LEZ BEFORE WICKET
[Author’s Note: This story has been knocking around inside my head for a while and I needed to get it written before starting on Part 4 of the Marcilla Series. It’s a one-off with new characters and is most certainly not going to become a series.
This story may be a little difficult for those not familiar with the game of cricket. Can’t help that, sorry.
I, however, make no apologies whatever for the horrible pun in the title. I’d never have forgiven myself for eschewing it.]
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Five balls left. Eight runs to win. And the ninth wicket’s just fallen.
I walk down the stairs from the pavilion and onto the field, passing Susan on the way in. She’s muttering furiously to herself, but takes a moment to glare at me. “Don’t you dare cock this up,” she hisses. “Take a bloody run somehow and give Jen the strike.” Slamming her bat on the ground for emphasis, she stalks off back to the pavilion.
The pitch looks very far away as I walk over the grass towards it. God, or the devil, knows I’m no batswoman – I can accurately be called a weasel (goes in after the rabbits, ha ha) – even at the best of times.
So going out last wicket with the match, and more, at stake isn’t exactly calculated to fill me with confidence.
Jen shakes her head slightly as I walk past her, not saying anything. Jen doesn’t often say anything, but her gestures are eloquent. Right now she’s thinking that she’d rather have had literally anyone else at the other end. And I sympathise, I don’t want to be here either.
The wicket keeper, a pretty black girl whose name I haven’t caught, grins as I take guard. “Going to get out first ball, I’ll bet you a tenner.”
I block her out. I’ve had some practice in blocking out negative comments – practice stretching back the whole twenty two years of my life. A little sledging is nothing. Besides, my mouth is dry and my heart hammering as I watch the bowler swing her arm a couple of times before starting on her run up. I doubt I’d be able to say much even if I wanted.
At least there isn’t a crowd. Not that there ever is for women’s matches, but the turnout is even thinner than usual today, just a smattering of people with nothing better to do. We’re both visiting teams, so there isn’t even the usual contingent of family members and boyfriends. But, empty stands or not, this game is important. Everyone knows that after the disastrous couple of years the national side’s had, the selectors are planning on major changes for the coming series against India, not to mention the World Cup after that. A lot of places are going to open up on the team, and this is one of the tournaments they’ll be watching keenly.
I’ve done my bit with the ball, taken five for forty in my ten overs, without conceding a single extra. But their bowlers didn’t fail either. And so here we are.
Their captain has scented blood, and moves the field in closer. Two slips, silly mid-on and off, and the wicket keeper right behind the stumps. I’m surrounded.
The bowler trots up to the bowling crease, the ball floats through the air towards me, and as it pitches at good length, I forget all my plans of how I’d handle it and swat clumsily at it cross batted. And, incredibly, feel it connect hard and heavy, right in the middle of the blade; it soars past silly mid-on’s frantic grab, bounces near the leg umpire, and begins rolling towards the ropes.
Jen is sprinting towards me, screaming for a run, but I am so astonished at actually hitting the ball that she’s halfway down the pitch before I start to move. Not that it matters; by the time I’m at the other end the ball has rolled over the boundary, defeating the fielder racing to stop it.
Four balls to go, four runs to win. I trudge back up the pitch, crossing Jen.
“Run faster, you stupid cow,” she mutters out of the corner of her mouth. “Don’t bloomin’ daydream.”
The wicket keeper grins again. “See, glad I am that you didn’t take the bet. But I’ll bet you that you get out this time!”
Their captain has realised that her field’s set too close, that if anything passes the close-in fielders it’s open ground all the way to the boundary. She pulls back the close-in fielders, so I’m not crowded in. So when the bowler sends down the next ball and I poke at it, the ball hitting the edge of my bat and lobbing towards gully, there’s nobody to snap up the easy catch.
And Jen and I manage to scramble across for a single, too.
Three balls to go, three runs to get.
The next ball is a monster. It rears up from good length to chest height. Jen somehow manages to raise her bat to block it, and it falls to the ground at her feet like a dead bird. The wicket keeper collects it and tosses it to the bowler. Two balls to go, three runs to get.
In the time before the bowler begins her run up, I take a quick look around at the pavilion. Everyone in the team is standing at the balcony, staring at us. Wonderful, tokat escort no pressure at all, then.
“Bowl a no ball,” I whisper desperately under my breath. “Please bowl a no ball.”
No such luck, naturally. The bowler pitches outside the off stump, the ball cutting in, but Jen manages to knock it towards cover point. Even before the ball’s fairly cleared the pitch, she’s sprinting across, and I rush past her, touch my bat to the crease and turn, hoping we’ll be able to take another. No luck. The ball slaps into the wicket keeper’s glove.
“Getting a mite interesting, innit?” she laughs as she throws it back to the bowler.
One ball to go, two runs to get, and I’m the one who’s supposed to score them.
‘Interesting’ isn’t what I’d call it. Terrifying, maybe. Adrenaline-flooding, yes. Some other words along those lines. ‘Interesting’ doesn’t make the grade.
The other side’s captain and the bowler hold a conference, glancing at me every few words. They move the deep field around a bit and then she begins her bowling run.
The ball leaves her hand, floats towards me, and I’m already stepping forward to meet it, feel the shiver of the bat as I strike it, the ball rising over her head before bouncing towards long off, and Jen is already partway down the pitch when I take off running.
Time seems to slow down. My feet hitting the ground at every stride seem to take an eternity. In the distance I see the other side’s captain running after the ball, swooping as she runs to pick it up and turning to throw, the umpire moving out of the way to the side, Jen in my peripheral vision racing past me, the crease coming up, I’m already stretching my arm and the bat to touch it…
…and then a piece of dry earth spins away under my foot, and I’m slipping, falling on my hands and knees, crawling desperately to get my bat across the crease.
Too late. I don’t even need to look up. The clatter of ball on stumps tells me all I need to know.
We’ve lost. By one single bloody run.
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I’m sitting in a far corner of the bar room on the ground floor of the team hotel, nursing a violently coloured cocktail the name of which I don’t even remember; I’d pointed it out at random on the drinks menu. It tastes about the same as it looks. I’m hoping to be able to stay there all evening until it’s time for bed.
No luck there either, apparently. A shadow falls across the table.
An offensively cheerful voice: “Drowning your sorrows in drink, are you?”
I look up slowly. It’s the pretty black wicket keeper. She slips into the seat opposite me without asking. “I wouldn’t recommend it. The bloody things can always swim.”
I make a noncommittal noise. I don’t want to ask what she wants, but she answers as though I had, anyway.
“Saw you sitting here all alone from across the room. You were just radiating misery. Slagged you off, did they?”
“You have no idea,” I say.
“Ace, you can actually talk!” She grins that brilliant grin. “I thought you’d gone mute or something. So, they didn’t like it that you didn’t score one run? Well, the ten of them put together couldn’t score two hundred and fourteen, so why blame you?”
“It’s not just that…we’re on the verge of getting eliminated from the tournament. And once we’re out, there goes the chance of national selection.”
“Oh, come on. You’ll win the next match, easy. Just keep bowling like you did today.” She pulls an exaggerated face. “I didn’t even see the ball with which you got me.”
“Uh…sorry about that.” I sit back and take a good look at her. In a T shirt and without her helmet she’s extraordinarily eye-catching. Her short hair clings to her scalp, emphasising the clean lines of her face; the tiny studs of her earrings only show off the elegant shapes of her ears, a thin silver chain hangs between the gentle swell of her breasts. I feel a faint stirring inside me, but push it down. This stunning girl could never be interested in me that way. “I might have hurt your chances for selection.”
She scoffs. “Oh, naff off. Next you’ll tell me you should’ve only bowled full tosses at me so I could score a century. What the hell are you drinking?”
“I don’t know. I picked it out at random.”
She picks it up and takes a sip. “Good lord, it’s awful. Wait, I’ll get us beer.”
Before I can even answer that she doesn’t have to, she’s gone, and reappears in a minute with two tankards of foaming bitter. “Here.”
I take a sip. The taste of it rises with the bubbles into the back of my nose. I bury a sneeze. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t get your name.”
“No worries! I didn’t get yours. I’m Karizma Davis.”
“Charisma?”
“With a kay and a zed.” She spells it out, grinning. “Fancy, innit? And you are?”
“Zhang Do…” I begin automatically, then as automatically switch it around to Western name order. “Dongmei Zhang.”
“Ace. From China, are you?”
“Well, my mum is, from Shanghai. My dad was born yozgat escort in Hong Kong. They came here before they met and got married. I was born in this country.” I take a quick look at her, but see none of the guarded expression that comes over so many people’s faces when they hear my name and realise I’m not Korean or Japanese as they’d assumed. “They’re really very conservative in a lot of ways, so they insisted on giving my sister and me Chinese names.”
“Nothing wrong with that.” She swigs her beer. “Imagine being called Vicky or Penny or something Zhang. Horrible. So what does it mean?”
“Dongmei? Winter Plum Blossom.” I brace myself for the usual quick mocking smirk, but it doesn’t come.
“Now that’s a proper brilliant name, if I do say so. You should be proud of it.” She glances at my beer. “You aren’t drinking. Are you all right?”
I sigh. “It’s just that…you know, this whole thing is getting me down a bit. My parents aren’t exactly thrilled about me playing cricket. They want me to give up this waste of time, as they call it, and start helping out in the family business. The only way I can reply adequately is make my way into the national team. Then, hopefully, they’ll lay off the pressure. I am,” I proclaim, “really a terrible disappointment to them. My elder sister, now, she can’t do any wrong. And she’s already handling the accounts and all that, while I waste my time running around a field with a red leather ball, as my mum never ceases to remind me.”
Karizma – I run the name over in my mind – nods. “That’s hard cheese. But don’t worry, you’ll go places. Not just the India series, either. You’re going to the World Cup.”
Despite myself, I laugh. “The World Cup! That’s about as likely as my becoming the first girl on Mars.”
“Don’t run yourself down. Leave that to all the pillocks. They’re good at it and that’s all they’re good at.” I chuckle at that, and she laughs again. Her laugh is infectious. “What’s the family business, then?”
“They run a Chinese restaurant. The last thing I want to do is spend my days taking orders for Hakka noodles and wonton soup. Can you see me in a restaurant kitchen in an apron and hairnet, all red faced in the steam?”
She cocks her head like a terrier and looks at me. “I don’t know, that’s a pretty interesting image, really. Now come on and drink up so I can get us another round.”
When she returns, she hands me a beer and sits back. “Now tell me about yourself.”
“What about me?” I’m surprised.
“I mean, what do you like? Movies? Music? Your taste in books?”
I shrug. “I’m not really one for movies. Especially not romcoms or action movies. I can watch an occasional horror movie, just as long as it’s funny.”
“Ha! I love those. Especially when they try very hard to be scary and end up doing the opposite.” She raises her arms before her, lets her wrists droop, tilts her head and lets her tongue loll out. “Braaiiins!”
I laugh so hard that I snort beer up my nose.
We talk about books and music and things for a while, and cricket recedes, and we aren’t on opposite teams anymore, just two young women chatting in a hotel bar room.
“So it was tough for you growing up?” she asks, when we get around to talking about school. “I mean, you know…”
“Yes. You can imagine what people said during COVID, not to my face but so I could hear.” I shrug. “I’ve grown good at ignoring stuff like that, but it still hurts.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, and looks as though she really means it. Maybe she’s gone through some of the same things, as a black person. “My parents said they had it tough, too, years ago.”
“What do your parents do?”
“Mum’s a college professor in economics. Dad, well, Dad…” she begins to laugh.
“What?’
“He’s a sportscaster. He literally did the commentary on today’s match!”
I do a facepalm. “Oh god. How he must have laughed at me for falling like that, last ball.”
“Oh, he doesn’t do that kind of thing, unless if I fall. Then he has a right good chuckle.” She raises her beer. “Here’s to falling together!”
I raise mine and she knocks our tankards together. That is the first time I’ve done it. I’ve only seen it in the movies. “Shall we go have something to eat?” I ask. “I’m suddenly a little peckish.”
“Aye, totally. I could murder a dinner. Drink up and let’s get to the restaurant!”
It’s late when I go back upstairs to my room. I’m lucky that I don’t have a roommate, so I don’t have to worry about noise. I undress, brush my teeth, and am in bed in ten minutes.
Only then does it occur to me to wonder what she meant by saying it was an interesting image when I mentioned being red faced in an apron and hairnet in the kitchen steam.
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Early the next day we have net practice.
I’m bowling to Claire in the nets, sending down leg breaks and an occasional googly for her to catch. She’s our ‘keeper and not very good at recognising what I’m going zonguldak escort to bowl from my wrist action. She’s missing or dropping a good quarter of what I bowl at her, and that’s though I’m not exactly feeling up to giving my best. Claire was one of the most vocal of those yelling at me for losing the match yesterday.
After twenty minutes she’s had enough and goes for a water break. I stretch and rub my back muscles, and swing my arms around to ease my shoulders. Then I see someone watching, who gives me a little wave when she sees I’ve noticed her.
It’s Karizma, of course. I walk over to her. “Hi. You’re playing tomorrow, aren’t you?”
She nods. “Yeh. And nets after you’re done. I hate nets.”
“How did you ever become a wicket keeper?” I’m genuinely curious. “Did you not ever want to be an all- rounder or bowler?”
She laughs easily. “Simple. When I started playing cricket back at school, the only slot left open on the team was for the wicket keeper. I could either be the ‘keeper or not play. I decided to be the ‘keeper.”
“And good at it,” I said. I remembered how yesterday she’d taken spectacular diving catches worthy of Adam Gilchrist or Mark Boucher. Out of the corner of my eye I see Claire glaring at me impatiently, waiting for another round of humiliation. “I’ve got to go. Duty calls.”
“I noticed.” She hesitates a moment. “Dongmei?”
“Yeah?”
“Can we meet again this evening? I’m a bit lonely.”
This dazzling girl, lonely? I can’t believe it. I swallow.
“Yes, of course,” I say, and the voice that emerges from my throat doesn’t sound like my own.
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“See,” Karizma says, putting her beer mug down on the table with what might be a mite excessive force, “I don’t make friends easily.”
“You don’t?” I shake my head, confused. “But you didn’t have any problem approaching me last night, so…”
She goes on as though I’ve not spoken. “You don’t make friends easily either, don’t you?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Fuckin’ aye it is.” If she notices me wincing at the swear word, she doesn’t let on. “I noticed that last night right off, Dongmei. We’re the same kind. That’s why I came over to you, because I saw the signs.”
“Now that you put it that way…” I nod. “Are we friends?”
She sits back and regards me with a tinge of wariness in her eyes. “Do you not want us to be?”
“Hell, yes! Of course I want to be friends!” An unbidden flash of my schooldays appears to me; the odd girl whom nobody really wanted to be with, the last one to be picked to partner on projects, the one who by being good on the cricket field only made it worse for those who were nowhere near as proficient. “I just…” My mind drifts away, a raft on a sea of memories.
“Dongmei?” Karizma waves her hand in front of my face. “Are you still here with me?”
“Uh…” I nod. “Yep. I was just thinking that I never really had any friends.”
“What, none at all?”
“None at school, at least none that took. None outside school either. Not even in my family. My sister and I aren’t close.”
“I don’t have a sister,” she replies quietly. “Nor a brother either. I wonder what it would be like if I had any.”
“Not particularly nice if they’re Miss Perfection like Biyu.”
“That’s your sister?”
I nod glumly. “I’m not saying she’s bad. She’s quite nice to me, really, most of the time at least. It’s just that she can’t do any wrong in my parents’ eyes, you know? When she was in school she couldn’t fail an exam if she tried, she doesn’t ‘waste time’ playing games, she’s already helping manage the restaurant and I don’t even want to cook or waitress there, she…” I shake my head. “When I was growing up I kept wishing I was an only child. That’s horrible of me, I know.”
Karizma leans back, amused. “You didn’t take a pair of scissors and stab her in her sleep, I take it? There you are, now that just might have been horrible. Perhaps. Maybe. Depending on the situation.”
There are things I can’t tell her, of course, so her joke doesn’t cheer me up. I draw a deep breath, proud of how calm I’m managing to keep my voice. “Anyway. So I don’t have friends and was a bit, uh, taken aback when you all but said that we are friends.”
She doesn’t say anything for nearly a full minute, and then leans across the table and takes my hand between hers. “Dongmei Zhang.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Hmmm?”
“I promise to be your friend, if you’ll have me as one.”
I swallow the lump that forms in my throat, and try to keep my voice light and carefree. “Absolutely,” I say. “You can be my friend for as long as you want to be.”
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The next day we aren’t playing, and the team’s supposed to go on a trip somewhere, a team building exercise, but I beg off, and nobody tries to persuade me. Instead, since Karizma’s playing, I go back to the stadium.
“Hey, you.” She grins and waves as soon as she sees me climbing the steps to the pavilion. “Come to cheer the other gang on?”
“Of course. I hope they wipe the pitch with you.” Unthinkingly, without knowing that I was going to do it before I did it, I give her a hug, and immediately try to break away, thinking it’s too much. Instead, she wraps her arms around me and pulls me close.
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