An emotional, bowel-churning day

I’m friends with Eddie Cowan. This seems like a ridiculous thing to actually read, now I’ve written it, but I think I am. We haven’t exchanged bodily fluids, or said out loud we are friends, but I think at our age semi-frequent exchanges where we happily abuse each other are what constitute a friendship. I know we own each other’s books, and since I never buy cricket books, that’s a big thing for me. We’re not besties, I don’t know whether he was 7 or 8 when he first got his beard, and he has no idea what I swear word I used on Triple J, but we know each other in a non-biblical way.

That meant Boxing Day, and the lead up, was different for me. I’ve had friends who were cricketers before; it’s an occupational hazard. Some of them have even played Test cricket while I’ve known them. But this was more than that. This was my home Test, my favourite place in the world, and my friend was about to walk out and face the new ball. I can’t explain why it did weird things to me more than that, but it did.

Eddie handled the whole trip to Narnia (as he calls it) very well. When I frequently (probably too frequently) asked how he was doing, he said he was relaxed, and did, at the very least, a passable impression of this. He had the air of a man who was thinking about something else, but not fixating on it in a bad way. Like a nerd waiting for a new Star Wars film.

In my head I knew that with any luck, he would get a start in his first innings. Because regardless of our friendship, as a cricket writer I trust he knows his game, is in the form of his life, has overcome this opposition recently in a tour game and couldn’t be picked at a more perfect time in his career.

As a friend, apparently all that meant little.

I am reliably told that when he faced the first ball I looked like I was going to vomit. Which is weird, because I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and was actually vomiting from both ends at once. From then, until he scored his first run, I felt short of breath. When he scored all I could do was take a short breath, and tweet something swear-y and incomprehensible.

At the start of the day all I wanted was him not to go out first ball. Then it was him scoring at all. Making it to drinks. Outlasting Warner. Surviving till lunch. Getting 30. Then 38.

I thought after he reached each target it would get more bearable, that I wouldn’t ride each moment, that every leading edge, close leave, or play and miss wouldn’t make my whole body twitch in a uncontrollable way, but it didn’t. It didn’t matter what milestones he got to, I couldn’t handle looking at him, and if I couldn’t see a ball, I panicked.

Through all this, Eddie looked calm. I mean, Eddie was calm. Chloe Saltau tweeted “Cowan looks so relaxed he might nod off at the non-striker's end”. I saw her tweet, and saw him. But even though she was clearly right, and he was slightly nodding off, I couldn’t relax.

When Eddie was in his 40s, I had to leave my desk and film an interview with Virginia Lette, Eddie’s wife. When I saw Virginia, it was clear that she was also far calmer than me. These Cowettes (her term, not mine, I liked Veddie as a moniker though) are clearly built for the stress of international sport far more than I am. Virginia was so calm that while Eddie probed and pushed behind her, she was deep into interview mode talking about Eddie giving her a muffin he cooked after their first date.

I, on the other hand was a nervous wreck, and found it hard to focus on a single word she said.

She only paused the interview when Eddie was within a single of his 50, probably knowing him well enough that a firm struck boundary was unlikely on 47, and a gentle single on 49 was odds on.

When that single came, and right now I couldn’t tell you much more about it other than it was a single, I think Virginia calmly clapped. I’m not sure because I was lost in my own moment, which included shouting, standing, cheering and clapping, in that way that drunks do, even though I was sober. I do know that when I finally sat down, and someone asked Virginia how she felt, she said she was ok, but that she may need to give me a hug. At this stage I was tearing up and trying unsuccessfully to look in any way shape or form like I was in control of my emotions.

Later on his wicket should have provided the sort of rage that makes me throw other journalists around the press box, but instead I was just disappointed. I didn’t even have the energy to complain about DRS. I just sort of sat quietly and sulked. I didn’t really care if he was abducted by aliens, or bowled by a heat-seeking Yorker, I just didn’t want him to go out.

At the press conference afterwards, the line to shake Eddie’s hand seemed as long as any I’ve seen from jaded journalists. Perhaps it’s not just me, it could be that everyone thinks they’re friends with Eddie Cowan. Maybe he’s the cricket writer’s cricketer. Or, we just love when fellow nerds do well. It’s even possible he’s a top bloke, I suppose.

In the future, my job and Eddie’s job will probably test our friendship, or even possibly end it. I’m bound to write something that he hates. The good news is, Eddie already thinks I’m too negative about him, so in his eyes, I probably can’t get any worse. Even if our friendship ends, I’ll always have today, that hugely emotional, bowel-churning and embarrassing day where Eddie was given out missing a loose cut shot he shouldn’t have been playing.