"Mama! Mama! Look! Red car!" Amber Nasrullin bounced around in the back seat of the coach, tugging at her mother's sleeve while frantically scanning the windows for the car she thought she had just spotted.
"Red car! Red car!""Awww, Amber, I think Mama's tired!" Catherine Nasrullin nodded, yawning as she glanced down at her daughter, a curly-haired stubbily-proportioned two-year-old with cheeks even rosier than her own, babbling away happily as her teammate Naomi Salisbury, crouched awkwardly in the aisle of the Plough Islands team bus, kept the conversation going.
"I think that car is blue, anyway, but good job spotting it!"Catherine was glad that Naomi was keeping her daughter occupied; she had indulged Amber with gusto in car-spotting and games of I Spy at the start of the eight-hour trip, but the questions at the back of her mind had begun to overwhelm her and she was all too happy for the Plough Islands' all-time top wicket-taker to pick up the slack. Naomi, on the pitch always the intense, focused professional, had surprised her with how keen she was to, virtually, parent her daughter - maybe what her gay brother had told her about lesbians and children was true. It was more likely she had just taken six wickets against Uppen Nasa and was therefore the only player to have come away from the previous night's debacle with any of her dignity intact, and consequently had the bandwidth to play car guessing games with a hyperactive toddler.
And it had been a debacle, one with direct implications for her. Catherine had not been at the Pale Cricket Ground for the game, but she had seen more than enough to know what had happened and to get the broad thrust of the conversation that Kevin, Lourens, and Shauna Weaver were having in the crowded front seats, still, after their head coach had vowed to leave any decision making until they got back to the Coal Coast. She knew as well as anyone that changes would need to be made for the next match - a point she thought she could hear Audrey Leggett making forcefully, the vigour of her partner's argument making Naomi's head swivel sharply at times. And given the nature of the defeat, the need for some new firepower in the middle order was self-evident.
With the Plough Islands Cricket Association unable to get further players out to the Coal Coast, that firepower would inevitably be Catherine. The neatly typeset page sent out, inconsistently, by the Association to some of the media covering the tournament made that much clear;
#9: Ekaterina Sergeievna NASRULLIN
Born 7th December 1999, Eleuthera, New Dalmatia ☭ Left-hand bat, slow left-arm orthodox
A robust and confident middle-order batter, "Catherine" was brought up in the fishing port
of Eleuthera by parents of Soviet descent who met while working at the nearby Plough Islands
Air Force base, but first discovered cricket while attending higher school in Sutton. She
was part of the Young Foxes team that attended the World 20-over Championships in Liventia
in 2019, and found her rhythm on the quick, flat Rushmori pitches, scoring 362 runs at 72.40
including three half-centuries.
Catherine also captained the Young Foxes in two of the eleven matches played by the team;
she possesses a keen cricketing brain and a naturally attacking instinct with the bat, and
may well prove a useful source of extra runs in Avorago and StrayaRoos. More recently, she
scored two centuries in Sutton & Avalon's 2022 Sutcliffe Shield campaign, in addition to
helping the Four Anchors first XI win the Ho Chi Minh Trophy final with a well-judged 65 from
48 balls. She lives in the Sutton highlands.
She slumped back into her seat. There was a lot to her story that was not in the media guide - much of it understandable, on the face of it. In most other countries, a player with those figures aged nineteen would have already made or been on the cusp of their senior debut, instead of having an awkward, unexplained three year gap. Kevin Laing's and Andrew Baxter's profiles made much of their children and personal lives, but the 'teenage single mother' label was a challenging one to explain to people outside the Plough Islander bubble of society, and Catherine had often winced at the notion, projected relentlessly from the outside world, that people in her situation were a problem to be solved, a symptom of failure.
Cricket had always been an escape for her, something to dedicate herself to where success and judgment were a lot simpler than a family life she preferred not to dwell on. That tournament in Liventia had been a welcome respite from the deafening cacophony of expectations and unfulfilled needs at home, and how every cut and drive had been an emotional high she found herself needing more and more of. How quickly her emotions had changed - from mingling with the Ko-orenite players at the weekend after the Dragonflies had ended the Young Foxes' run, and Seophyn yMharwn, one of her heroes, complimenting her as an equal, to the sickness that came in waves almost as soon as the team landed at Echodale on the Monday, and the fear and uncertainty before a visit to the hospital confirmed a different sort of certainty, and with it a more existential kind of fear.
"Mama! Mama! Mama!" Catherine felt the tug at her sleeve again.
"Is that a red car?"Naomi was making discouraging noises already, but Catherine leaned forward to confirm.
"Sorry, Amber, that one is white. White car.""Awwww!""White like this!" Naomi held up a cricket ball with '6-58' inscribed on it, scuffed and worn to the point where it could no longer in good conscience described as 'white', to approving gurgles from the youngster.
"White ball! White, see, like that car!"Catherine glanced back at the front of the bus and found that she could see Lourens Hendricks' bald head, now capless and twitching as he slipped into Afrikaans to try and argue some point Kevin or Shauna had made, peeking over the rows of seats ahead. Catherine was determined not to intrude on the details, but she would always be grateful for Lourens, who had taken her in when her mother's reaction to her pregnancy had left her feeling unable to share space with her family for a while. She did not know whether it was out of a sense of decency or some recognition of whatever talent she had, but when she was sixteen she had told her then-youth coach confidently that she wanted to play international cricket for the Plough Islands, and Lourens had reminded her of this as she moped over changes to her body and the logistics of what was to come.
It was he that had kept contact after Amber's birth, and invited Catherine to the summer cricket festival at the Four Anchors club in Sutton when her daughter was barely old enough to walk. She had felt badly out of shape and only managed a few boundaries in her first innings before being stumped, but no sooner had she come back over the boundary rope than Lourens had been there, praising her technique and asking what she thought needed to be done to get her back into second XI cricket. A lot of the difficult training and schedule management that had followed had come from Catherine herself, and the many other people that had helped her come back from the Four Anchors seconds to the Sutcliffe Shield heroics of the summer, but it was Lourens who had made sure cricket was not lost to her.
And now, whatever strategy was being thrashed out at the front of the Foxes' team bus, it seemed inevitable it would involve him giving Catherine her international debut.
She sighed.
"I really hope I live up to it, if it happens""Huh?" Naomi paused, looking up from trying to extract the ball from Amber's tiny fingers.
"Are you still worrying about playing?"Catherine nodded.
"Yeah. I cannot understand why, honestly""It is a major event, of course you are going to be a little scared," reassured Naomi,
"but you are stronger and better than you think you are. I felt exactly the same when it happened to me."In reply, Catherine mumbled an acknowledgment, but the words, well-meant as they were, did little to calm her brain down. The thought of representing her country, and all that came with it, had been gnawing at her all journey, the possibility of wearing the green shirt in anger looming large enough to be all-encompassing, to make her feel insignificant and unworthy of the task. And try as she might, she could not banish it; like a hungry cat it came back again, and again, and again, each time demanding more of her attention.
"Mama?" Amber looked up at Catherine, her eyes wide in thought.
"I want to see a racist car!"And sometimes, an event just demanded all her attention. In the split second before she dissolved into hopeless, snorting laughter, she tried to parse what on earth a racist car would look like, and failed entirely as she lost her grip on an oblivious Amber and practically howled into her open palms. Naomi, by contrast, was entirely stunned; a brief flash of mirth came over her before it was overcome by curiosity.
"A...racist...car?"Amber proudly repeated herself.
"A racist car! It has a whooshing engine that always--""Oh!" The shilling finally dropped for Naomi, and she stifled a laugh.
"You mean a racing car. Racing. Rac-ingggg. "Catherine drew a deep, badly needed breath, and took her chance to lean back and stretch. Having Amber come along on the tour had proven a good idea, in the end, despite some of the reservations from within the Association; if nothing else, her daughter was excellent at distracting her brain from harder, more troubling thoughts. After all, cricket was only a game, even international cricket, and no matter how things went over the next few days it helped to be reminded that there were things more important than sport. She wondered if Amber would be watching - maybe briefly, she thought, if one of her new friends could hold her attention with the television long enough. Maybe she would see Mama for a few moments, if the camera found her in the lineup, and ask why she was there; she was asking so many questions recently. Maybe the significance would be entirely lost; to a nearly three year old, it probably just seemed like her Mama had gained lots of new aunties and uncles, who were all really pleased to see her and who happened to dress the same.
"Mama! Red car!"Catherine startled to attention, wondering if for a second Amber somehow knew her mother was thinking about her. She looked over at Naomi, who frantically gestured for her to look out of the window instead, and there it was - probably more of a utility vehicle than a car, but resplendently, brilliantly red, against the dull colours of the road, passing beneath the windows of the bus and shifting Catherine's brain away from thoughts of cricket for just a moment.
"Yes! That is a red car!" She pulled Amber close, ruffling her daughter's hair.
"Oh, good girl, good girl!" She heard Naomi chuckling, and even thought she could sense a lull in the arguments still raging up at the front of the bus.
If Amber could finally spot a red car after so many tries, then maybe her mother could make this cricket thing work out.
PLOUGH ISLANDS CRICKET ASSOCIATION
XI FOR ANAIA O.D.C.C. VS. S'YAROOS
PLAYER BAT BOW
#13 ANL Weaver RHB
#7 AC Leggett RHB RLB
#14 SLC Weaver RHB RLB
#12 ADM Tyrie RHB RLB
#1 KCT Laing (c) RHB RMD
#9 ES Nasrullin LHB
#5 TM Bleasdale (w) RHB
#2 DV Andreyev RHB RFM
#3 S Ashe RHB ROB
#15 SH Wilson RHB ROB
#10 NA Salisbury LHB SLA