Article - Herald Sun - July 29th, 2006

Going into bat for Oz;
Claire Sutherland
Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia)
07-29-2006

WILLIAM McInnes is at pains, as are so many authors, to point out that the main character in his latest book is not based on him. Chris Anderson might live in the west, play the odd game of cricket with his son and be tall with a voice that can be heard from one end of a cricket oval to another, but he's not William McInnes. And like Chris, McInnes might have sold communist newspapers to impress a girl, and he knows a bowler who took requests for particular bowling styles (Tom Cruise's stocky perambulation, Elvis's showiness), but still -- not him.

"It's a temptation to think, 'It's just him and his son'. But it's not. I just set it there because I thought it was a nice place to set it,'' McInnes says. "In the suburbs, the face of Australia is changing and I wanted these guys to be surrounded by this new wave and multiculturalism. In certain parts of Australia it isn't just talked about around the dinner table as being a good thing -- it's in practice. I think that's something to be celebrated.''

Celebration is a theme of Cricket Kings, set over one long afternoon's cricket match. The setting might be a fourth-grade game, but the action is everywhere else. Each team member has a story to tell. Chris's brother committed suicide, and his batting gloves are still in Chris's gear bag. Brian is "not quite right'' and the butt of jokes from the other team, but he is the only one who notices a newly arrived African migrant waiting in the hot sun for a bus that will never arrive. Michael is a doctor who takes pills to help him cope with what saw while working in the third world. And Livey is a butcher who is lucky he hasn't blown out the bum of his pants, such is the force of his flatulence.

McInnes hopes his book looks at what it is to be Australian. "It's an optimistic book and it's just saying that if you give people a go, anything can happen. I just hope it's a nice story that men and women and kids can read,'' he says."Not little kids. There's language.''

McInnes grew up in a Labor family, but his own leanings are rather more conservative. He is not one to berate his countrymen as racists, and though his book is sprinkled with the odd bit of racism, it is roundly howled down. "I'm a pretty conservative person. Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a flag waver for the Left. I just think Australia is a pretty tolerant place and a pretty compassionate place and too many people want to blame a couple of people in power.''

This proclaiming of conservative roots is an odd statement from a man whose main character is a union rep, and who has just played John Curtin, hero of the Labor Party. But part of what makes McInnes hopeful that the ABC telemovie Before Dawn will be a success is its even-handedness. "It doesn't make any of those hard and fast judgments about people, such as: the Tories are all twits and the Labor people are saints,'' he says. Australians and their foibles occupy much of Cricket Kings. It is set in the present day, but somehow seems to be in a nicer, slower world. "It's like an old Australia. It's the way Australians see themselves, in a really archaic way,'' McInnes says. "The second most important job in Australia is the cricket captain.''

Cricket Kings, by William McInnes is out now, (Hachette Livre), rrp. $32.95.