That summer I joined the ranks of cricket legends

Cricket was all Simon Wraight and his friends could talk about as he expected to receive a bat for his birthday as a child.
Photo: Delivered / Simon Wraight

Even though I can't remember the exact summer, I can still remember the feeling.

It was mid-December and that meant three things. My birthday, Christmas and especially cricket.

On the morning of my seventh or eighth birthday, the anticipation was killing me. I heard footsteps outside my room and my father's head peeked around the corner, his smile wide.

He wished me a happy birthday and handed me a package in the shape of a cricket bat.

I eagerly tore off the wrapping paper and discovered an English Willow cricket bat, a GM Maestro Extra. I had skipped a level and surpassed my friends with their Kashmir Willow Mark Waugh Slazenger V100 bats.

It had been painful to get to this point. I had spent hours poring over cricket catalogs, analyzing my favorite players and the bats they used. Did I want a Kookaburra, used by attacking players like Nathan Astle and Adam Gilchrist? Or did I want a GM, used by the elegant Stephen Fleming?

It was the only thing I could talk about with my friends. We sat down before school and at lunch and compared the profiles of the players and the bats they used. Parsing the names, Ridgeback, Golden Crown, Maestro, Diamond.

At some point leading up to my birthday, a friend returned from a trip to Nelson with lines all over his arms. He had gone to the sporting goods store with a pen and measured the center of the bats, or the “flesh” as we used to call it.

His arms were a jumble of lines and names, the bats of our idols measured against the skin. We quickly grabbed our battered catalogs and compared the photos to the hard evidence before us.

The decision in the run-up consumed me. But when I tore open the paper that morning and received my bat, I was satisfied. It was a thing of absolute beauty. Like a straight drive from Stephen Fleming.

Although I was a small and stocky right-handed hitter, in my mind I was a tall, elegant left-hander with the Maestro in my hand.

Simon Wraight has fond memories of the Maestro that he took with him everywhere during the few summers he lived.
Photo: Delivered / Simon Wraight

The week between my birthday and Christmas was taken up with 'stocking up' my bat. Hours and hours of banging, getting ready for play and driving my family crazy.

As soon as my father deemed it ready, we went to Memorial Park to get the nets.

That summer took up several summers in Motueka. On Saturday morning we played cricket at Motueka High School, then went to someone's house for lunch before going to Memorial Park to play in the nets and watch the Motueka senior team play.

We would sit and chat with the players when Motueka was batting, or create our own games in the nets, pretending to be our idols.

The Maestro came with me everywhere those few summers. My favorite weekends were when we had rep cricket against Nelson or Marlborough on Sunday, as well as the Saturday games. However, during one of these games, the Maestro came to an end.

I had lent the bat to a teammate who was a promising left-handed batsman and a very handy left-arm seam bowler. He was an athlete with skills second to none at school, and we all knew he was going somewhere (he ended up playing 300 games for the Warriors in the NRL).

He leaned in to play a drive and the Maestro's lower half split in two. It was shocking, but I don't remember being sad. All my idols on TV had broken their bats at some point, so it felt like a badge of honor. And while the Maestro had made his final attempt, my love for the game remained.

Part three of RNZ's summer essay series.

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