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Pocket battleship

Last night I dreamed that Peter Roebuck, my cricket coach in 1981, had written an extremely long article about me, full of color pictures. Weirdly though, he had spelled my name “Terry Jun”, and so there were all these people trying to find out who the hell Terry Jun was.

What does this mean?

Roebuck had captained the Somerset county side, opened the batting, and was rumored (at least among our bunch of 17 year olds on the other side of the planet) to be under consideration for the England XI. He played with Viv Richards and Ian Botham and was full of stories.

Later I played with him in a local side. Other teams were always thrilled and despairing to hear that we had a borderline international batsman in our line up. In one case, this time not a dream, we played a side containing the then-famous Australian playwright Alex Buzo. As it turned out, Buzo was mad keen on cricket and had been long looking forward to the day when he might bowl to the famous Peter Roebuck. In the meantime, I had been looking forward to the day when I might bat against Alex Buzo, and was determined to hit him out of the park.

I prevailed, hitting him for consecutive sixes (yes, of course I tried for 3 in a row) and finishing the game – before Roebuck had a chance to bat! I was delighted, in fact am still delighted, that Buzo later wrote an article in a widely-read cricket magazine describing the time he almost bowled to the great Peter Roebuck. But, he wrote, the other team had sent in a “pocket battleship” who had given no quarter and denied him his chance.

Now I read with sadness that Alex Buzo is dead, and I wish things had been a little bit different. Maybe just one six, then a quick single, and then he could have bowled Roebuck for a golden duck.


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