The boys filtered from the park. Daniel, flicking his dark hair out of his eyes, collected his personal kit bag and dragged it by the wheels, joining Mr Stoyle for a confidential walk towards the teacher’s car. Daniel only lived a few blocks away, but as captain he was often chatting with Mr Stoyle about selections, tactics and higher-order issues such as Daniel’s pathway. Ben envied this intimacy, but it was a captain’s privilege; a man’s privilege: Daniel, his muscles and his beard were on the enviably far side of a post-pubertal transition that loomed before Ben like a high wall.

Ben picked up his gear: a second-hand kit, too-small gloves and box, borrowed pads and helmet, and no bat—how could you be a cricketer with no bat! He was still such a kid. There was no way he could ask Dad to buy him one. He slung the kit over his shoulder, with his school bag in the crook of his elbow, and made for the gate.

‘Eh, check this out.’

If Ben was the regular twelfth man, Zane Dwyer was number eleven in the pecking order. Ben was the talentless cricket tragic, clinging to this team with invincible enthusiasm, while Zane was in cricket as a more or less permanent detention. With his history of delinquency and crime, coming from a well-known family of ‘unfortunates’, Zane’s participation in cricket was Roman Catholic educational charity in action. The teachers, unable to cane him as they had been educated to do, subjected him to a virtual house arrest of compulsory extracurricular activities to stop him consorting with fellow criminals. Assuming there were no criminals in the cricket team.

Whereas Ben was forever hoping to get a turn, Zane was usually avoiding it. But cricket did offer certain opportunities to Zane, such as the one he was sharing with Ben now.

‘Oh no, that’s Jai’s!’

Ben was staring dry-mouthed at the youth-size Gray-Nicolls bat Zane was sliding out of his unbranded nylon carry bag.

‘Joel’s,’ Zane corrected him, eyes flickering.

‘Same diff. You nicked it?’

‘Joel hardly uses it, he’s always borrowing Daniel’s Spartan,’ Zane said, putting on a Daniel voice, which he made interestingly effeminate. Zane was on his knees, rummaging in his bag. Ben felt drawn into some dark enterprise.

‘They’ll kill you.’

‘They won’t even catch me,’ Zane’s voice said from the depths of his bag. He came out with a grin, a handful of Puma stickers and a Stanley knife. Sitting cross-legged with the bat across his knees, he began digging at the edges of the Gray-Nicolls stickers.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Ever heard of rebirthing?’ Zane said. ‘New Puma bat, all yours for eighty bucks.’

Zane’s hatred for the ‘ruling class’, as he called the more popular boys, was so ferocious that he would take any risk to spite them. This included promising Ben he would ‘fix your little problem’ of never getting a bat. Ben had only thought Zane would punch someone, not steal Joel’s Gray-Nic.