When cricketer Matt Renshaw made his test debut in 2016, I told anyone who’d listen that we’d gone to the same school.
It’s important to note that I don’t know Matt Renshaw. Never met him. He graduated 24 years after me. I’m guessing we shared few teachers. And the turf on the wicket that I once batted badly on would have been completely replaced by the time Matt rolled up with his silky skills.
So the question is, what exactly am I hoping to elicit from the listener when I say I went to the same school as Matt Renshaw? Do I want them to think I’d gone to a famous cricketing school? I didn’t. Matt Renshaw was one of a few diamonds in a lot of rough. Do I want them to think that because Matt Renshaw is good, I must be good? I doubt anyone thinks I was “good”. All they think is I’m using a tenuous association to draw attention to myself.
So, by the time Matt Renshaw scored his maiden test century in Sydney in 2017, I resolved to shut up about it.
Cut to six years later and Renshaw was named in the test squad again. And it was fine. I felt no compulsion to say anything to anyone. It was almost like I’d grown up.
Then a cricket friend texted me when the final team list for the third test was announced: “Renshaw’s in.”
All I needed to do was press “like” and walk away from my phone like a self-sufficient adult. But, no. I grabbed it with the casualness of a heroin addict reaching for a syringe and texted back: “He went to my school. The cricket program obviously improved after I left. (laughing face)”
What. Is. Wrong. With me?
In fairness, the receiver of the text went on to say he’d gone to the same school as Geoff Marsh. So I’m not Robinson Crusoe. But seriously, send help.
Prolly the same reason I bang on about coming from the same town as Jimmy Matthews, Dave Graney and Gavin Wanganeen. Only one of those is from my generation ... And then there's my bumping-into-Shane-Warne story that everyone within ear/text/chat shot has no choice but to be enlightened about.