Maiden century for Tingling Catch

Today is Tingling Catch’s 100th post since October 2010. To celebrate I found a photo of myself raising my bat. The photo was originally taken for my 50 in publishing in 2008 (50 books published by my publishing company HeadworX at Winter Readings 2008, an event at City Gallery, Wellington). Nevertheless, it will do to raise the bat again here. My bat in the photo, a GM Cannon, is the one that I used for club cricket. I’ve always liked GM bats. Stephen Fleming, a favourite player at the time, used GM bats when playing for New Zealand.

I also had a dig into my poetry files and unearthed a cricket poem from 1982 by the late New Zealand poet and song-writer Jim Tocker about a club cricketer reaching a century against ‘mighty St Albans’. Tocker, a club cricketer, composed nearly 50 cricket songs for the former Old Collegians’ Cricket Club in Christchurch between the 1970s and 80s. They were collected in his sole publication, Songs of a Cricketer, which ran into several editions and was privately distributed to members of the club and interested friends and family.

JIM TOCKER

A Hundred Today

I’m as pleased as Muldoon in November,

I’m as happy as kids in the hay.

No more a duck-scoring man with no luck,

I have made us a hundred today.

We were matched against mighty St Albans –

Bowling from their team is seldom astray.

Though I was dropped when a ball really popped

I have a still made a hundred today.

In their first little burst

They were doing their worst

With their big bowling guns.

Then we found we could pound

All their bowlers around

And we piled on the runs.

When I finally got to three figures

I knew I’d always be able to say:

“You really strive and you’ll score just as I’ve

Made a hundred, a hundred, a hundred, a hundred

   a hundred this wonderful day!”

© Jim Tocker, 1999

(From Songs of a Cricketer by Jim Tocker, self-published, 1999 edition)

(Note: Muldoon is Rob Muldoon, then Prime Minister of New Zealand. Tocker also states humorously that the poem/song is to the tune of ‘I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy’.)