A decade since Dad died, cricket has become a reminder of his love for us

Cricket is ‘a place where Dad’s parenting and care still exists. Where he is still explaining how to protect the stumps or telling me to stop grumbling on the way home after a loss’, writes Lucianne Tonti. Photograph: SolStock/Getty Images

My brother is asleep on the couch at his in-laws’ summer house in Norway. The room is full of the light of the afternoon sun. From the TV, there is the soft rumble of a stadium crowd then silence, followed by the distinctive knock of a cricket ball on wood. For a moment the crowd gets louder and the players on screen shuffle around, but nothing changes and a commentator’s sharp, low voice cuts through.

I realise he’s watching the first Test of the Ashes. It’s 2023 and I’m visiting for the first time since Covid. I estimate it has been at least 15 years since I saw, or heard, a game of cricket. When Ponting, Warne, Gilchrist and McGrath lit up Australian screens. When my dad was still alive and I was young enough to be home when he’d watch it.