Page #13 & 14 of “OUT OF IT” a novel by Michael O’Leary

watching the clouds swirling dark and light and quickly across the sombre West of Auckland sky, he knew that his ten year investment in the illusion of the Protestant work ethic was a complete and utter failure.
“I came into this world with nothing but original sin and it is only God’s love and forgiveness which can absolve me, not good thoughts or words or deeds. I am a sinner, always have been and always will be – it is the darkness within which is my true self…”
Suddenly a roar went up from the crowd and someone pushed Malone violently to his left and a cricket ball came thudding out of the sky and landed where he had been sitting.
Malone, who had not seen the ball nearly land on his contemplating skull, was ready for a fight. Like a cobra’s head his fist was ready to strike the stranger who had just saved his life. The P.S.M. looked at his supposed adversary and saw a large, smiling Maori man looking down at his crumpled Irish self.
“Soon take the grin off his face!” The misguided Malone said to himself and it was only the intervention of the modern, almost broken transistor radio whose voice permeated the dim, primordial Celtic mind, which stopped what could have become the beginning of a racial conflict throughout the long white cloud – yes folks, it could have been the cloud wars all over again! But thanks to the Irish-Maori view of time, disaster was avoided –a disaster which would have been perpetrated by the Irish-Maori view of a good scrap!
As the cobra was about to strike, the sound waves of radio messages reached the Malone’s receiving apparatas with the following words of the English language,

“What a magnificent hit right into the grandstand making that the fifth six off five balls!”
“A stupendous shot indeed from the Out of It captain and…”
The Malone’s mind changed the direction and appearance of his cobra so that the snake-like venom of the clenched fist whilst in full flight, moving swiftly towards its target, became an out-stretched hand of friendship and gratitude. Had Anglo-Saxon clockwork time been used the punch would have landed because the mechanism for change is not an inherent component of the technological age.
The Malone breathed a sigh of relief as he introduced himself to Rewi, who had suspected nothing but what happened.

“..and the excitement is intense as Te Rauparaha attempts to join and indeed make a world team of those who have hit six sixes off one over in first class cricket. The existing duo of Garfield Sobers and Ravi Shastri may soon be part of a trio. Perhaps they’ll form a combo and do a world tour, who knows!”
“Of course Dennis, the remarkable thing is that this is off the bowling of Richard Hadlee, one of the…”
“Indeed John, and here he comes now, he tries to dig it in short but it doesn’t get up and Oh! He’s done it! Te Rauparaha has hit the ball right out of the ground and I’d say that that ball was trying to catch the next train up to Kingsland Station, Dennis! What a shot!”
“Hadlee can’t believe it. What a game this is! To have a maiden over bowled by Chatfield followed by this, is extraordinary. Well, this Out of It Eleven are certainly winning over even their most ardent antagonists amongst this Eden Park crowd. Young Ken Rutherford will be saying “So that’s how it’s done? To himself no doubt.”

The Malone went back from listening to thinking. “That was a close thing – it’s all this thinking that’s no good – it’s unhealthy I think. There I was with thoughts about the Nazi, Irish, Holy Roman Train, about the wife and about sin and guilt all going on and I missed a whole over by Chatfield and five sixths of an over by Hadlee – I even missed my own life being saved and here I am thinking about all my thinking – “
“Well, I gotta go bro! I gotta meet my mate Golly! Said Rewi.
“Thank you again Rewi, I don’t know what to say – how do you say anything to someone who saved – did you say Golly?”
“Yeah – he’s my bro, we came to the game to see the Chief e! – you know him?”
“I think so maybe, has he got big fuzzy afro hair – Oh, I know he had a sister called Hine.”
“Yeah, that’s him e! How you know Goll?”
“I guess we’re related – but I knew him years before I married Maureen O’Shea. Maureen is a relative of Hine’s husband, Paul.”