On Sunday I had the honour of being involved in the inaugural TEAR 30/30 charity cricket match. TEAR Australia works to help those in need both in Australia and abroad and in recent years have become well known for their World’s Most Useful Gift Catalogue which allows you to donate a goat or a well or school books or any number of other useful things to a community unable to afford such essentials, instead of giving a DVD that gets watched once then put in the back of the drawer. The event was organised to raise funds and awareness of the work TEAR does.
The format was simple, 2 teams of 11 (World XI vs Commonwealth XI), 30 overs per side, batsmen retire at 50, each batsmen allocated 2 free hits to be taken at their discretion, bowlers limited to 5 overs each with a maximum of 2 overs per spell, each team required to play at least 2 wicket keepers… okay, so the format wasn’t that simple, but we figured it out in the end. For some reason I was assigned the task of opening the batting for the World XI, and after taking three overs to put leather on willow I eventually carved out a belligerent 18 before holing out to one of Tyson’s pies outside off. That’s the thing with cricket, batting is loads of fun until you get out, and then it’s THE most frustrating thing imaginable, you don’t get a second chance (to be fair though the keeper did put me down twice so I actually got three chances – perhaps that’s why the end was so devastating, I thought I was invincible!).
After my dismissal I decided to drown my sorrows in the one thing that never lets me down; a massive Canon 70-200 f/2.8 IS lens strapped to my 40D. I elected to use the 40D rather than the 5D2 for the extra reach it gives me and the extra frames per second. I’d forgotten how responsive the 40D is, I absolutely LOVE my 5D2 but it’s very slow to focus if you’re using any of the non-centred focus points and the 3.9fps doesn’t really set the world on fire when shooting sport. As a team we started out poorly but the tail wagged and when were all out in the 25th over we’d made a defendable 116.
Or so we thought.
The opposition openers put on a clinic and when both had retired with 50s to their names the match was all but over. We bowled out the rest of the overs so everyone got a hit, and to our dismay virtually the entire Commonwealth XI scored freely and basically made a mockery of our inability to keep our wickets and put runs on the board. My hard fought 18 of several hours ago now looked ridiculous, why did Simon take so long to make so few runs on this lifeless pitch and fast outfield everyone was thinking. At the end of the day it didn’t matter, the aim of the day was to have fun and raise funds and both these were crossed off the checklist (although I suspect the Commonweatlh XI probably had more fun that we did!), and if my recovery goes to plan I’ll be able to walk again freely within the next few days.
While the pain of losing wasn’t pleasant at least I didn’t have this type of pain.
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