Waves crashing. Cicadas singing. And always the burble of cricket on the radio, unifying summers and people with its gentle pleasures for an uncertain world
y father was a man of his generation, which meant when summer rolled around and the cricket season started, he insisted on muting Channel Nine’s coverage and blasting the ABC’s radio commentary instead.
Ours was a complicated relationship but one thing for which I’ll be forever grateful was the way my father shared his love for Test cricket with me. I grew up as a cricket obsessive. My love for the game survived childhood, adolescence, and even the realisation that, given I was batting No 11 for South Melbourne under-12s, my dream to open the batting for Australia was unlikely to be fulfilled.
So I dashed to the car when my mum picked me up from school, desperate to turn on the radio – usually to hear one the great West Indies teams of the 1980s had yet again laid waste to the Australian batting order. I listened from the beach in 1989 as Allan Border turned the tables on the Windies with his left-arm spin, taking 11 wickets on the way to a famous SCG victory.
Nostalgia is the most seductive of poisons but hearing Australia play India on the radio feels like a small but vital link to a time when the world felt like it made some sort of sense. A lost era of lazy days bookended by radio cricket commentary melting into the distant sound of crashing surf and cicadas that began singing in the hour before stumps.
Everything changes, even the cricket commentary. As the years have come and gone, so have the voices on the radio. Players’ names have changed as careers have begun, flourished, and ended. Even the subtle rhythms of the game itself have evolved. These days we have Tests decided in two days, something that would have been unthinkable to my father and his generation.
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