Page #4 of “OUT OF IT” a novel by Michael O’Leary

stays away and we can all enjoy this tremendous, spectacular day’s cricket. In a moment I’ll run through each of the teams but at this very minute I can see Te Rauparaha toss the coin that will decide who will come into bat … Oh dear! There seems to be some sort of controversy brewing out there even before a ball has been bowled. Te Rauparaha looks very angry and he has quite a reputation for what he might do when his feathers are ruffled. I seem to recall that one time he was so furious that he went to Akaroa I think it was …. Anyway somewhere in the South Island and …”
“If I may interrupt Dennis, they seem to have taken a bat out into the middle. It looks like … Oh! How amusing, they are going to decide the toss by throwing the bat in the air and seeing whether it lands on the flat or the back of the bat.”
“I haven’t seen that done since we played at school some thirty or forty years ago. I can’t even guess what that was about, can you John?”
“Not for the life of me! Oh well, no doubt we’ll find out in due course. Now if I may, I’ll just run through the two teams and perhaps we could make a few comments on selection and some of the player’s recent form …”
“Hello, Kia ora, did you hear the one about the fella who ran a fast letter delivery service using a dog. His firm was called Kuria – heh heh.”
“Oh, hello. I’d like to welcome to the commentary box one of our guest commentators, Billy T. Ubufella. And I believe you can enlighten us on the goings on out on the pitch, Billy.”
“Yeah and gidday Dennis, John and everyone. I just been talking to John Wright and he is the man who will vice captain the New Zealand team. He said that all the huhah was about Te Rauparaha taking exception to calling a Maori head a tail and they used one of those ten cents and Jeremy Coney baby called tails. He won, but Te Rauparaha said that’s not a tail, it’s a Maori head. Anyway, he got angry looking like he might eat someone, and so the umpire says we’ll do it like when we was boys, eh boys and that’s it.”

Patrick Malone laughed openly at Billy T’s story but everyone else around him looked either concerned or confused at what was going on out in the middle. Jeremy Coney had also won the second toss and as it was announced over the speaker system that the Out of