Why Isn't It Unfair in My Favour?

There’s a Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin complains to his dad that something is unfair. Something tiny, the way most of the world’s great injustices are when you’re six. His dad gives him the classic line: the world isn’t fair. Calvin isn’t bothered. He knows that. He just wants to know why it’s never unfair in his favour.

Honestly? Same, Calvin. Same.

We’ve all had our “why does this always happen to me” moments. We know it happens to everyone. We got the memo. We just keep hoping the universe will make an exception for us, just this once.

The comeback

This is about a cricketer. Not a legend. Not the most gifted guy or the most technically correct. A decent, honest, mediocre international cricketer. Let’s be fair, that’s still about a billion places above my gully cricket career.

Ten years ago he got a couple of matches for Australia. He didn’t perform, and he was dropped about as fast as he’d been picked.

Then he got cancer. And he beat it.

Then he went back to cricket and scored runs in domestic cricket. He kept scoring them until the selectors had no choice but to notice. At 34, ten years after his last game, Australia called him back to open the batting in a Test.

You can almost hear the documentary narrator warming up. Beat cancer. Revived his career at 34. The universe has clearly written him a script, and it ends in slow motion.

The script

Instead. Instead!

Guess what life had in store for him in his first match back after ten years?

A duck.

And not a merciful one. Not a jaffa first ball, where everyone shrugs and says “unlucky, great delivery.” Not one small mistake on the third ball, where everyone says “unlucky, could happen to anyone.” Neither.

He faced 33 balls. Thirty-three. He fought through every one of them trying to get one run on the board, and then he got out. For nothing. Apparently it’s the longest duck by a Test opener this century, which is a record nobody trains for.

I can’t imagine how gut-wrenching that must have been. Ten years of waiting, and the scoreboard next to your name says 0. The scorer never even had to pick up the pen.

And of course the internet did what the internet does. Out came the articles about how mediocre he is, how he never had the talent, how he should never have been picked.

The other scoreboard

We love celebrating the big stuff: big scores, big wickets, big milestones. Nobody writes about the failures. Nobody puts a duck in a highlights reel.

But look at the whole innings, not just the last ball. Dropped early. Survived cancer. Fought his way back through domestic cricket. Picked to play for Australia at 34. Sure, the story ended with a duck. But the story was never about that one score.

The journey, the effort, the years he put in. In the world’s eyes he failed. By his own measure, I’m sure he made it. He got there. The scoreboard just doesn’t have a column for that.

Not just cricket

This isn’t the story of one cricketer. We see it in every field, and in the people around us. People we know. The friend who trained for a year and didn’t finish the race. The one whose business didn’t make it. The one who gave everything to something, or someone, and it still didn’t work out.

We should appreciate the people who went all in and still came up short, instead of putting them down and reminding them of it forever. The world would be a better place, I guess.

The world probably won’t be unfair in our favour any time soon. But we can at least be a little kinder in each other’s.

— Yoki