Page #25 & 26 of “OUT OF IT” a novel by Michael O’Leary

“Yes, Dennis, I was talking to Glen Turner just after the New Zealand team had been announced and what you say is quite true.
There is, of course, a lot of similarities between these two players on the field. Goering is a big hitter of the ball and both men are useful, second strike bowlers. The Luftwaffe chief, like Lance, likes to flight the ball and they both excel at the in-swinger and out-swinger which should be facilitated by the cloud cover today.”
“Curiously enough, also John, the two men are not unlike each other to look at, so it should be an interesting contest just between these two, let alone the two teams, although I think the Reich Air Marshall has the edge over Cairns when it comes to black-market art theft, but that of course, does not concern us as we watch Cairns bowl to Te Rauparaha who goes to come forward and them at the last minute moves back pulling his bat away from the line of the ball which ends up safely and uneventfully in the gloves of keeper Smith.”
“Dennis, I know you’re sceptical about my oft quoted and maligned “mania” for statistics, but if I may, I shall inform our listeners that Te Rauparaha has been at the wicket for a total of eleven and a half overs and had scored fifty nine runs….”
“Very illuminating, but Cairns is ….”
“I’ll just finish if I may Dennis. In the first six of those he scored fifty eight and in the last five and a half only one run. He does seem completely unable to play either Cairns, who gets such lovely variation of delivery, and the spin of Bracewell who ….”

A huge roar from the crowd drowns out the announcer’s sentence.

“John, how many times have I told you not to talk so loud. The big Maori chief has just answered your “Statistics” by hitting a cracking shot down to the third man boundary.”
“Makes Harry Lime look like a boy scout! And he made me look like I’m still in nappies. What a fine shot that was as the Out of It score moves on to 118 for three with two balls remaining in the fourteenth over.”
A terrible example of a human bean I am. It was the Malone thinking to itself again. The memory thought of the melancholy of the once lying on his own bed alone and on the radio is City of New Orleans, a famous, sad song about the disappearing rail road blues.

This is what heaven must be like, the Great Mind had thought and the Great Guilt had rebuked and the Great Hand crossed himself with the famous “mea culpa” – some things are never forgotten even though they were never learnt in the first place – such was the place of the Latin in the life of the P.S.M. for it had permeated the distorted Irish cerebral cortex at an earlier age and even though he had never been an Altar Boy, a fact he resented and held as a dark sin in his human heart, he never forgot the ancient archaic language and when he finally left off going to the Holy Roman it coincided with the Mass of English – Sure why did ya leave the Mothar Church Patrick Sean Michael – he would reply “Who wants to belong to a religion you can understand” – and the petitioner would stare in wonderment.
“Now here I sit in cold, wind-swept isolation watching the great game and I’m feeling like it’s the end. Since I was the young child I have never done what I wanted. The others have told me what was right and wrong and I just said yes. Ma, Da, Holy Church, Wife, Holy Taxman all say do this and it is done – “Say but the Word!” – and here I am doing it at last and it ends in the isolation of the self from the holy human family.”

“Just a small point Dennis, but I have just checked up with Mr Vulu who was here before with Billy, on the greeting he used when he came on air. I thought he was saying something about Maloney who plays for Wellington but I didn’t like to take it up at the time. However, Billy T. has informed me that Sef greeted us in his native Tokelau tongue with the word “Maloni” which is similar to Kia Ora, or Talofa or just “hello”.
“Well, John with all this talk about the Maori being the lost tribe of Bryan Boru it doesn’t really surprise one that there should be other connections between the Irish and Polynesians in general. And of course, if you look at the Irish in London and other British cities, then they’re occupying a similar position as the Pacific Islanders who live in Auckland and other New Zealand cities. And of course Ireland was Britain’s first colony and remains her last. So that …. Oh! It looks like Oscar Wilde has been bowled out, but there seems to be some doubt!”
“I think I see what happened, and that is it seemed that the umpire called a no ball but the bowler didn’t hear the call and thought he had bowled Wilde.”