Ultimate Backyard Cricket

I was at home on Saturday afternoon, happily roasting a couple of bits of pork on the spit, waiting for the time when we’d be leaving to take Sam to the movies with friends to celebrate his birthday when the phone rang. It was a friend of Sam’s Mum.

“Toby would like to know if Sam would like to come over to our place tomorrow night and play some backyard cricket with Ricky Ponting.”

For the foreigners (particularly those from that North American continent) that read this, that’s probably the equivalent of the national hockey team captain.

Sam had a bit of a funny grin on his face when he was asked. It was nothing compared to the silly grin that I had on my face as I was doing the asking. For a moment I actually thought that he was going to say that he wasn’t really that interested, but I think he could tell that it was unlikely that I was going to let him get away with no as an answer.

There’s probably a bit of an explanation required at this point, because when the call came through, I knew that it was genuine. So the more likely and response that would have come out at another time, Like, “Ha Ha very funny,” or something less polite didn’t even cross my mind.

Sam’s friend Toby is in remission and has been a recipient of help through the Ricky Ponting Foundation, run by Ricky and Rianna. A couple of years ago, when we’d just returned from Canada and after Sam had made friends with Toby, he’d had his picture in the Advertise with Ricky at the Adelaide oval ahead of the test match. So when Ricky is in town, he catches up with Toby.

On Australia Day the Ponting Foundation is organising The Biggest Game of Cricket to raise money for young Australians with cancer and their families so the opportunity was taken as part of the launch to have a game in the backyard with Tony and some of his friends – one of whom was Sam.

Needless to say, Mum and Dad both dropped him off and took the chance to have a bit of a gawk and meet the former Australian Cricket Captain. It was a great opportunity and I think that we’ll have to look at hosting our own game of cricket on Australia Day, especially since oval renovations have seen Adelaide robbed of cricket on possibly our most traditional day of cricket.

We managed to get Thomas’ bat signed as well as his cousin’s (on his birthday even, which was lucky since we skipped out of his celebration for a couple of hours to do so) and had a great time watching the kids get the chance to play cricket with one of their idols. It was very generous and an exposure to another side of Ricky to that which we usually get to see via the media.

And as we all pointed cameras at him whilst he played with the kids and sat and ate and posed for photos, it was also an eye opener into what it must be like to live a celebrity life-style! Far from private.