Nambucca Boy

And all of those thousand thoughts
That could be in the back of your mind
Looking at the dressing room door
Am I good enough to don these whites?
It’s the SCG
But the nerves are bilingual
Often settled by a single
Just hit the damn ball
Yeah the game is that simple
Jitter the fear of a cheap dismissal
On the walls hung the accolades
The names that have been engraved
The Bradmans, the Benauds, the giants of the game
That rose up like a fig tree out of Saturdays
The kid was seeing them like basketballs
The summer that he had been recalled
Feet moving and a better balance on the shorter ball
Scoring freely and barely getting caught at all
He was brought up Nambucca River way
Town of Macksville young kid begins to play
The way he wields the willow outside off
No matter what was throw at him well it would bounce right off
Runs came in fifties and tons
Ever since he was young
Save your legs, Phil, it’s four more runs
Baggy cap was not a match for the Australian sun
Next to noses got burnt but the emblem on the front
And the write up in the local paper
But this time not in the back of the sports pages
A local lad had cracked the Shield side
A couple of years after the Ashes of ‘05
Raised his bat that much that he got his baggy green
Flying across the Indian Ocean with the Australian team
Number 1 ranked opposition, Dale Steyn at the peak of his powers
Debuting against him in a nerve wracking hour
He failed at first, caught by the keeper
But it was the second innings of the match that he featured
Second Test of the series a century in both innings
The youngest to do it at twenty, no longer a secret
And it had all gone to plan but his destiny was
Never that simple cause simple is rare
A temporary member in and out of the Test
But soon enough a permanent threat, but there
They’re in the middle that November night
Let the groundsman turn on the lights
The radio reports saying that the batsmen died
So let the groundsman turn on the lights
And all of these thousand thoughts
That would be in the back of their minds
There walking out the dressing room door
Solemnly and side by side
So let the groundsman turn on the lights
Grown men crying at traffic lights
And every day there were bats outside
So let the groundsman turn on the lights