Down the Wicket: Part 1

By BOB CALLETT, Illustrations DAVID KEARNEY

There's nothing like the beginning of the cricket season for dreams. You can do anything, be anything Ð score the fastest hundred, take a hat trick in your first over, win the League. A golden summer lies before you.

I was standing in the middle of the square at the Eastgate Priory cricket pitch, looking at the wicket and dreaming.

It was Glory Gardens' first pre-season net practice and I'd arrived early. No one else was around and I began to think about our first League game against Croyland Crusaders, which was less than two weeks away.

Even I had to admit that we would struggle to improve on last year's amazing results.

Glory Gardens had won everything in sight: the under 13s League; the national Champions League against the best teams in the country, and to round things off nicely we'd just returned from a triumphant tour of Barbados.

A year ago no one had heard of Glory Gardens C. C.; now we are one of the most famous junior cricket teams in the land.

Everyone is looking forward to the new season and, after the West Indies tour, we are all match fit, apart from Frankie, who thinks a training diet is seeing how many burgers he can eat between meals.

Publisher: Random House, $14.95
Age group: 8-12 years