I got a fever, and the only cure is, more sport.

In my bedroom there is a cricket score sheet, My name in red, with the stats saying 103*(62). For those not in the know, that’s 103 runs, not out, off only 62 balls faced. It’s the only century I scored in my cricket career, which started when I was 11, and finished when I was 35.

Pretty obviously I wasn’t that great at batting, but then again, the first time I was ever in cricket nets, I had my arm broken, and my batting suffered ever since. But it didn’t stop me from playing, because I love the game so much, so I kept giving it my best, and trying every single week to get as many runs as I could.

That particular game was a good one for me. I took four wickets with my bowling, got a run out, and even put the gloves on to get a stumping, before going out to bat. We were chasing 178 runs off 40 overs, but my batting partner and I went the tonk and got the runs in 20 overs.

I really wish that could happen again, a game where it all clicks together, but it simply can’t. You see a couple of years ago, I decided to try and play Australian Rules football, and I loved it. But during the third game, my left knee gave way, and as I crashed to the ground, I thought “Damn it, there goes the cricket season”.

After seeing the specialist though, the news was worse than just a cricket season. He let me know that was it, no more sport. The next step is to replace my knees, as they are both in condition now to get replaced, but I’m a bit too young to do that, so no more sport.

“How about if I just bat at cricket? No more bowling, no wicketkeeping, no bowling.”
“Well you can do that if you like…” [Yesssssss!!! I thought], “But I’ll be seeing you again within 12 months, and there won’t be much I can do.”

I left his rooms, surgery booked, and feeling very deflated. My career was over, no more sport. The one thing that had been a constant in my life since I was aged five, except for the times I was off because of knee reconstructions, had come to a premature end.

After the surgery, I did everything expected of me to rehabilitate the knee. To get it as good. It could be. I didn’t rush the recovery, I took my time to let it heal right. After all, maybe the surgery went better than expected, and there was still hope for me to get back out on the field.

At the check up post surgery, the doctor let me know what he had done. He had split a muscle to change where it attaches to my knee cap, in a hope of reducing the amount of wear and lateral sway my knee gets. But in terms of cartilage, there is nothing left, so it’s just bone rubbing on bone, and what bone is there had to have a lot scraped off, just to try and make it smooth. It wasn’t so much the damage that had been caused when I fell on the footy field, but the wear and tear that had happened over the twenty years since I last had the knee reconstructed. His diagnosis was the same, I’m retired.

Retired from sport maybe, but not retired from having a competitive nature.not retired from wanting to win, from doing what I can from being involved in a challenge…, blah! Who am I kidding, I’m done.

That feeling lasted for all of a week. Then the want to play sport came back. I started slowly. Try going up stairs two at a time, no, no good. It took a year, and then I could do two steps at once, but at the end of it, pain. This constant conflict between will and flesh just will not go away. Even though my body keeps telling my brain “Enough!”, my brain keeps reverting to what it has always done, “No such thing as pain, keep going.”

So now all I am left with is staring at the wall. Looking at those figures, and remembering when. Remembering the joy of winning premierships. The sorrow of losing grand finals because the game was rained out, and your team happened to have finished second on the ladder by 5 runs. The joy of scoring my first goal in hockey, after seven years of playing (I was a goalie), to my last season where I topped the goal scoring for the year with 14, despite having played half of the season as a goalie. The joy that playing hockey gave me when I got out of hospital while fighting Leukaemia. Sure I still had tubes hanging out of my chest, sure I was only on day release, sure I felt stuffed after doing it, but gee it made me feel alive, and if the cancer had beaten me after that, I would have died happy. The joy of having been the top scorer in one cricket grand final only to have to sit out the grand final the next year, after dislocating my knee in the semi final. The love of sport I have felt, and had the opportunity to try my hand at. You name it, I’ve probably given it a go. Everything from Footy to Trugo, I’ve given it a go, and loved it. I may not have been any good at some of the sports, but it always put a smile on my face.