A Brisbane park cricketer is embracing his new nickname.
Peter joined the Morningside Magpies Queensland Sub-District Cricket club this season and has already fit in, starting the season in fourth grade as a solid middle-order batter and part-time leg spinner.
But it’s off the field where Peter’s popularity has risen, earning a new nickname only two weeks into the new season.
“It started in our first game back,” said Peter. “We were easing to victory in our first one-dayer and I was fielding at slip. I joked to our ‘keeper that one of our bowlers would take a hat-trick to end the game. And he did. As we were celebrating the hat-trick, the ‘keeper said to me, ‘Good prediction Oracle!’ and that nickname stuck.”
In just two weeks, Peter has embraced the nickname to the point he’s started using it at home. And his girlfriend hates it.
“The idiot’s gotten such a big head since he got that bloody nickname!” said his frustrated girlfriend Kate. “He’s renamed all his accounts on our streaming services ‘Oracle’, constantly calls himself ‘Oracle’ around the house, and even writes ‘Oracle’ on his leftover Chinese food! I don’t care if he plays cricket, as I like having Saturdays to myself, but the nickname carry on is ridiculous! HIS NAME IS PETER!”
Though Kate had a moment of vindication when he let Peter pick the Lotto numbers last week, none of which came up.
“If he’s such an ‘Oracle’, then he’d know what the numbers were and we’d be millionaires by now!” she said.
“In my defence, the boys only called me ‘Oracle’ because of my cricket fortune-telling and nothing else. Oracle likes being called Oracle and will continue to call himself Oracle,” said Peter.
The Gurgler presents stories of the Park Cricketer, where we explore the lower reaches of the great game of cricket from the suburban ovals and rural grounds across Australia.
