Kenrick Tucker, tactics and the Malvern Star Kid

In 1982, my 5^th class Social Studies assignment was on the Brisbane Commonwealth Games. We had to choose an Australian team member, write a story about their sport and glue newspaper clippings into a project book. ‘Kenrick Tucker’, Dad said. ‘All the other kids will choose swimmers. You should learn about track cycling’. I didn’t like getting help with my homework but I didn’t know who Kenrick Tucker was, so Dad watched the races with me and answered my questions. Why are they riding so high? Why do they swing up and down? Why aren’t they going fast from the start?

‘A kilo sprint isn’t just about going fast, Kimberley,’ he said. ‘It’s a game of chess on wheels’.

I liked playing chess with Dad. I would watch his face as my fingers hovered above the board, and wait for his pantomime expressions. ‘It’s not about getting to my side of the board fastest. Think about the next move, and the one after that,’ he said. ‘That’s how you win. Tactics’. If ‘kilo’ sprinting was like chess, Kenrick had to see the next move, and the one after that. He might be the fastest, but he would be knocked out without ‘tactics’. He’ll ride on the bank, or swing up and down the track, and then he’ll go, Dad said. ‘He’s smarter and faster than those other bastards. Wait.’ Then Kenrick went, and Dad was saying go, go, get in there, yelling at Kenrick Tucker like he did at Kingston Town. I jumped up and down on the lounge when he won and Dad didn’t even notice.

I don’t remember what I got for my assignment, but I thought about what Dad said about tactics. I had a yellow bike with gold glittery handlebars, a glitter stripe on the seat and spokey dokes, but I was getting too tall for it. My Dad had a big bike, a Malvern Star. It looked like the one Kenrick Tucker used, and my gangly legs could touch the pedals if one was at the top, or they were both even, and I didn’t move when Dad helped me up on to the hard ‘saddle’. Big bikes didn’t have long seats like mine for doubling someone behind you. If Mum was at work and we were going to my grandparents’ house after school, my Pop would meet us on Collier Street near the bike racks and double my sister on the flat handlebars, my brother and me riding behind. I could have had a double off ‘Old Arch’ or sometimes with Dad, but I was too scared to sit on the handlebars and keep my legs away from the front wheel. I was always cranky at how fast Old Arch would go, because it meant my sister would get a glass of lemonade and a scone from Nan before me.

Dad always put his bike in the garage after he knocked off from work, and walked over to the club for a drink. When we came home from Nan and Pop’s, we were supposed to put on our play clothes before we raced all of the other kids to the edge of the gully above the creek. I couldn’t go as fast as the kids with BMX bikes, even my brother. That’s when I remembered what Dad said. I wasn’t the fastest, but I had a plan. I put a milk crate next to Dad’s bike, moved the right pedal until it was at the top and held onto the edge of the garage while I swung my leg over. I tapped at the pedal and rolled down the driveway.

I hit the unsealed road on the thin tyres and turned left, towards the creek instead of riding up to the start line at the top of the hill. As the pedals ticked over by themselves, the boys started yelling at me to brake. They were riding after me and I knew I had to push the pedals back to make the bike stop or I was going over the edge and all the way down the gully. I looked down for the left pedal to come up and pushed my foot down. That’s when I learnt big bikes didn’t work like mine. The back of the bike started to slide on the dirt road and down we went. While the boys rode down on their BMX bikes I lay in the dirt, my left ankle caught on the pedal, its teeth clamped into me like one of Pop’s rabbit traps. I cried as they pulled the bike and me out of our own private dust storm, ankle, knee and elbow bleeding, school uniform and a sandal strap torn. The boys wheeled the bike home while I hobbled, crying, snotty with a big, googy egg bruise starting to rise on my temple. Mum came down the drive and yelled at me to get inside.

That was when I wished I had headed straight down the gully.

Be victorious

Jai Ho!

(VICTORY TO YOU)

Aaja Jariwale Nile Aasman Ke Tale

(COME JOIN ME UNDER THE GLITTERING BLUE SKY)

Jai Ho, Lyrics: Gulzar / Composer A.R. Rahman

“It is pretty shocking seeing the empty seats. Wonder what ticket prices are?”

“1.2 billion people live in India and maybe 40 or 50 of them have turned up to watch the host nation play in a netball game”

“Maybe they should of held the commonwealth games in Perth, there were better crowds at unigames”

“#T1 : Grandma interested in #CWG status of the day, #T2 : Grandma asks when does the next Test Match Start?”

“#cwg 6 golds wow….but y we don’t get more then single gold in Olympics……i always wish,India should be on top of table in Olympics :)”

“That indians have a fascination for gold is not new.. that we can win it in sports and so many of them .. is ! #CWG”

I love India; it’s an incredible and infuriating country to spend time in – & it requires time. India is everything and nothing … you can eat, cross-legged on the floor with thousands of Sikh pilgrims at Amritsar’s Golden Temple; go to the Regal Cinema in Mumbai & throw popcorn at the bad guys in a Bollywood blockbuster; or take a package holiday in Goa, eating full English breakfasts & never setting foot outside Calangute.

It’s incredible: the languages, the food, the people, the diversity of landscapes, architecture, religions; and infuriating: the wild goose chases because nobody says ‘no’, or ‘i don’t know’, spending half a day to send a parcel, the obvious baksheesh deals to get you into the ‘right’ shop, the unbelievable gap between rich and poor. Most of all, it’s intense: the slums, the inevitable illnesses, the Taj at dawn, the ghats on the banks of the Ganges at Varanasi, Gandhiji’s memorial, the forts and palaces, the impeccable saris, the rituals, the sacred cows.

India is everything the world is – but in one country. Communal violence, corruption, coexistence, TV channels – all on a monumental scale that you don’t understand until you arrive. The crowds buying bhelpuri on a muggy night at Chowpatty Beach aren’t hundreds of people, they’re thousands; Dharavi slum is Asia’s largest, & yet there’s an emerging middle class of 200m plus and 565 million mobile phone connections (and better reception). In 2007, I arrived in Delhi after three months travelling from Kerala to the Pakistani border. From my autoricksaw in freezing December, I saw children sleeping outside construction sites; yet Forbes 2010 rich list names 69 Indians in the world’s top billionaires – two in the top five. It has one time zone – the infamous Indian Standard Time – which is an elastic concept in a geographically daunting country and the accepted price of doing business.

So with every tweet, comment, news update, whatever, that I come across about how badly the Commonwealth Games is going attendance-wise, I want to scream. India is a maddening place to get things done, but when you go with it and see its mighty past and awesome (in geopolitical and socio-economic terms) future, you just laugh. You laugh and you cry and you are moved by the smallest things and the biggest problems. Having seen construction standards, and experienced power failures across the country, the fact that the athletics track is on par with a school playground and the official broadcast centre is a shambles doesn’t surprise me. That people question a country’s pride or place because of a sketchy crowd at a netball game – that just saddens me. I’m obviously passionate about this, but I’m trying to rationalise it. Here goes:

1/. The BCCI (The Board of Control for Cricket in India) refused to reschedule the Australian test series. It is an utter conundrum that the most cricket mad nation I’ve visited can’t fill a 30,000-seat stadium in Mohali for a thrilling test match, but weigh it up – there are entire TV channels devoted to cricket, 24/7 – replaying matches endlessly. A new match = huge TV audiences, product placement and profits. It is no joke that everything moves a little slower when a cricket match is on. It is inescapable, but as a woman who can attempt to bowl overarm, I was all kinds of weird to kids wherever I went, whether it was in the laneways of Old Delhi or an orphanage in Mamallapuram; for my backyard cricket days I remain eternally grateful. The laughs I had with children I couldn’t otherwise communicate with – (unless I handed over my camera – self-portraits are a big hit) made my angst about the overwhelming poverty a little more bearable. I don’t think I have ever cried as hard as I did leaving that orphanage. I had my own Jolie moment, fantasising that I could somehow adopt a child when in reality, I can’t even keep tropical fish alive. Enough: suffice to say that the BCCI is as powerful as the IOC, FIFA and the European Union rolled into one and the Commonwealth Games didn’t stand a chance against it;

2/. Historically, India has never ‘performed’ at the Commonwealth Games (271 total medals won at 14 games attended out of 18) – or the Olympics – 20 Olympic Games medals total since 1920 (6 gold in men’s field hockey). Australians flip their wigs if we finish further down the medal tally than countries larger than us by infinity and beyond; yet the IOC’s head, Jacques Rogge, is there, encouraging an Indian bid for the Olympics. This is a trial run, they’ll get a whole heap of criticism and then get it right in 20 years time. $100 on it now;

3/. Not all countries care. Australian TV promos pitched the entire games as a grudge match between Australia and England. Stuff everyone else. Try listening to BBC World Service. Every time any other nation wins anything, they’re shouting from the rooftops. Last night, every hour, they played a quote from an Australian competitor (sorry, can’t remember name) who described the games as a bit like a training run for a better competition. It comes at the end of the far more lucrative Euro athletics season; the sun has well and truly set on the Empire, so it’s time to ask: is the whole thing an anachronism? Plenty of the Commonwealth’s best athletes are voting with their feet and saying I’m not bothering. Why should Indian spectators pay for the privilege of not seeing many of the best athletes in the world (barring, for example, Steve Hooker who is competing and to his absolute credit, has publicly stated that he doesn’t understand why others have withdrawn) – or even the best athletes in the Commonwealth. This article from the Bangalore Mirror gives a pretty comprehensive list of reigning champions not appearing (some who definitely wanted to go but had to withdraw because of injury); others, like Usain Bolt, who at least said straight up that it doesn’t suit his training schedule; but I’m going to call it as I see it: if it’s safe enough for the Australian cricket team to go, it is safe enough for Canadian badminton player Alvin Lau to get out of uni for 12 days to compete (seriously – I’ve never met a student who couldn’t wangle their way out of college)

http://www.bangaloremirror.com/article/71/20100929201009292319556674415277b/Pullouts-are-in-at-CWG.html

http://www.smh.com.au/commonwealth-games-2010/comm-games-news/reasons-change-but-result-the-same-as-more-drop-out-of-games-20100930-15z2p.html

4/. There are shedloads of Indians who can undoubtedly afford tickets and get time off. Public servants get approximately 20 days’ holiday a year – 3 secular, national holidays – the rest are (‘local’ holidays according to which state you live in, or religious observances). If you work in the private sector, say for a corporation, chances are you may get the same time – but what if you don’t? What if you’re the hundreds of millions of rural and urban poor? What if you work everyday selling ice from a cart to feed your family? Ticket prices for athletics events range from zero on the last day of competition – the marathon finals to Rs1,000 (AUD 23.22 today)http://www.tickets.cwgdelhi2010.org/cgibin/bv60.dll/cwg/home/schedule.do?sportsname=Athletics. The median salary in Delhi is Rs419,000 (AUD9,729 today): http://www.payscale.com/research/IN/Country=India/Salary/by_City The median salary in Sydney is $65,460. So each Rs1,000 seat would cost a Sydneysider on the median salary the equivalent of $163. Think about it, long and hard: would you fly to the Gold Coast, pay for accommodation and alcohol, put up with maddening security and see the best of who can be arsed turning up when you can watch it on tv for nothing?http://www.payscale.com/research/AU/Country=Australia/Salary/by_City

5/. Finally, who the hell are we to talk? ANZ Stadium is hardly ever ‘full’ … a couple of football games a year; it’s never carried the same numbers as it did during the Olympics because they got rid of the extra stands. If people are so incensed by crowd numbers at the netball in New Delhi, then TV ratings and attendance figures at Australia’s stellar women’s comp should double next year.

But most of all, why should any of this deter this inspiring, infuriating country, one of the world’s fastest developing economies, from sinking billions into sporting & other infrastructure? India is a member of the G20; the world’s largest democracy and second largest population. I really hope that Delhi makes similar reuse of facilities as Beijing did with its Olympics venues  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26393878/ns/beijing_olympics-beijing_olympics_news/ and the performances of the stars who will be made  by these games inspire and bring joy. A sincere “Jai Ho” to everyone who loves the Commonwealth Games. To all of the competitors, supporters, TV audiences around the world … “Victory to You”.