“The first catch, we erupted in here,” Calvin Aean, curator of the nearby Kingston Twin Ovals, where Webster played his junior cricket, reported from the Snug Tavern bar.
“But the second one getting rid of Virat, that had a great reaction given no-one seems to like him over the past few weeks so that was pretty special.
Beau Webster celebrates his first Test catch against India.Credit: AP
“There’s a lot of the old boys in here, his old teammates and mates of his old man and we’ve been keeping the bar busy from the first ball. It’s a pretty special time.”
While the people of Snug keep the home fires burning, Rod and Tina Webster take a breath after a mad 24-hour scramble to take in their youngest’s Test debut.
After a Facebook call-out for a dog sitter went viral, hounds Eddie and Frank were left in the care of relatives. Flights from Hobart to Sydney were found at short notice; accommodation too.
Older brother Jordan, currently based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, tried to make his own haphazard dash across the Pacific once news of his sibling’s debut arrived at 10am AEDT on Thursday.
The call-out for a dog sitter after Beau Webster’s Test debut is confirmed.Credit: Facebook
But at last count, Jordan was settling for a dodgy online stream in the cosmopolitan South American centre. In one ear, surely, the other half of Australian cricket’s new favourite bit of bling.
The other is shining brightly in the SCG centre. Conjuring memories of Shane Warne, Colin ‘Funky’ Miller and a youthful Michael Clarke, a heady slew of loud, occasionally lewd, local favourites to sport earrings in the gentleman’s game.
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Webster strikes as anything but. Even if the theory at the Snug Tavern, according to Aean, is that “the earring might have come in after his last few overseas T20 contracts.
“The bigger the contract, the bigger the diamond maybe?”
The truth is far more wholesome, and better for it.
A largely unassuming journeyman of Australian cricket, Webster has plied his trade for more than a decade in the state arena. Now 31, he’s found consistency with his batting and added seamers to his off-spin in a reversal of Miller’s own late-blooming Test career.
A berth on the next subcontinent tour to Sri Lanka at the end of the month looms given the added strings Beau now offers. Especially after an eye-catching first day as an Australian Test cricketer, bling and all.
“His mother bought a set of earrings probably about a year ago,” Rod Webster explains. “And she gave one to Beau and one to his older brother, they both wear them, I think just out of respect for their mother. I wouldn’t say Beau’s all that out there, that might be his one thing.”
