Author: Matt

My sister fought — and beat — colon cancer this past spring. She was diagnosed on the fourth of July, 2017, then went through chemotherapy, then radiation, then surgery, before finally been declared cancer free. It was a long, hard year for her. Exhausting and painful. But for all those months, she kept in her mind the promise of that pure, wonderful, perfect moment of sitting in a doctor’s office on some distant afternoon and being told that the fight was over, that she had won.

But that moment never came. Sure, it happened, but it was not the pure moment of elation that she had hoped for. It was just another moment in a life full of them. Her fight was over, and part of her missed the fight. It was a few months before she was, once again, able to look toward the future, to plan, to feel good. It wasn’t cancer one moment, then no cancer the next. There was no fist pumping, no pure elation. Just life. Progressing.

Pure moments, pure joy, those really only happen in sports. Think of the moments when you received the best news of your life. News that you had dreamed about for months, maybe years. Was it a run through the streets screaming moment? It probably wasn’t. Life isn’t like that. Change, and good news, happens over long stretches of time. And when the news finally comes, it’s almost a letdown, because it’s never as good as you hoped it would be, there’s always a drawback or two, and then you miss the anticipation, the waiting, the looking forward.

This morning I read one of those Cricinfo 25th anniversary posts about Edgbaston ’05. It’s one of those matches that everyone remembers, even those of us that weren’t even aware that it was happening at the time. You hear the words “Edgbaston” and “oh-five” and you are instantly transported back in time. You see the sun on that Birmingham patch. You see Freddie Flintoff setting the place alight. You see Michael Vaughn’s worried face. You see Brett Lee’s brave final stand in that simmering cauldron, the crowd quiet and murmuring and riddled with anxiety, minutes from watching their side go down 2-0. And you hear those words and those images float through your mind, then you hear the commentary, that famous commentary:

Jones! Bowden!

It’s a perfect moment. A pure moment. The kind you only get in sports. From the brink of despair to a glittering pool of joy, all in just a few seconds.

But the best moment of Edgbaston ’05 took place shortly after that. When Flintoff bends down to comfort a despondent Brett Lee. He puts his hand on his back, and takes his hand in his. “You were fucking brilliant, mate,” he tells Lee, a look of almost sorrow on the face of Flintoff, sorrow and empathy in the face of all that joy, all that elation.

It’s a pure moment too. But not like the moment before when the ball settled into Bowden’s outstretched hand, it’s not like the pure moments you get in sports, it’s the kind of pure moment you get in life. And that’s what makes it so special, so memorable, because it reminds us of the innate goodness in humanity, in the world.

We all have such moments, when someone, sometimes a perfect stranger, reached out with kindness, or helpfulness, leaving you godsmacked with just how kind people can be, and how the world really is a good place, in the end, despite all the vitriol and hate and violence. It’s a good place, and those small, pure moments are what keep the fires at bay.

They are rare moments in sports, that’s why the Flintoff handshake stands out for us, normally sports are bravado and testosterone. But Flintoff’s empathy reminds that people are, for the most part, good. It’s a rare moment in sports, but not necessarily in life. At least, they don’t have to be. Because it doesn’t matter if you are receiving the kindness, or giving it. “Perform random acts of kindness” is a cliche, but it’s also true. You can be Brett Lee, or you can be Freddie Flintoff, no matter which the kindness will help the world keep spinning, will help keep the darkness from taking over.

So when you see someone hurting, despondent, help them. Be kind to them. But more. Be kind to everyone. Because that’s the dirty little secret that we all know but so often forget: everyone we see is fighting a war, is maybe on the wrong side of life’s tug-of-war, is feeling happiness maybe slip away forever. They have just buried their mother. Or their child was bullied at school. Or their parter lost their job. Reach out to them too. Even if you don’t know their struggle, even if they don’t look like their struggling. Reach out to them, put your hand on their shoulder, and tell them they are fucking brilliant.

We don’t get pure moments like you get in sports in our regular life. Ours are quieter, harder to see, harder to celebrate, but also way better, and far more important. There might not be a crowd cheering us on, there might not be a commentator enshrining our moments in bronze where they will live forever, but our moments collect in our hearts over the course of our lifetime, they never leave us, their light never diminishes, and they are what keep us afloat and make this a good world, a good life, one with staying for.

Edgbaseton ’05 produced wonderful cricket, moments of joy and madness, but it’s Flintoff’s kindness that made it the perfect Test. It’s not the moment of being told that she was cancer free that my sister remembers, it’s all the small kindnesses that she both received and gave over the year of her fight, those moments that kept her going, kept her smiling, kept her alive.

51 seconds. All that’s great about sports, and all that’s great about humanity.

What a moment.

 

And, so, that Colin Kaepernick Nike ad. No matter what you think of him, or his protests, or anything else politically, you have to like the sentiment: be the best ever in whatever you do. Don’t be a cricket blogger, be Jarrod Kimber. Don’t be a slightly above average county cricketer, instead dredge up every last bit of your talent and become captain for England.

Of course, it’s idealism. A corporate vision of utopia. Not every kid who has a killer jump shot is going to get lucky enough to play in front of the right college recruiter on the right day. Back to cricket: Yesterday,  I was thinking about Lasith Malinga and his return to the Sri Lankan side for the Asia Cup. His unique arm action — like a kid skipping rocks on a lake — made me swoon when I first started following the game. That big fluff of hair, those wicked in-swinging yorkers breaking the legs of batsmen. And then I thought about all of those kids in the ghettos of Colombo who grew up mocking that action, and that thought warmed my heart a little. Malinga’s been playing international cricket since July of 2004. 14 years. And so an entire generation of Sri Lankans have grown up watching him bowl death overs. But then I remembered an article that Jarrod Kimber wrote a few years back:

Like many in Sri Lanka, the cricketers from Chilaw are largely invisible inside the system. There are Test-quality cricketers playing on the streets of the Hikkaduwa right now that will never play with a hard cricket ball in their life.

That’s the thing. That’s what we should all be rebelling against. The systems that keep those outside. And that’s what Kaepernick is doing, or at least that’s what he — and many others — believe he is doing: protesting against the systems that keep people down, or even, in some cases, end up killing them. He is giving a voice to the voiceless. It doesn’t matter if you agree or disagree with how he is going about it, his intentions and his actions are exposing the very systems that take away the even ground necessary for us all to be the best ever in whatever we choose to do. In that sense, the ad has multiple narratives.

*

Reading about Kaepernick of course also got me thinking about on field protests, and since this is a cricket blog, I started reading about the “Black armband protest” at the 2003 World Cup. For those interested, Andy Flower and Henry Olonga wore black armbands in a World Cup match for Zimbabwe, played in Zimbabwe (the country hosted six group stage matches), against Namibia. They were protesting the death of democracy in Zimbabwe (Mugbabe was nearing the height of his powers) which included the seizure of white owned farms as well as human rights abuses that the EU had punished the country’s elites for just recently.

The planning for the protest was quite in-depth, and included a statement partially written by an attorney delivered just before the start of the match. Farcically, both players neglected to actually bring black armbands to the ground, so were forced to use black electrical tape instead. Some of the crowd even joined in on the protests throughout the game as they learned of the statement, putting their own black armbands on. Flower batted for 39 and Olonga took no wickets for 8, as Zimbabwe won the rain shortened match.

As we all know, political statements on the field during a cricket match are a violation of the spirit of cricket, and so the hand wringing commenced almost immediately. The reactions were, at first glance, similar to the reactions to Kaepernick’s protests: a slap on the hand from an ineffectual governing body, and loud consternations from the Zimbabwean president and his party, while the support from fellow cricketers and the international press was largely positive. The similarities stop there though. Olonga was called an “uncle Tom” and was charged with treason (one fan wearing an armband at the match was also arrested and charged, but 200 fans wore them at Zimbabwe’s next match), he was sacked by his club, he received death threats, and was dropped by the national team for the remainder of the group stage, playing only one final match for his country (a super six match) before retiring — and was even kicked off the team bus.

Flower, for his part, while the reaction from certain parts was equally acrimonious, he was also considered undroppable and played for Zimbabwe the remainder of the tournament. And while he didn’t wear a black armband, he did wear black wristbands or white armbands. He had already announced his retirement from the national team, and so received no further punishment.

Both men eventually settled in England, and were awarded honorary lifetime memberships of the Marylebone Cricket Club.

Now, it’s a complicated issue. And one that has come up in the news recently, only in South Africa instead of Zimbabwe. And I won’t begin to try to understand the minutiae of Zimbabwean politics in the early 2002s. But what Flower and Olonga were attempting to do was the same thing that Kaepernick is trying to do: give voice to the voiceless and expose the systems that keep people down. Right or wrong, their actions were at least an attempt at virtuousness. An attempt to use the stage they were given to shed light on an issue that exists mostly in shadow. Just like Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Just like Věra Čáslavská. They had the biggest stages in the world, and they used them.

People get crispy about mixing politics and sport, or politics and music, or politics and just about anything. But usually they are only against it if the athlete or musician is expressing an opinion that they don’t agree with. We are all guilty of this. Both sides. But we shouldn’t be. As long as the opinion or protest is valid, it should be not just allowed, but celebrated. The world is filled with far too many people not just outside the system, but who are being crushed by the system. And if an athlete wants to give voice to those people, then more power to them. Be they democrat, republican, whatever. For we should all have the chance to play hard ball cricket.

Where do you start?

Alastair Cook made his Test debut in March of 2006. 12 and a half years ago. I was 30. Living in a St. Paul suburb. Still smoking cigarettes. Working at a toy company. Traveling too much. Working too hard. Life was okay then. Okay in that way that you don’t really recognize until it’s too late. I took the bus home everyday. And when the #61 would hit Snelling Ave. I would call my wife and just say “yep” and then she would get in the car with our dog, Murray, who would get excited the minute the phone rang, and come pick me up outside the diner in the strip mall next to one of those 24 hour fitness places.

Cricket was but a glint in my eye. Honestly, it wasn’t even that. It was, to me, nothing. Like it didn’t exist at all.

In the fall of that same year, Cook flew to Nagpur on short notice and hit a glorious 106 against India in the grueling heat to pull a draw out of a hat for England, batting in alien conditions with jet lag and an Indian attack that held no quarter.

And then time passed like falling leaves.

In April of 2007, I quit smoking. And everything changed. The whole world changed, for me. And I discovered cricket. Here was this game that I knew nothing about, that made no sense to me, but that I could wallow in completely, let it hold me in its arms. And somehow, despite every notion to the contrary, I was able to quit smoking. I followed the Cricket World Cup like an infant followed a set of keys. And while it was a hard, terrible time, I got better. Thanks to cricket. Everything changed, and for the better. For the way better. The whole world opened up, light poured in.

Later that year, December, I was still working at the Toy Company, living with my wife and dog, as Cook batted for 118 against Sri Lanka in Galle. His 7th Test hundred. And it saved the Test for England. He was only 22 years old. I was 31. And at the time it felt like life was just beginning for me, as it seemed for him, too, probably. He blocked and played off his back foot. He was handsome and charming, like a prince in a knit sweater in a field of green on the other side of the world.

In 2010 he scored in my opinion his most brilliant Test century. I don’t know. I think maybe it was because I was able to watch it live. But when no other England player could manage anything, he eked out this quiet little 110 against Pakistan at the Oval. And that would start this run for Cook that really made me a fan. His 235 against Australia at the Gabba, his 294 against India at Edgbaston. The April before the latter, I started this blog. I was working one of the worst jobs of my entire life. I remember that Edgebaston Test, watching him bat on and on and on and on, and somehow it made me feel as though everything was going to be okay.

And then there was that series in India in the fall of 2012. His 176 at Ahmedabad, his 122 in Mumbai, his 190 in Kolkata. That was maybe the hardest fall of my life. We had run away, and then we’d come home, and it was as if my life was being lived on the edge of a cliff, like everything could collapse and spill over the edge at any moment. But in the fall of that year, I graduated from college after spending most of my 20s and 30s as a college drop out. And through those rough days, I remember two or three times waking up, having gone to bed with Cook at the crease, and see that he had spent most of the night there, as I’d slept, on the other side of the world, in the heat and haze, playing off his back foot, keeping himself alive via his sheer force of will.

For Cook, though, after that, things started to drift. Hard years came, and hard years went. But, for me, life started to happen. I was offered my perfect job and then a year later, another perfect job. Things started to solidify. And, for the first time, be okay. There was a slight insurgence, for Cook, against New Zealand, with his 162 at Lords, and of course his 263 against Pakistan at Abu Dhabi and, his last Test century, his 244 at the MCG when the Ashes were already long lost. But, mostly, we felt we were all watching him struggle against the inevitable tide. That his hand had been played, and that it was his time to move on.

Then, today, Sept. 3, 2018, on what is traditionally the last day of summer in America, he retired. 12 years. 160 Tests. 12,254 runs. 32 centuries.

For so long, my entire life as a cricket fan, I had been used to seeing Cook in the England whites, the cross of St. George over his heart. He was never hurt, or dropped, or sick. He was just always there, through every England Test. And now, after the last Test against India, all of a sudden he won’t be there. I’ve watched him bat in India, Sri Lanka, the Caribbean, South Africa, Australia. I would turn on the cricket and there he would be. Opening for England. With his strong jaw and shock of black hair, handsomer than any devil. And sometimes he would bat for minutes, and sometimes he would bat for days, but no matter what, he was always there.

But, now, he won’t be. From the 22 year old on debut against India when I was a year away from following the game, to yesterday against India at Southhampton. From the Toy Company to the public radio station. College, and dead dogs, and divorce. Through it all: Cook has been there. And later this year in Sri Lanka when England’s openers walk out in the heat and haze, it won’t be Alastair Cook. It will be someone else. And that thought makes me almost intolerably sad. For me, as a cricket fan, considering when it all started, England is Cook, and Cook is England. But. Now. No more. For good or for bad, that’s the new reality.

Life is change. That’s what my mother always says. But sometimes there’s too much change. Sometimes you want that old cricketer who’s not even that old to give it one more year, because too many other things have changed and you want a few things to stay the same. You want that old cricketer to trade in those aching joints and walk out into the sun just a few more times. Sometimes there’s too much change. I’ll close my eyes tonight and when I open them in the morning the light will be soft and to my left, like it never has been before. And for a few seconds I will wonder where I am. But then I will remember. And it’s a dark, hard moment, that remembering. So I wish Cook had hung on for a little longer. Just one more series even. Given me a morning like I remember. Those mornings back in 2012. When I’d wake up with the dog and take him outside and look at my phone and know that some kid from Gloucestshire had batted the whole time I’d been sleeping.

But. Never again. Just like so many other things.

Life is change.

The shadows are stretching long in Southampton this afternoon, as England and Moeen Ali took India’s last few wickets, clinching the series victory. As a neutral, I was hoping of course for an Indian win so the fifth Test would be the decider instead of the dead rubber it will now be. But, alas, no. England found a way. Somehow. And with the series now clinched, you can almost feel summer start to fade, for fall and winter and dark and cold to start to seep in around the edges of the world. Summer doesn’t ever end on September 21st. Instead, there’s always this little moment that signals the quiet beginning of its long, slow journey into the night.

I’ve written about this before.

Sometimes summer ends when the Twins are knocked out of the playoffs. I remember 2002. Listening in the kitchen of our apartment downtown as the Angels won game five and ended the Twins’ run as my stepfather lay stroke riddled in a hospital in the suburbs. It was almost as if you could feel summer start to lift and peel away. In 2003 my wife and I watched the Twins lose to the Yankees and then took a walk around Lake Phalen and it was as if the whole city was outside, mourning the winter to come. In recent years, it’s been days like today, when the English cricketing summer ends. The long shadows, the late afternoons, that undefinable feeling of a series coming to end, the players tired, the crowd (usually) sparse on some quiet Monday as the England team bumps fists and walks off, not to be seen again until spring. But other times it’s not about sports at all. Sometimes it’s a quiet bike ride and you are just over come with the feeling of: summer is ending, today summer is ending. In the States, this feeling usually comes for most on Labor day weekend — this weekend — because school traditionally starts on the Tuesday after the long weekend. You walk the streets on that bank holiday Monday and see that the Sumacs are already turning and you get wistful and melancholy but in that nice way, you know, fresh school clothes, change, a clean slate.

This year, though, I didn’t get a summer.

There’s no easy way to say it, so I will just say it: on May the 4th (Stars War day), my marriage ended. A 19 year relationship. A 16 year marriage. Well, almost, in both cases. Out of fairness to everyone, I won’t go into any details. But I have spent the entire summer in this state of mourning. Like, the sun never came out. Not once. I had never had a summer. Those long, perfect days of June I spent in a quiet new apartment next to a bakery in the West 7th neighborhood of St. Paul, feeling this weight on my chest, crushing me. Or, more accurately, like my insides were slowly being scooped out, and left to rot on the sidewalk.

Summer never came. And now it’s already gone.

My weekends were lonely and quiet. I went on some bike rides, maybe one or two, I had a couple nice evenings on patios drinking with friends, but mostly, I was alone, and hurting, and unable to reach out. I didn’t sleep. I was always exhausted. Nothing stemmed the flood from the hole that was in me, that had been carved out and allowed to bleed. Time passed like a dying fire, sinking into itself. It wasn’t living, it was breathing. And with each hour that passed, I felt summer slipping away from me, and I felt my old life slipping away from me. Forever. And now England are walking off the pitch, the shadows long, and tomorrow is Labor Day, and all I want is to, somehow, push the sun back into the sky, and give us all one more day of summer.

That last line is from the deeply flawed but also magical Kevin Costner baseball film, For Love of the Game.

I don’t know who wrote that. Whether it was the screenwriter, or if it was a Vin Scully ad lib, or if it was the author of the original novel (written by Michael Shaara, randomly, that guy who wrote all those Civil War novels), but it’s perfect writing. And it’s how I feel right now, as I sit in my kitchen and watch the squirrels on the trees furiously work to prepare for the coming of the long dark winter in the north:

And you know Steve you get the feeling that Billy Chapel isn’t pitching against left handers, he isn’t pitching against pinch hitters, he isn’t pitching against the Yankees. He’s pitching against time. He’s pitching against the future, against age, and even when you think about his career, against ending. And tonight I think he might be able to use that aching old arm one more time to push the sun back up in the sky and give us one more day of summer.

“Against the future, against age … against ending.”

But that’s the thing. For me and Billy Chapel and for those English cricketing fans enjoying the sun on their backs in Southampton one last time and for those kids dreading the start of the school year, we should never pitch against the future. We should lean into the future. Yeah, I didn’t get a summer this year. But I will get a summer again, God willing. We all will get a summer again. Let’s lean into that future. Not just the summers, but the falls and the winters and the springs. Let’s not mourn the death of a season, but the instead revel in the start of a new one. We can fight against time, against aging, against ending, but in truth, happiness is not in the delay of time, but in the accepting of its inevitable advance. For, no matter how we try, time keeps moving.

To paraphrase Hanif Abdurraqib: today I am sad. I was sad yesterday. And I might be sad tomorrow. But today I watched Arsenal play with the sun on their backs in Wales, and today I listened to this band out of Brooklyn called Wild Pink sing about sitting on a hill top and watching smoke drift out of chimneys, and today I held in my hands a picture of me from a time when I was not sad, where I am young and I have a smirk and there’s light in my eyes. Today I am sad. But tomorrow I might not be.

And that’s the promise of time.

In 2002 the Minnesota finally won some ball games after years of fealty on the diamond. They won the division that season and even won a playoff series — defeating the As in five games in the division series. And so with the same core group of players returning in 2003, fans like me expected another good run of baseball. But we were mistaken. The team was a mess, and lost themselves a whole lot of ball games — to the point where their chances at repeating as divisional champs in the very weak AL Central were firmly in doubt.

Then in July of that season they traded part time outfielder and decent enough guy Bobby Kielty (I met him a meet and greet at a bar the summer previous) (he hit a game winning home run against the Tigers in 2002 at a game I was at with my brother and girlfriend — later wife — and I still remember my brother standing in the aisle pumping his fists and yelling back up at the crowd, it’s a great memory) to the Toronto Blue Jays for outfielder Shannon Stewart, and everything turned around. Stewart got on base and stole bases and scored runs. His injection into the lineup changed the whole vibe of the offense … and they started winning, and they looked good doing it.

At the time, I was working a mindless desk job at a toy company in downtown Minneapolis and I would listen to the weekday day games on a little AM radio at my desk. In August just as they were starting to win again, the Twins were losing one of those weekday day games to the Angels 5-4 late. With two outs and a guy (Dustan Mohr) on first, Stewart stepped up and cracked a double to left field. Huzzah! Mohr got on his horse and blew through the stop sign at third and headed for home. He was going to be out. The Angels had him dead to rights. He would be out and the game over. I remember the color announcer, Dan Gladden, sighing “oh no” as Mohr blew the stop sign.

But.

Instead of sliding into home and inevitably getting tagged out, Mohr barreled into the catcher, Benjie Molina. Lowered his shoulder and rugby tackled him. A perfectly legal play at the time. The ball popped out of Molina’s mitt. Mohr was safe. The ball trickled to the backstop as Molina lay in a heap near home plate. Stewart rounded third and scored easily. Huzzah again! Twins win! In a walk off! It was quite a moment. And I was super excited. It was one of those plays that can — and did! — turn an entire season around.

Lost in all this was the fact that Molina broke his wrist in the collision and didn’t play for six weeks. Lost further — and lost almost completely on me — was that Mohr’s play was dirty. It was a cheap shot. It was borderline cheating. And, yes, it was against the spirit of the game. But I didn’t care. They’d won. Mohr had done whatever was necessary to win. And that’s all that mattered. The W. Sorry not sorry.

But looking back now. I was wrong. The W wasn’t all that mattered. The safety of the players mattered. Maintaining a fair playing field mattered. Not cheating mattered. And baseball agreed, banning home plate collisions a few years back. Many fans were angry with the decision, saying it gutted the game, sanitized it, watered it down, took the “tough guy, rub some dirt on it” out of the game. But those people were and are wrong. Home plate collisions were dangerous, and they were cheating, and banning them was the right call.

Lots of people roll their eyes when whey talk about the spirit of cricket. It’s outdated. It’s nonsense. All that matters is doing whatever it takes to win. Let the players play. Don’t hamstring them. Let them take any advantage they can. Let them appeal for an edge when they know an edge wasn’t there.

And I see that side of it. I do. There is so much money involved in cricket — in all sport — and that puts a certain amount of pressure on the players. But that’s not an excuse. The spirit of cricket is important. It not only ensures a flat and fair playing field, therefore ensuring that the best team wins, but it protects the players’ safety, as well. Dustan Mohr might have won the game for the team, but is dirty play where a fellow player is injured worth it? Ever? Of course not. That’s juvenile. We’re adults. Let’s hold our athletes to same standards we hold each other.

***

Last week India were once again thrashed rather mightily by England for the second Test in a row. India looks lost, rudderless. Poor. But this is an Indian team that won 10 out of its last 11 Test series, dating back to 2015. Meanwhile England looks like world beaters, all pomp and swagger. But this is an England side that’s only won four of its last 10 Test series.

It doesn’t make a ton of sense. Until you look at where those matches were played. Of India’s last 11 series, all but two were played on the sub-continent, and one of those two was the one they lost (to South Africa this past January). Meanwhile, three of England’s wins came in England, and they had zero wins on the sub-continent.

But still. It doesn’t make it all clear. I know home field advantage is a real thing, in all sports, and even more so in cricket because of how much the weather and the wicket can affect play, but still. It shouldn’t matter that much. These are world class athletes, the best cricketers on earth — probably in all of history considering modern training regiments — good teams should be good teams no matter where they are playing. The moon, India, Manchester, wherever.

I guess what I’m saying is that we should no longer use it as an excuse. Are you a good team? Yes? Then win.

It feels in some ways like the entire sport of cricket has left me behind. I still follow, of course, but mostly via cursory platforms like Instagram, where I just see images and results of the bigger matches, or pictures of Virat Kohli with his girlfriend.. But I don’t take the deep dives like I used to. Life has gotten in the way a bit, I guess. More on that a little later. But taking these little breaks from the game just goes to show how quickly the game evolves. It doesn’t feel that way when you’re reading anything and everything on Cricinfo seven days a week, but it does when you do take a little break, you notice how much the game changes in such a short period of time. Even things like the lexicon used to describe the game change rapidly. When I stepped away last fall no one was using the terms “red ball cricket” and “white ball cricket” to describe the game’s various formats. They were using “one day cricket” and “first class cricket” and the like. But all of a sudden it’s a white ball this and red ball that.

And that’s just one small example. I mean. What’s this 10 ball over nonsense? The “hundred”? What is happening? Where did cricket go? Is this even the same game?

But then I spend two and a half days watching and listening and following the England v India Test match and I am comforted. It is the same game. The same glorious game I love. Kohli’s master class, Cook’s capitulation, a packed Edgebaston on an English summer’s day, fight backs and plot twists, heroes and goats, and a 20 year old kid from Northampton named Sam Curran playing in only his second test who took 4 for 74 in India’s first innings and 63 off of 65 in England’s second to pull the home side out of the fire and give them at least a fighting chance against a spirited and ruthless Indian side.

Test cricket, am I right?

**

The last time I logged on here, I was writing about my sister’s battle with colon cancer. And I am happy to report that she is fine. Better than fine. She is great. Cancer free and living life like it never happened. It warms my heart every time I think about it. What strength she had over the last year, though. She might be the strongest person I know. Just relentless fight. Sorry, Virat, but she puts your century to shame.

During those dark days when we didn’t know how it would all turn out, I would picture her empty chair at the dinner table during future holiday meals and it would break my heart into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the wind. But now we know she will be in that chair come Thanksgiving, come Christmas, but there will still be an empty chair, the room will still be quieter, less full of joy and smiles and laughter and love.

Everything is raw right now. And I don’t want to write about it too publicly. But life is a bit of a struggle these days, and so I came back here, like I do when the road gets potholed and dark. Back here to this game I love, to this site where I feel safe, where I can write about Sam Curran and red ball cricket and the insane 2019 World Cup group stage.

More to come.

England 362 (Bairstow 99, Stokes 58, Root 52, Rabada 4-91) and 243 (Moeen 75*, Morkel 4-41, Olivier 3-38) beat South Africa 226 (Anderson 4-38) and 202 (Amla 83, du Plessis 61, Moeen 5-69) by 177 runs

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The Saturday before the England-South Africa Test series started I was sitting out on my patio reading in the sun. It had been a really good day. I had woken up early and done some writing and got a bunch of chores done and went for a bike ride and went to the farmers market for fresh vegetables. And then it was mid-afternoon and I was on the patio with Roberto Bolaño and a Bent Paddle pilsner and it was 82 degrees and sunny with big blue skies and it was perfect.

I happened to look down and see that I’d missed a call and had a voicemail. It was from my sister. My sister never calls me, and so I assumed she had either dialed me by mistake or that something was horribly wrong with our mother. I listened to the voicemail and it didn’t sound like an emergency. “Hi Matt, it’s your sister, just calling to chat. Feel free to give me a call back or maybe I will just try again later.” There was no urgency, no tragedy. Just a simple message.

I didn’t want to call her back. It was a Saturday and I was sanding the edges off what had been a really long week. I wanted to keep reading and have another beer and then make dinner. The last thing I wanted to do was talk to anyone, including my sister. But my curiosity was killing me! What the heck could she possibly want? And so I sighed heavily and picked up my phone and called her back.

She answered on the very last ring. As the phone was ringing, I started to think: what if she was calling to admonish me for being a poor brother, or crappy son, or both? I mean, I would deserve both lectures, but it really wasn’t something I wanted to hear about on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and so I started to pray that she wouldn’t answer, that we could just play phone tag all day. But she answered. And proceeded to tell me that she’d had a colonoscopy, and that they had found a mass, and they didn’t know anything yet, that she needed to have a biopsy, but that she wanted to tell me herself, and that she needed me to, simply, be her brother.

I was relieved! Our mother wasn’t sick or hurt or dead, she didn’t want to yell at me, and so I bowled her over with optimism: “It’s fine! I am sure it’s nothing,” I said. “It’s probably benign anyway, and even if it is cancer modern medicine is amazing and this will all be fine.” I don’t think she believed me but looking back it was probably better than moping with her. I told her that I was there for her, whatever she needed, whenever she needed. Five minutes later I was back in my chair on the patio, reading Bolaño and drinking my beer. And while my optimism had been a symptom of my initial relief, it was genuine. I really thought that everything would be fine, that life would just go on as it had, that this wasn’t even a blip on the family radar.

Two days later, the 4th of July, two days before the first Test match, I had the day off for the holiday and it was around lunchtime when I got home from a bike ride and checked my email on my phone. There was a message from my sister. She had been diagnosed with colon cancer. My sister. My only sister. My half happy, half sad sister. Cancer. It hit me like a sack of bricks. I had to wait a few minutes to tell my wife after reading the email because I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.

“Maggie has cancer.”

The day is a blur after that. I wrote my sister back and, again, gave her those empty but genuine platitudes that we all give people in times of crisis: whatever you need, whenever you need it. I called my mother and we talked and then I drank beer on the patio and went to the book store and then to the record store. I just kept picturing her empty chair at the Thanksgiving Day dinner table, her empty spot next to the Christmas Tree, her laughter quiet, her spirit gone. My mother and brother are very close to my sister. Losing her would suck the life out of my family forever. We would never recover. And then even if she made it through, the next year would be so hard on her and — as she’s a single mother — her teenage son. Her teenage son who is the same age I was when my father died.

I wasn’t doing very well.

Back on the patio I started to think about how I wanted to write about it. About her. And then I remembered that I had wanted to write a new post for each day of the England-South Test series. And so that’s what I did, and that’s what you have been reading. Along the way I discovered consistent themes, themes that I knew existed but had never really thought about. About how strong my sister is, how deeply devoted she is to the people around her, even the ones who don’t treat her very well, and how all she wants is to eek out a little bit of happiness, and how she always seems to find a way to do that, even when skies are dark and the future uncertain.

On the Saturday of the second Test match, as England were collapsing to all out for 205, my sister told me over lunch at my parent’s house that her cancer was stage 3, meaning it had spread to her lymph nodes, but not to her other organs, that she would be going through rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, followed by surgery. Again it hit home. My sister. My only sister. Cancer. Only 42. And I worried about her, and I worried about our mother. And I felt so helpless. But then I looked over at my sister, and I saw strength, and good humor, and optimism. And I realized that I had a lot to learn from her, that after all these years as brother and sister, I had allowed myself to see only one small side of her, but there was so much more there. And I knew in that moment that everything would be okay, that my sister was too strong, far too strong, to lose this battle. And over the next few weeks, as I collected memories here on the blog, that faith strengthened, and it also made clear that I needed to be there for her and her son — really be there, not just with empty words — just as she’s been there for me all these years, sometimes in the background, waiting, other times right out front, defending me, helping me. And that’s what I want to do for her. And I want these blog posts to not be a memorial to my late sister, but instead a reminder of her strength and love over the course of a long, happy life, and that I should always be striving to be a better person. A better son. A better husband.

And a better brother.

England 362 and 224 for 8 (Moeen 67*, Broad 0*, Olivier 3-38) lead South Africa 226 (Bavuma 46, Anderson 4-38) by 360 runs

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One hot, humid summer’s day my sister, our neighbor and I were playing our garage. I as showing off a bit, I guess, showing them I could get from one end of the garage to the other without touching the ground — climbing over the lawnmower and the garbage cans and the other assorted junk you find in everyone’s garage. After a while the neighbor kid’s dad called him home, a storm was coming.

We were living in Ohio and it was flat and you could see thunderstorms rolling in way off into the distance. In the summer it felt like a storm hit us every week. You could feel it coming in the air the day before, as the humidity spiked and the birds grew quiet and air was thick like soup. And then the storm. The horrifying storm. The lightning lighting up the night, the shutters rattling in the wind, the thunder shaking the house. I was scared death of thunderstorms growing up — especially of the tornadoes they occasionally produced — and this fear was doubled by the fact that our house did not have a basement.

After the neighbor kid left my sister and I went back inside and helped my mother close the windows in preparation for the coming rain. I was a little manic with fear and when I was losing the sliding glass door in our family room I neglected to move my other hand in time and slammed the heavy door directly on my thumb. I howled with pain. The nail had shattered and there was so much blood. My mother wrapped it in a towel and called the doctor’s office and they suggested we come in. I sat in the back seat as my mother drove with my sister in the passenger seat through the nasty Ohio thunderstorm, hydroplaning through intersections as the wind rocked my mother’s bright orange 1976 Chevette hatchback. My mother had put some hot soapy water in small cereal bowl and I kept my thumb submerged in the water as we drove.

At the doctor’s they did an x-ray, determined nothing was broken, wrapped my thumb and sent us home. The nurse told me that if it started to hurt, to hold my thumb up over my heart.

The next my sister and I were eating lunch in the kitchen. I was in so much pain. I was crying. It hurt so bad! My sister looked at me and saw that I was in pain and she motioned to me to raise my thumb over my heart. “Up, up,” she said. “That will help it feel better.” And she was right.

“Don’t worry, soon it won’t hurt at all and you’ll forget all about it, ” she said after I calmed down a bit. She was right about that too.

Day 2, Session 2: South Africa trail by 308 runs with 8 wickets remaining in the 1st innings (Elgar 0, Amla 30)

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Ducks were a big part of our lives growing up. When we visited the Becker family cottages in the upper peninsula of Michigan they were everywhere, swimming up and down the lake shore. My sister and I would watch them swim and put their beaks in the water to catch food and we would feed them crusts of old bread while standing on the rocks in front of the cottages — watching them fight over the scraps while listening to our dad tell us that we were making them too fat to fly south in the winter and that they would freeze to death. Thanks, dad.

One summer we went to a relative’s cottage on the big lake, Lake Michigan, and there my sister and I were amazed as we watch the ducks dive completely under the water to catch food. We watched them for hours out there in the sun drenched big blue chop from a white washed open window as the adults ate lunch and talked about Ronald Reagan and South Africa.

In 1986 we moved to upstate New York and one day each week during the summer our mother would take us kids somewhere. The zoo, a movie, whatever. Just something to get us out of the house and away from the television. If we couldn’t think of something to do we would just go to the swimming beach on Lake Canandaigua, one of the “finger lakes,” five lakes that resembled the fingers on a hand.

It was a busy beach and across the street was a small amusement park with a ferris wheel and a carousel and a water slide. But mostly we just sat on the beach. My mother would read and sunbathe and we would play in the lake and come out to dry off on a towel and eat whatever sandwiches my mother had brought and have a juice box or two.

One day my sister and I waded deep out into the lake, the water coming up to our shoulders. We were close to a group of other kids. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, about a dozen or so ducks came swimming up near us. The other kids started freaking out — ducks! look at the ducks! oh my god ducks! — they were so excited. My sister and I rolled our eyes.

“Not sure what they’re getting so excited about,” my sister said, having to raise her voice over the sounds of the lake. “We see ducks all the time in Michigan.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” I replied.  And we waded back to shore in the dirty brown water to our mother, waiting on the beach, reading her mystery novel, with our little brother, who was playing in the sand and wearing a hat to protect him from the sun, and we dried off in the sun as our swim suits dripped on our mother’s blanket, retrieving our glasses from the safety of her purse, and the whole world sat firmly in the universe, the ground solid under our feet, and the ducks swam off into the deep part of the lake, and my sister and I reveled in our smugness, and we thought about those ducks on the big lake that day in Michigan, diving into the waves over and over again.

England 260 for 6 (Stokes 58, Root 52) v South Africa

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When I was two years old we moved from Johnstown, Ohio, outside Columbus, to Lebanon, Ohio, a small town about 45 minutes from Cincinnati. It was a suburb, but it was far enough out that it still had a quaint old downtown with a Carnegie library and an ice cream shop and a bookstore and an old hotel where, famously, Charles Dickens had once stayed.

We lived in a small one story ranch house about a mile from downtown, and while the houses were nice, it was very suburban in look and feel, and it also had a touch of bumblefuck nowhere Ohio to it — flat, no trees, rednecks on motorcycles. Behind our house was a creek and a farm field and a pond. It was a nice place to grow up, all told.

Our neighbors to the south were the Johnsons. Rex was the dad and there was a mom whose name I don’t recall and they had a younger daughter and an older son, Jeremy, who was one year younger than I was and was missing the ring finger on his left hand which he lost in a lawn mowing accident. They were blue collar white working class. Middle America Ohio mainstays. They were loud and their yard was a mess with garbage and toys and Rex would drink cans of cheap beer by the case and yell at his kids.

To the north was Baptist preacher with his wife and their son, Timmy, who was the same age as my sister. They had money. The dad had a sports car and they were the first family I knew to have a VCR. Timmy was a good kid, a little weird, occasionally cruel, but mostly harmless. Timmy was also the person who told me that Santa Claus wasn’t real.

It happened one beautiful summer’s day when Timmy, my sister and I were in the backyard sitting by my mother’s vegetable garden. We were talking and inspecting the plants and the whole world was green and splashed with late afternoon sunlight. And then we started to talk about Christmas, and Santa Claus, and Timmy told me he didn’t exist. I was horrified and crushed, like the sky had come crashing down on me. I looked to my sister for help but she backed Timmy up. Telling me that, yeah, Santa didn’t exist, our parents bought all those gifts and wrapped them and left them under the tree each Christmas morning.

I wailed and screamed and ran inside to my parents. I was inconsolable. It was like being told that was the whole world had just broken in some irreparable way and that it couldn’t be put right again — that the way world was had changed not in event or tragedy but in fact and truth. Actually it wasn’t like being told that, it was exactly that.

Mom and dad tried to calm me down and figure out what was wrong. After a bit my sister came inside. The sun was setting and it was growing dark in our living room. My sister was crying too. She was just as inconsolable. She had played it tough in front of Timmy but she was also heartbroken, as heartbroken as me even. Maybe she’d had an inkling that Santa Claus wasn’t true, but there it was: confirmed. Laid bare in the summer gloaming.

My parents did their best to walk us through the heartbreak. Telling us that while maybe Santa didn’t exist in reality, he did exist in our hearts, in our kindness, in the way we treat other people. And life went on, and Christmases came and went and they still had magic, just a different kind of magic. And my sister and still got up at dawn in our pajamas and woke up our parents and opened baseball gloves and doll houses as my parents sat on the couch bleary eyed with coffee and smiles as the darkness fell away and the sun came up over another bleak, brown, dry and cold southwestern Ohio winter’s day.

I still think about my sister in the garden that summer afternoon. Trying so hard to be strong, while inside her heart was shattering. That kind of strength, while at the time perhaps a little misguided, would continue to serve her well her whole life.