Howzat! I'm back in Australia and playing cricket in the street | Gina Wilkinson

As much as I poked fun at Dad's obsession with the game, I didn't want my kids making their home in some faraway land

But who is going to teach my grandsons cricket?" demanded my father. It was the same question every time he called, his lament travelling 18,000 kilometres of scratchy telephone line from his home outside Perth all the way to the United States. I'd been gone for almost 20 years, based most recently in Washington DC, and before that in Bangkok, Colombo, New York, and Baghdad too.

I'm no Dennis Lillee," I said. And my husband, Geoff, was no Shane Warne. Born and bred in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in Canada, Geoff is also an Australian citizen. We celebrated this milestone with party pies and tomato sauce in gravy boats, followed by drinks at a pub that once served as the setting for archetypal 1970s Aussie series The Sullivans. Still, neither Geoff nor I could tell our silly mid-off from our googlies.