Quick single: An Australian Partnership – Fidget and Meringue Man

Fidget

I can well imagine going on holiday with Steven Smith. 

Passport, tickets, credit cards, currency.. Passport, tickets, credit cards, currency.. Passport, tickets, credit cards, currency..

Smith pats his trouser pocket, breast pocket, back-pack and bumbag, compulsively and repeatedly. Just checking. Just checking again. Checking again. Again.

Batting, between deliveries, Smith checks: helmet grill, right pad, left pad, box, helmet crown, bat twirl. Twice over. He’s a blur of manual reassurance. Fidget. 

Passport, tickets, credit cards, currency.. 

Taking strike, the bowler about to begin his run up, the batsman settles, steady and still, eyes level, energy conserved, ready to pounce. Not Fidget. He stands at the wicket. His bat wags towards gulley like the tail of a well-behaved dog, hearing his master return home at the end of the day. A dip at the knees, then another. A shuffle to the right, another dip. 

Passport, tickets, credit cards, currency.. 

Non-striker, Fidget rehearses front foot shots. Left foot forward, bat sweeps and his back foot drags, drifts or rotates. Without the ball, he practises his idiosyncratic technique, where most players emulate the text book. A solid base, the coach insists; au point, this twitchy ballerina practices. 

Passport, tickets, credit cards, currency.. 

Running. A forward defensive and Fidget is five yards down the track before bouncing back into his ground. When the ball is directed into open space, Fidget is away, looking for two, three, an all-run four at the very least. His body moves forward, at pace, his limbs scatter. He’s like a junior playing his first game in unfamiliar pads. The bat’s not tucked economically under his arm, but an extra limb, an unneeded crutch, as much in the way as helping him towards the other crease. 

Passport, tickets, credit cards, currency.. 

All this energy and motion, critical to a one-day run-chase, to setting and maintaining a momentum. But this is day one of a Test match. He bats from mid-morning to lunch. Passport, tickets, credit cards, currency.. All afternoon. Passport, tickets, credit cards, currency..  And through to the close of play. Passport, tickets, credit cards, currency.. 

Fidget’s at work, on tour. Batting hard on a pitch he might not take home, but would enjoy on holiday. Passport, tickets, credit cards, currency.. 

Meringue man

The ingredients of a meringue start loose and liquid. 

Rogers is off the mark quickly. A waft over the slips, then smooth punches through the off-side, easy tucks off his pads. Comfortably out-scoring his more heralded opening partner. 

As energy and activity are applied to the meringue mixture, it stiffens.

His fifty up and into the afternoon session, the sun is out and Rogers is trying to accelerate. Driving, the bat turns in his grip and the ball finds his instep, not the boundary. Cuts clatter into the ground beside him, not the sponsor’s boundary advertising. Meringue Man’s batting is becoming viscous. It’s sticky, slow work through the 60s and 70s, relying on the toe end and outside edge of his bat. 

The meringue has a hard, if fragile, surface.

It is the delicate cuts from the slow bowlers that keep Meringue Man’s score accumulating. Just brushing the face of his bat and skittering away to the third man boundary. Fine deflections, not full-on impact, move him into the 90s. 

Finally, a full connection with a straight drive takes Meringue Man to his 100. And now he’s transformed, shattering his crusty shell, middling the ball and speeding to 150.

A meringue crumbled and made fruity. An Australian Eton Mess?