Almanac (Cricket) Humour: Viv on Bellerive’s gulls

 

Viv Tufnell by Michael Weldon

 

 

(Viv Tufnell is a Tasmanian Shield cricketer in an alternate universe. He lies, makes excuses and plods at a 28.3 strike rate, while all the while busying himself in the art of being an a@#*hole.)

 

You know, if there’s one species I hope climate change takes to the brink, it’s seagulls. Especially the kind that loiter around Bellerive.

 

I’ve struck three gulls in all my years at the crease, and on all three occasions, I’ve wanted to ring their necks … (that is, the bits of their vertebrae which were left unfractured.)

 

My first strike was in my second game in shield cricket. I’d just come to the crease and was struggling against W.A quick, Mick Hunt. Mick was all over me with the second new ball and I was desperate to get off strike. For three punishing overs, Mick had me ducking and weaving, playing and missing and marooned on naught. Somehow, on the first ball of his next over, I managed to glove it between seventh slip and the two gullies, and just as I called an emphatic “YES!”, I watched in horror as the kookaburra slammed beak first into one of its feathered brethren. My partner – whoever the f@#* it was, I can’t remember – then spurned my call with a hysterical “NO!!!”, adding, “Gull strike, gull strike! – the ball’s ricocheted to a fielder!” I hastily retreated back to my end – the end that was the cauldron facing Mick, of course! – and the next ball … correction … the next missile, my middle stump cart-wheeled 14 times before splitting…

 

Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly feeling at one with nature when the gull soon after shook off its grogginess and happily flew away.

 

The next time I hit a gull it cost me a ton. Can you believe it? An effing ton!

 

I was on 97 facing Victorian t*rd, Brad Holt, and creaming his military medium pies all round Bellerive. I glanced a ball to third man, knowing there wasn’t a third man, and just as it was about to trickle over the rope, one of these varmint’s landed slap bang in its way. The boundary that would have taken me to a hundred was reduced to hastily scrambled 2 and the next ball I nicked one down leg side to Brad’s merriment.

 

That gull lived too, and when I later saw a doting Brad feed it a whole bucket of chips in the tea break, I wanted to pluck it and turn it into quills.

 

But as frustrating as these strikes were, they don’t come near my most recent strike.

 

I was facing Queensland’s Pete Roach and he’d been at me all arvo about how I’d gone six seasons without hitting a six. “That’s weak as sh*t, Viv,” he kept sledging. “Six seasons, eh? That’s gotta be some kind of record for drabness.”

 

Anyway, I’d had enough of his sniping so I galvanized to take the long handle. He then served up a rank half tracker and pow … I creamed it to square leg. I tell ya, it was a thing of beauty watching this thing missile towards a spot 40 rows back in the stand, and just as it was about to make its aerial passing over the rope, kapow, it collided with a dozily ascending ‘you know what.’ The ball trampolined 10 feet higher off the gull’s back and this gave deep square leg enough time to position for a catch … which he completed … with one hand! … and not for the sake of satisfying backyard rules types for ricocheting balls … just because he got himself into a tangle.

 

I then got into a big argument with the umps over the catch being legit, protesting “Effing gull this and effing gull that”, and though I managed to talk them round, I soon came to realize that cursing a dead gull in front of what I later found out was an amateur ornithologist, is not a good idea, seeing that Bob Sanders gave me out three balls later to the dodgiest LB I’ve suffered.

 

Anyway, that’s been my experience with gulls, and as for the one I inadvertently killed … well, I heard Pete took it to a taxidermist and had it mounted in his pool room. Jesus, the sh*t people pass off as memorabilia.

 

 

More from Punxsutawney Pete can be read Here.

 

 

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