The Rules of Backyard Cricket

"Okay, so The Rules of Backyard Cricket is about two brothers, Darren Keefe and his older brother Wally. It has a really great opening; we meet Darren when he’s in middle age, and he’s in the boot of a car. He’s gagged, he’s cable-tied and he’s got a bullet in his knee. You just think: hello. The story is told mainly through flashback, which can really drag in a book, but in The Rules of Backyard Cricket it doesn’t because you know you are hurtling towards some end point and you’re pretty sure it’s not going to be good. We go back and get to know Darren and Wally, and view their relationship— and also wider society—described through the game of backyard cricket. Backyard cricket has its own rules depending on different families. In Darren and his brother’s case, it’s a violent, competitive game of one-upmanship. They are sons of a single mother who is quite fierce and independent but way too forgiving of Darren. There’s a beautiful quote that sums it up: Mum adores me regardless, loves us both, in fact. She won’t hear a bad word—she said to Wally after the charges were laid that I’d just fallen in with a bad crowd. Bless her—I was the bad crowd. I thought that was a great description of a relationship. The rest of the novel goes into sports fixing and fraud and illegal betting, and we soon see that Darren has fallen in with a very bad crowd, and that he’s doing some very dodgy things. The brothers have both gone on to be professional cricketers. I do not like cricket. In fact—I’ve got to be careful saying this in Australia—I hate sport. It takes up a lot of airtime in Australia. People are really, really into sports here. I picked this novel up only because I’d read Jock’s first novel and loved it. I knew he was a great writer, and of course, even though cricket is the background of this book, it is not about cricket. I loved it. There’s a line early in the book, where they begin playing cricket with a team, and Darren says that it had never occurred to him that it was a team sport. And I just thought: beautiful piece of writing. Jock’s a very lyrical writer, and very funny as well. It’s a dark book, but it’s got these flashes of humour. I really like that in a crime novel. I like things to be dark but then to have these flashes of light, and this book definitely has both those things. Yes, exactly. I was in a band called Chiaroscuro once! Absolutely. Quota also had an unusual setting: the world of abalone fishing and poaching."