I used to play a fair bit of club & district cricket, managed 30 seasons straight from the age of 8 and even kept the tradition by playing in Canada of all places when I lived over there. My grandfather used to play for NSW back in the 30's before the war broke out and a little after, so I have always loved the game.
I got a bit over using club bats or 3-star cheapies and saved up and bought two top of the range original L.E 5 star Gunn & Moore bats when I was around 20 I guess. One was a GM Purist, can't quite remember the 2nd one could have been a GM Original but they were somewhere around $1000 each. I treated them like they were holy relics, made sure they were prepared professionally, oiled, rolled, knocked and finally sleeved. Then spent a good few sessions in the nets gently further knocking them in. They did me well as the years passed, I always made sure have them fully serviced every season.
I was playing a match one day and during the lunch break a couple of us headed up to the local pie shop to grab a pie and a coke, a customer in the shop seen that we were in our whites and asked how the match was going, wasn't just the average bloke being friendly though, was a fella named
Stephen Rodger Waugh
We were pretty gobsmacked, we asked him if he could hold on for 5 mins to sign our bats, he was happy to oblige. My mate flew back to the ground and brought my 2 bats and his bat back up, kept it quiet with the others. The pie shop had a couple of sharpies we borrowed, I got the Purist signed on the back in gold, the same bat as Steve used, the other in silver. Still had every intention of using them.
I came back from Canada in 2010 and figured yeah why not get a few more seasons in. I had not taken them with me as I didn't expect to play, turns out there were plenty of guys from the subcontinent over there and it was pretty easy to get involved, and yeah they had qualified for the World Cup a few times.
So I had left the bats at my mum's and called her up and asked if she could have them posted/freighted down, I asked her to please make sure they are registered/extra cover if she was going with Australia Post.
Of course, they didn't show up.......and of course mum just sent them with just registered parcel post, not with the extra cover (I'm not sure what went on there)
I tried for months to track them down. Checked Gumtree and eBay close to every day. Apparently, they made it past Chullora then got lost at Penrith. I eventually spoke to a few people higher up the corporate ladder and exchanged a few emails after just getting the runaround. Was pretty much told that they are fully aware that goods are consistently stolen from inside the sorting facilities. That laptops and mobile phones were the main targets if they were not covered by extra insurance. I questioned why employees were not scrutinized more and if they even had background checks? I never did not get a satisfactory answer.
I got offered $100 compensation, crazy thing was I didn't claim it.....mum did! I still shake my head thinking about it!