We've all either played or booed at some bitter grudge match fought on a scabby country sports ground. That's part of Otago life.
Brian Turner goes to the heart of the grudge match with a country rugby story in Boundaries, his new Central Otago collection. The Annual Battle for the Wooden Cup details the yearly haggle and bitch between Becks and St Bathans. (It recently appeared in the ODT).
The story is about good keen men - young guns, old farts, country wisdom, and the No 8 wire approach to winning a footie match. If you're even half in love with the idea of Central, it's a book worth having.
Turner has been both poet laureate and prize-winning sports columnist for that grand old gutter rag, the NZ Truth. This may seem odd, but it makes perfect sense. The anatomist, too, becomes more aware if first apprenticed as a cannibal.
He's a wonderful writer, and of course, the first leg of the Turner brothers' trifecta of national sporting caps. Brian (hockey), Greg (golf), and Glenn (cricket). Surely, God should be more even-handed when he shovels out the talents?
True blue country sport has shrunk as sealed roads, and cars that start, made the next valley closer. And television increased sophistication. The backs of St Bathans can learn from the All Blacks replays, and come summer, the batsmen of Becks will study the slow-mos of Kane Williamson.
The rustic cricket match is as much a staple of English writing as the country house murder. The set players of village green stories are the fast bowling blacksmith, the otherworldly parson, and the pub yokels.
But little has been written about Kiwi country cricket. I think its first two truths were that the match finished by 3.30 so the cockies could get home for milking - and teams usually arrived a couple of players short. There were some pretty scabrous ring-ins.
A country competition included a local high school team. Because schools were small and many kids left when they turned 15, the XI was bolstered by teachers and then rounded out by conscripts of the day.
Kelvin Wiles was the least talented conscript I've seen. Kelvin couldn't bat, bowl, or field, and had trouble pulling on his sunhat. But he won a match for us.
I was holding out at the other end, and the scores were equal, when Kelvin came nervously to the crease. Being 16, I went down the pitch to offer wise counsel.
‘‘There's only one run to get. Don't get out or you're custard.''
‘‘The guts have gone to water,'' Kelvin croaked ‘‘I think I'm gonna spew.'' He took guard stiffly, as if crouched over a long drop.
The bowler was a crafty cheese factory foreman whose specialty was slow looping spinners. He checked the keeper was ready for a stumping, and began his run-up. As his arm rolled over Kelvin, wide-eyed and terrified, rose from his crouch - and broke wind.
It was a fart to announce the second coming. A Big Bertha. An epic, rolling, thunderclap. Birds flopped from the trees, and battalions of bees fled the field to find refuge.
Kelvin lurched forward and missed the ball. It was a simple stumping chance, but the alarmed keeper, expecting a gas attack, had shielded his eyes with his gloves. The ball bounced off his shoulder, and trickled behind first slip.
‘‘Run, it's a single,'' I bawled. Kelvin bumbled up the pitch, tripping over his pads only once, and made it home as the fielder's throw crashed into his backside. It was a win for the ages, and Kelvin had given fresh meaning to a technical cricketing term - ‘‘letting one through to the keeper.''
Greg and Jane Turner, who live up the street, gave us a lift to the Oturehua Hall for the Boundaries book launch. Discussing country sport, I mentioned Kelvin's triumph, and pondered whether there was a short story in it. ‘‘Yeah, you've got to write it,'' said Brian.
Perhaps this counts as the first draft?
- John Lapsley lives in Arrowtown
