Doing My Bit Chapter 6 - Sydney University Cricket Club - The Treasurer

DOING MY BIT

Chapter 6 – Sydney University Cricket Club – The Treasurer

The nets smell the same no matter where you go.

There is always that mix of cut grass and damp canvas, the faint rubber note from worn grips, a sweetness that sits just behind the throat when the morning air is still deciding whether to warm or not. I stand at the edge of it, kit bag at my feet, watching a line of young men in University blues move through drills with an ease that suggests they have always belonged here. Their laughter carries differently. It moves with confidence, as though the ground itself recognises them.

The thought arrives early, uninvited but not unexpected. You don’t belong here. It is not said with cruelty, nor even with certainty, but it lands with enough weight to be measured. There is always a cost to absorbing something like that, even when it is not spoken aloud. It registers somewhere beneath the surface, small at first, but never negligible.

The bag is lifted anyway, and the walk forward is deliberate. First days have their own rhythm. Introductions that are not quite introductions, nods that carry more hierarchy than warmth, questions asked not to understand but to place. Where did you play. Who do you know. What school. What college.

The answers become acts of translation. Country cricket becomes “a decent standard,” though the phrase feels like a quiet disservice to what it actually represents. The introduction itself had come through John Grimble, the Sydney Morning Herald First Grade Cricketer of the Year, not as a favour but as a recognition of something seen and considered worth placing into this environment. The level being spoken about was not social park cricket in the loose sense the term sometimes carries, but A Grade, the top tier of that world, the same level that produced players like Doug Bollinger who would go on to wear Australian colours. It is, by any reasonable measure, a standard that sits well above average, though the language here seems to prefer understatement where it cannot immediately verify pedigree.

Averages are softened in the telling, stripped of context that might otherwise give them weight. Names that once carried meaning in one circle fall flat in another, landing without resonance. The translation is not dishonest, but it is incomplete, shaped by an awareness that significance is often determined not by what has been done, but by where it has been done. By the time a direction is given toward the fifth-grade captain, it is delivered with a kind of efficiency that feels almost administrative, as though a category has been identified and a file placed accordingly, the nuance of how that placement came to be quietly set aside in favour of a system that prefers its own order.

Taking guard in the nets strips all of that away, at least temporarily. The ball comes quicker, cleaner, more deliberate, but not in a way that surprises. There is a familiarity to it, an honesty. The first few deliveries are left, watched closely, the seam tracked, the pace absorbed. Then the bat meets it, properly, and the sound carries its own authority. Not loud, not forced, just right. The ball runs off the face and into the side netting with a quiet finality.

Nothing is said, but something shifts. Performance introduces in a way that conversation never quite can. By the time the session ends, invisibility has given way to something else, though it stops short of belonging. There is a space between being seen and being accepted, and it becomes a place that is occupied more often than not.

Training gives way to matches, and matches to numbers. Runs accumulate in the way they always have, not through flashes of brilliance but through a refusal to yield. The crease becomes a place of negotiation, each ball a question answered without excess. There is a satisfaction in that, but also an awareness that capability and permission are not the same thing. One can be demonstrated. The other is conferred.

And with the runs and wickets comes a need to give more. A need to fit into a world far beyond that of a small town HSC dropout, but ne an accountant with aspirations in the realms of business could master. The sitting Treasurer steps down and for a time, focus not on a student but an accountant as someone to fill the void is thrust before me.

It is within that space that Max Bonnell emerges.

Not dramatically, not as a moment that announces itself, but as a presence that sharpens conversations. At that point he is still a student, carrying the dual weight of academic law and lived responsibility as the Club’s Secretary, learning in real time how theory collides with practice. His voice in meetings cuts through layers of process with a precision that feels both deliberate and necessary, not out of arrogance but out of an instinct that systems exist to serve outcomes, not the other way around. He carries the law with him in a way that makes it accessible rather than oppressive, translating complexity into something workable. Where others defer to systems, he tests them, not recklessly, but with a quiet confidence that they can, and sometimes must, be bent to function.

What begins as alignment over small frustrations grows quickly into something more substantial. There is a recognition, almost immediate, that we are working from the same internal blueprint, one that values movement over stagnation, outcomes over optics. He is the Secretary in title, I the Treasurer in function, but the delineation does not hold for long. Conversations extend beyond meetings, decisions are shaped before they are formally raised, and gradually, without declaration, the operational heartbeat of the Club begins to sit between us.

This is not to suggest the absence of oversight. The Board carries names that command respect, men like Alan Crompton and James Rodgers, both later recognised with OAMs for their service to cricket, individuals who represent the tradition, the continuity, the institutional memory of the Club. Their presence brings gravitas, a sense that what exists here has been built over time and should not be disturbed lightly. Yet there is also a distance, not of intent but of tempo. The machinery they preside over moves at a pace shaped by precedent, by governance, by a belief that proper process is the safeguard of proper outcomes.

Within that framework, Max and I become something else entirely. Not in opposition, but in contrast. Where the Board deliberates, we act. Where systems hesitate, we find pathways. It is not rebellion, at least not in the way it might appear from the outside, but rather a response to necessity. Bills need to be paid, competitions need to be run, players need to be engaged, and the gap between what should happen and what actually does becomes too wide to ignore.

There is a certain audacity in it, though it does not feel that way at the time. It feels practical. Sensible, even. The Club begins to run, not just exist, and in that running there is a shared understanding that we are, in effect, carrying more than our titles suggest. The trust account, the initiatives, the constant pushing against inertia, all of it becomes part of a rhythm that is sustained as much by instinct as by structure.

Max moves easily within it, his legal mind providing both justification and boundary, even when those boundaries are being approached, tested, occasionally stepped over in the name of getting things done. The student becomes a confidante, the confidante evolves into something closer to a partner in execution, and it is perhaps inevitable that the relationship extends beyond the Club. The transition into my accounting practice follows naturally, as though it had always been the next step, the environment shifting but the dynamic remaining intact.

Together, we are, for a time, running the Club in a way that sits just beneath the surface of its formal structure. Not replacing it, not dismantling it, but filling the spaces it cannot reach quickly enough. It works, undeniably. The outcomes speak for themselves. Yet beneath that effectiveness sits a quieter question, one that does not demand immediate attention but refuses to disappear entirely, about where initiative ends and overreach begins, and whether the line between the two has already been crossed without either of us quite noticing.

The connection forms in the margins, in conversations that drift from selections to structures, from frustrations about how things are done to questions about why they are done that way at all. He is the Club’s secretary, already embedded within the machinery. The transition from player to Treasurer follows more quickly than expected, though it feels less like a promotion and more like an inevitability.

The committee room is a different world entirely. There is no grass, no movement, no release. Only paper. Agendas, minutes, forms, and approvals that seem to exist as much for their own perpetuation as for any practical outcome. The air feels heavier here, thicker with expectation.

The numbers do not misbehave, but they do not move. Payments stall, caught somewhere within a system that values process above outcome. What should take days stretches into weeks, sometimes months. The Club continues in motion, but the financial lifeblood that sustains it lags behind.

It becomes clear quickly that the system does not work in the way it is intended to, at least not for the pace required. The caritas gauge begins its quiet work here, measuring not just the need to act but the cost of doing so. There is a point where observation gives way to decision, though it does not arrive with fanfare.

It arrives with a bill that needs to be paid. Not next week. Not when the paperwork completes its slow journey through the hierarchy. Now.

The room offers familiar responses. Wait. Follow the process. Submit again. None of them solve the problem at hand. The answer that comes instead is simple, almost unremarkable in its delivery.

It will be run through the practice trust account.

There is a pause, not of resistance but of recalibration. It is a small act on the surface, moving money from one place to another, bridging a gap that should not exist. Yet it represents something more significant. A shift from operating within the system to working around it. The practice trust account becomes, quietly and without formal declaration, the mechanism that allows the Club to function in real time.

It works, as numbers properly handled tend to. Payments are made, obligations met, momentum maintained. What begins as an exception becomes, over time, a pattern. Not through formal agreement, but through the simple logic of effectiveness. The paperwork continues, but it follows behind the reality rather than directing it.

Max operates within that space with an ease that complements the approach. The law is not ignored, but it is navigated with intent. Together, the gaps between what is supposed to happen and what actually does are managed, sometimes neatly, sometimes less so.

The Six-A-Side competition begins as a concept, an attempt to bridge the distance between the Club and the city that surrounds it. Law firms, accounting practices, offices filled with people who once played or wished they had. It requires persistence. Calls that go unanswered, conversations that begin with polite dismissal and occasionally end with commitment.

There is a sense, at times, of being a nuisance, of pushing against a reluctance that is both cultural and practical. Yet the idea takes hold. Teams form, matches are played, and the grounds carry a different kind of energy. Less polished, more inclusive. Revenue follows, not in dramatic bursts but in steady increments that begin to matter.

Recognition arrives, though not in the form that might have been anticipated. Performances on the field, measured in runs and wickets that compare favourably across grades, do not translate into the accolades that logic might suggest. The calculations are not purely numerical. Context is applied unevenly, and the influence of background, of connection, becomes apparent.

The old school tie is not an abstract concept. It is present, subtle but persistent.

The award that does come, the John Morris Clubman of the Year, carries its own weight. It acknowledges contribution beyond performance, the willingness to engage with the Club as an entity rather than simply as a team. The room on the night is warm, crowded, filled with the low hum of conversation and the occasional sharp note of glass against glass.

The words that accompany the announcement speak to service, to commitment, to impact. They are genuine, and they are received as such. Yet there is an awareness that they sit alongside, rather than in place of, what might have been.

There is a duality in that moment. The boy in the backyard, who once measured success in centuries and representative honours, remains present. Alongside him stands someone who has come to understand that value can be defined differently, that contribution is not always visible in the ways that statistics suggest.

Max’s glance across the room carries a recognition that does not need elaboration. The roles occupied are not fixed. To some, the efforts represent progress, necessary disruption, a willingness to do what others will not. To others, they represent interference, a complication of systems that prefer simplicity.

The trust account continues its quiet work, facilitating what the formal structures cannot. Each transaction reinforces both the effectiveness of the approach and the dependence it creates. The caritas gauge, that internal measure of how much can be given and at what cost, begins to register more clearly now. Not from a single decision, but from the accumulation of them.

At home, the rhythm of family life continues, largely untouched by the mechanics of committee rooms and financial workarounds. The boys move through their days with a simplicity that is both grounding and confronting. Presence becomes a currency of its own, one that is spent as surely as any dollar, though far less easily replenished.

The question shifts, almost imperceptibly at first, from whether something can be done to whether it should continue to be.

The numbers on the page one evening tell a story of stability. The Club is functioning, perhaps even thriving in ways it had not previously. Initiatives are working, systems, patched as they may be, are holding together. From the outside, it resembles success.

But the internal measure does not rely solely on outcomes.

The lines between roles have blurred. Player, administrator, accountant, benefactor. Each decision, each workaround, each initiative has edged those boundaries further apart. The sense of belonging that was once sought has been replaced, in part, by a sense of responsibility that was never explicitly assigned.

The question that lingers is not one of capability. That has been established. It is one of sustainability.

If service becomes the means by which a place is secured, what happens when the cost of that service begins to exceed what can quietly be carried, and who ultimately decides where that line should be drawn?