Bowling Them Over

Securing the farm gate behind him, he chops the Holden Rodeo down to first gear for the final kilometre of his journey home. It is a trip that saw him leave the same property earlier that morning, to catch the only one-day international cricket match to be played in Cairns that year: Australia vs Bangladesh.
    &nbspHe slows along the drive up to the farmhouse, wary of skitterish Brahmin-Droughtmaster cattle, easily startled by the headlights, like kangaroos or rabbits, in the same way those Bangladeshi batsmen were unseated by that fast bowler’s 135-km missiles.
    &nbspFor the last three hours – once he got out of the city’s 60-km speed zones and headed for his tinder-dry farm – he hasn’t been thinking so much about the demolition job on those hapless Bangladeshis.
    &nbspWhat impressed him most was that cricket ground, lush as Crème de Menthe, greener than the EXIT sign, grass groomed immaculately. Verdant. And very professional.
    &nbspAs he pulls into the garage, the silver trim of his runabout glistens. Tomorrow he will go fishing out in the channel for barramundi who dart as unpredictably as slow balls on a turning pitch or the flashy javelin fish who strike out like batsmen in the last over.
    &nbspThat night his dreams are of Droughtmaster cattle grazing on freshly prepared cricket grounds. His thoughts are inhabited too by dugongs, 400-kg cows of the sea, who graze the seagrass in broad swathes until bad light stops play.
     He wakes just after first light, thinking of putting bull-bars on his boat.