on with the poem, dashing towards Jimbo and grabbing his hand as the final words of the second line came out.

My head crashed into the side of the garage and Jimbo piled on top of me a moment later. He looked at me incredulously as he gathered himself up.

For a moment neither of us spoke. Jimbo was breathing hard and staring at me.

‘Jimbo,’ I stammered. ‘Did you see that man? Who was he?’

‘I dunno.’

We both turned at a noise from further back in the garage. Without another thought we scrambled up and out of there. Then we stopped, hearts pumping.

‘My kit,’ Jimbo said, looking at the garage door swinging to and fro.

‘Yep. The directory too. C’mon, let’s get it.’

‘Then straight back into the house?’

‘Yep.’

We snuck in, eyes down, avoiding the darkness near the back, heading for the kit and the directory. I found the
Wisden
, closed it and shoved it back into its box. We were out again within moments.

‘Toby?’

I turned and looked at Jimbo.

‘I’m sorry—’ I began.

‘No. Thanks. That was incredible.’

I nodded. ‘I know.’

I raced up the path to the front door and nearly crashed into a man standing on the first step. I almost fainted in fright.

‘Hello Dad,’ I heard Jimbo say.

I looked up. How long had he been watching us for?

‘You boys been playing cricket?’

I didn’t like the way he said the word playing.

‘Actually, we’ve been watching cricket, Dad,’ Jimbo replied.

Well, it was an honest answer.

The front door opened. It was Mum. She was nodding and smiling and welcoming Jimbo’s dad into the house. As we followed them in I wondered if things could really change between Jimbo and his dad.

What a shocker. Sometimes, in the early days of cricket, teams got caught on stickies. These were rain-soaked wickets that were drying out. Wickets back then were never covered. On this particular day, Victoria, playing against the MCC, were knocked over for 15. They lost their first four wickets without a run being scored. And it would have been 5/0, but the next guy was dropped.

Saturday—morning

‘
SO
, you guys went on the prowl instead of to the nets the other night?’ Dad said to me first thing on Saturday morning. I’d slept in on Friday morning and Dad had got home too late to catch up with me on Friday night.

‘Yeah,’ I grinned, trying to look relaxed. I sat down, hoping that I didn’t look as tired as I felt.

‘Gee, you look whacked,’ Mum said to me, one hand on my shoulder, the other setting down a bowl of cereal.

So much for that hope, I thought to myself.

‘Big game today,’ I explained. ‘Kept on going over it. Couldn’t get to sleep.’

‘Well, if it hadn’t been raining for the last six hours, I would have to agree with you, Toby. John Pasquali phoned through about an hour ago. We thought we’d let you sleep on a bit.’

I was in such a daze that I hadn’t even noticed the grey day outside, the water on the window and that cosy
feeling when you wake up and it’s raining on a non-school day.

‘It’s going to be this Thursday, after school,’ Dad said.

‘Which means we’ll all be able to watch, honey,’ Mum said.

Nat had tennis on Saturday mornings, which kept her and Mum away. Then again, as Mum often pointed out, my cricket kept Dad and me away from Nat’s tennis too.

‘So, we can all go to tennis this morning,’ Mum said.

‘Sure,’ I replied. I was glad to tag along. It might take my mind off the creepy man Jimbo and I had met the previous night. Nat was a great tennis player, too. She played against girls way older than her—and usually won.

After tennis I asked Mum if I could go and visit Ivo at the hospital.

But when I got there, a nurse told me that he wasn’t allowed to have any visitors. I took the lift up one floor, but this time skulked around a bit, making sure I wasn’t seen by any of the nurses.

The door to Jim’s room was slightly open. I pushed it and walked in. Jim looked pale and weary, lying there alone on the far side of the room.

‘Jim, it’s me. Toby.’

He smiled but didn’t open his eyes.

‘Ah, dear boy. So good of you to come. Tell me of your adventures.’

And I did. I told him everything. I told him about India and Dad’s
Wisden
s in the garage. I told him how I
had taken Jimbo back to see his dad. Jim winced on hearing that, but he didn’t look angry. He didn’t look strong enough to be angry. And I told him about the man I’d seen.

Suddenly Jim’s eyes were open, his body tense.

‘Describe him, Toby.’

‘He was tall—and looked really weird. He had on a long hooded cape, so I couldn’t see his face. I sure could smell him, though!’

Jim sighed, but he looked worried.

‘He said something about helping him.’

Jim closed his eyes, and settled back on his pillows.

‘You must not carry, Toby. You must not take others with you. You are exposed and vulnerable when others are with you. I’m sure that’s how he found you. Do you understand me, Toby?’

‘Yes,’ I croaked, for a moment almost forgetting to breathe.

‘Which means that my one selfish hope of getting back to 1930 may never come to pass.’

‘But why don’t you just go?’ I asked.

‘No, Toby. I have respected that warning all this time. And now, I’m too old to travel. Especially those distances. No, I would need someone young, like yourself, to get me there.’

‘I’ll carry you,’ I said.

For a moment, as I looked down at his sad face and tired body, I felt as though there was nothing I wanted more than to get Jim back to see that 1930 game when Don Bradman made his big score.

‘Are you okay, Jim?’

He opened his eyes again, and this time turned his head slightly to look at me directly.

‘No, Toby. I’m very tired.’ He kept on staring at me. He smiled. ‘If everyone’s life has a limited number of innings, then perhaps I have seen my Don Bradman innings anyway.’

The door of the ward opened. A nurse bustled in. She carried a clipboard.

‘Come along,’ she said to me.

‘I must think more about this man, Toby.’ Jim had grabbed my hand and was holding it tightly.

‘Off you go now, mister. That’s enough chatting. You’ll wear poor Jim out,’ the nurse said. She pointed to the door.

‘Please!’ The nurse and I stopped, surprised by the rifle-crack of Jim’s voice.

‘Please,’ he repeated, less sharply. The nurse looked puzzled. She looked at her watch and busied herself with Jim’s chart.

‘What does he want?’ I asked. I still couldn’t believe the world I was entering and talking about with Jim.

‘That, I don’t know, Toby. But I can tell you that—’

‘Well, I know what I want,’ the nurse interrupted, writing something on a chart. ‘Some peace and quiet in here.’

‘We will talk again, Toby and I shall tell you more of what I know.’ He turned his weary body slightly to face me. ‘It’s time to go, Toby.’

‘It most certainly is,’ said the nurse.

I stared at Jim’s worn face. His bottom lip was twitching.

‘Have you learned the poem off by heart?’ he whispered.

Ignoring the nurse, I remained by the bed and recited the poem for him. I got to the end without missing a line. By then it looked as though Jim had fallen asleep. I turned to go.

But Jim wasn’t asleep.

‘It’s one thing to say the words of the poem. It’s another thing altogether to understand and honour them, Toby.’

‘I’m doing my best. I could just walk away from it all,’ I said.

‘You most certainly could.’

I left Jim’s room wondering for a moment whether I should just stay in my normal world. My year. My time. Forever.

In 1915, J.C. Sharp, a schoolboy batting for Melbourne Grammar, scored an amazing 506 not out against Geelong College. A team-mate, R.W. Herring, scored 238. The total score was 961 and the game was won by an innings and 647 runs.

Sunday—afternoon

DAD
dropped me off at Rahul’s at five o’clock on Sunday afternoon. Rahul greeted me at his gate, looking very excited.

‘Look! I’ve got some rupees, notepaper, a camera—’

‘No camera, Rahul. No way,’ I told him.

‘Oh, well. It was a long shot.’ He grinned.

I was so keyed up I didn’t eat much at dinner time. Rahul’s family were always very polite and pleasant. Rahul had a sister and another brother, both younger than him. They asked me heaps of questions, and made me very much the centre of attention.

When we went to bed Rahul and I chatted quietly for about half an hour after his mum had come up and said goodnight. The rest of the house was quiet.

‘Are you sure there’s nothing else you’re going to do, Rahul?’ I asked for the hundredth time.

‘No, Toby. I just want to get a quick look at the game, then see Dean Jones in the hospital.’

‘Okay. A quick look and then we’re back. You hear me?’

‘I hear you,’ he grinned at me.

‘And if we’re nowhere near the hospital, then—’

‘Then we maybe get a quick look at the game, and come home,’ Rahul finished.

‘And have you thought about the fact that we might not be anywhere near the hospital, or have no way of getting there?’ I asked him.

‘Of course. I have worked hard on this.’

I was less confident.

‘It’s my call, Rahul.’

‘It’s your call, Toby.’

‘Right. Let’s do it.’

We walked over to the lamp and I opened the
Wisden
up to the correct page. The words swirled and spun, round and round.

‘Rahul,’ I whispered. ‘Point at the bit about Dean Jones’ big innings.’

‘Here,’ Rahul said, pointing to a spot halfway down. I grabbed his hand, trying to bring to focus the swarming letters.

Rahul was reading the words. All I saw was a swirly mess.

‘“On the second day, Jones…”’ Rahul spoke the words that I was trying to decipher. He read on, and the swirl became letters, and the letters became words…

‘Come on, Toby!’

I looked about. The smell and the noise were
like last time. Again, we seemed to have arrived in a quieter spot, behind one of the stands. This time we walked towards the noise—the ground itself.

The crowd was chanting and the noise was huge. It was a constant roar, occasionally rising to a crescendo when something happened out on the field.

The first thing we both did was turn our heads to the scoreboard. Australia was batting. Dean Jones was on 209.

‘It’s okay, they’ll get him soon,’ Rahul called out. He was excited with the knowledge he had and that the other 25,000 people at the ground didn’t.

‘Rahul!’ I exploded. ‘No!’

‘No one is listening,’ he said.

I looked back out across the brown oval. The stench in the air was making me cough and gag. Dean Jones looked exhausted. The other batter—that must have been the captain, Allan Border—was talking to him. Dean was looking at the pitch. A moment later he moved away. His body shook as he tried to vomit.

He hit a ball way out into the deep and walked the single. Walked the whole way. But that was the last run he made.

Rahul had moved a few metres away and was talking to someone—another kid. I moved across to him, worrying about what he might be saying.

Just as I got to him there was a tremendous roar from the crowd.

I looked up. Dean Jones had just been bowled. Everyone was jumping up and down, screaming their lungs out.

‘Come on,’ Rahul shouted to me, ‘this is our chance. Let’s go.’

He dragged me away, down the way we had come. We walked around behind a big stand, where we waited for a few moments.

‘How do you know we’re in the right spot?’ I asked him. ‘And what do we do when he comes out? Hop in the ambulance with him and tell them we’re doctors?’

‘It’s okay, Toby. Like I told you, I’ve been doing research. It’s all worked out.’

We waited and waited.

‘So maybe he doesn’t go to hospital,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry. He’ll be having his iced bath—’

‘Listen!’ I called.

Above the noise of the crowd, away to our right, was the sound of a siren. It was getting closer.

‘Dean Jones has just collapsed onto the floor,’ said Rahul. ‘He is cramping severely. The ambulance will be here in a moment.’

We stepped back as the siren got closer. People were coming from everywhere. It seemed as if we weren’t the only ones who knew what was about to happen.

A stretcher was taken from the ambulance and wheeled through a door. A few minutes later the door opened again and a few men appeared. Dean lay on
the stretcher. His eyes were open but he looked as if he wasn’t really noticing anything. I took another step back. Rahul didn’t.

We followed the group, about 10 metres behind them, through a gate and out into a car park, where the ambulance waited. The crowd was getting bigger. Everyone was talking excitedly.

‘What now?’ I asked, feeling frustrated. ‘We steal a car and chase them?’

‘No, silly. Come on.’

Rahul seemed to know exactly where he was going. We came to a line of taxis. Rahul leaned down to the open window of the first cab and spoke to the driver. A moment later he motioned me to get inside the taxi. If anything, it was hotter inside the car than out.

‘What did you say?’ I asked.

‘Can you take us to the hospital, please?’ He smiled. There was something more happening here, I sensed. But I couldn’t for the life of me work out what.

‘Are you really so interested in seeing Dean Jones lying in a hospital bed?’ I asked him.

‘Oh, yes, terribly,’ he replied. Even Rahul was sweating in the heat. ‘You see my whole assignment is based around Dean Jones’ innings. Did you know that some of the Australian staff wanted him to come off at tea, when he was about 200? Did you know that he walked his last 20 runs? And it was a tie, Toby. The game was a tie!’

‘Rahul!’ I hissed.

‘Oh yeah. Okay.’ He was obviously very excited by the whole Dean Jones story. And it looked as if we weren’t the only ones who had followed the ambulance in. Cars were parked everywhere, and people were running in all directions, shouting and giving advice. Inside the hospital was no different.

And I had thought the cricket ground was packed! The hospital was swarming. Doctors, nurses, patients, old people, children, visitors—they were everywhere, choking the rooms and corridors.

‘Rahul, we’d better stick close.’ People were jostling and pushing us from behind.

‘Rahul?’ I turned right, then left. He had vanished.

‘Rahul!’ I screamed. But my cry was lost in the noise and bustle.

‘Rahul!’ Now I was running—pushing and bumping into people. Then I stopped. There was no way I was going to find him like this. I needed to go back to the front and put out a call for him.

‘Rahul Prahibar. Please report to the front desk on ground level, immediately,’ came the message over the loudspeaker system a few minutes later.

I sat down to wait. It was then that I started to panic. Suddenly the whole idea of sitting here, alone, in a busy hospital in a city in India nearly 20 years ago was too much. I put my head down in my hands, my shoulders starting to shake.

‘Not a happy chappy?’

I froze.

Slowly I peeled my hands from my face and looked up. A man wearing a white coat, his arms crossed, looked down at me. He was obviously a doctor come to see what was wrong.

At that moment, a screaming, wailing noise erupted from the sliding doors to our left. A woman rushed in, carrying a small child. The piercing noise from the mother drowned out everything else.

Without thinking, I jumped to my feet, charged past the doctor, raced around a corner and was soon swallowed up in the mass of people. I half-walked, was half-pushed into a lift. I didn’t care what floor I went to. I got out on the eighth. It was quieter. The noises here were only of crying babies.

I ran over to a nurses’ station.

‘Please, I’m looking for Dean Jones.’ I panted.

The nurse on duty looked at me blankly.

‘Emergency?’ I asked.

‘Ah,’ she nodded. ‘Ground floor.’

Great. I walked back towards the elevator. The sound of clapping and laughing made me stop. I looked around a corner and down a long corridor.

Rahul was standing halfway down, staring into a large window.

‘Rahul!’ I screamed in delight, rushing towards him. He didn’t move.

‘Rahul, come on. We’ve gotta go. Now!’ I stopped. There were tears streaming down his face. He made no noise.

‘What is it?’ I looked in through the window. A young Indian man was standing by a bed. A lady lay in the bed, a tiny baby in her arms. Other people stood around the bed. The man picked up the baby and kissed it. Everyone clapped and cheered again.

‘That’s my brother,’ Rahul whispered, through sobs.

‘Rahul, we shouldn’t be here,’ I told him. It only needs someone to turn around, and—’

‘Toby, I can’t remember my brother,’ he continued. Behind us the lift clanked and shuddered to a stop. ‘I just have to see his face. He’s my brother, Toby!’

‘Rahul, you’ve got the rest of your life to see his face. Come on, let’s get out of here.’

Finally, Rahul tore his eyes from the scene in front of him.

‘My elder brother,’ he said. ‘The brother who scooped me out of a river of rushing water and threw me into my father’s arms. He saved my life. I was just a baby. He was swept away. That’s him there. Being kissed and loved.’

A rush of footsteps made me turn. Two men appeared to be bearing down on us. Rahul made a dash for the half-open door, a few metres to his right. I started reciting a line from the poem, reaching out for him as I did so. He shrugged my arm away and reached for the door handle.

‘Rahul!’ I cried, frightened beyond belief. ‘You
can’t go in there!’ We were lying entangled, at the foot of the door. It started to open wider and we tumbled forwards. Grabbing Rahul’s ankle, I managed to fire off two lines of the poem.

I never turned to see who had been running along the corridor towards us.

We arrived in a heap on Rahul’s bedroom floor. A moment later, the door was flung open. Light streamed into the bedroom.

‘Rahul! What is it?’ Mr Prahibar stood at the entrance. Rahul wiped his face with the back of his hand, struggled up, and fell into his father’s arms.

‘I think he’s had a bad dream,’ I said.

‘I heard a thump on the floor,’ said Mr Prahibar.

‘And fell out of bed too,’ I added, lamely.

His dad looked at him kindly.

‘What was your dream, son?’

‘Dad,’ Rahul started sobbing again. ‘I dreamed that I w-was at the hospital where my older brother was b-b-born, and you and Mum and all our family were there. And…you were h-h-holding, w-w-were holding—’

Rahul’s dad hushed him, and Rahul fell silent, except for the sobs that were racking his body.

‘Rahul and I will go downstairs, Toby. I’m sorry that you’ve been involved in all this. Come on, Rahul,’ Mr Prahibar was saying as they left. ‘Let’s talk about this dream you had.’

I crawled back into bed. What had I done? Jim was right. The gift of time travel was not meant for
others. All sorts of worries and problems swirled round in my head. The light coming through from the partly open door lit up the
Wisden
on the floor. I got out of bed, kicked the door shut then shoved the
Wisden
under the bed. It thudded into the wall.