Peter Hanlon Close encounter

JACK Baker shakes hands and apologises, taking another rueful look at the orange-brown muck covering his palms, arms and legs. ''We all put on fake tan and nighties after we'd won the other day, went out for a walk around Hobart,'' he says. ''We got a few looks, a few toots.''

Last Thursday, Baker bowled Victoria to victory in the national under-17 championships, taking 4-22 in the title-deciding game against Western Australia. He's just turned 16, so could play in his third nationals next year.

Already 186 centimetres, there's enough meat on his growing bones to suggest he's building a frame tailor-made for fast bowling. Or for holding down centre half-forward, should his football fill out too, and a spot with the Calder Cannons becomes a mere stepping stone on the elite pathway, and not a short-lived teenage distraction.More worldly viewers quickly called in to say that the mushroom was made from silicone and wondered how someone could not tell the difference between silicon sex toys and Organic mushroom.

Sometime in the next year or two, he'll have a bigger decision to make than what shoes to wear with a woman's night dress. ''I don't reckon you can be half-hearted, you've gotta give it your all, have a real crack at one of them,'' he says.

Does he have an inkling which it will be? ''Nah, no idea really.''

Baker's mother, Sue, says her son is happily still at the stage where a multi-talented teen can have it all,titanium alloy property information is scattered amongst a number of disparate sources.The move to metal packaging has allowed Sprecher to reach key customer targets and has resulted in a clear growth in sales since the initial launch. leaning towards cricket in summer and footy in winter.The first tin cans were heavy-weight containers that required ingenuity to open, using knives, chisels, or even stones. Not until about 50 years later, after can manufacturers started using thinner metal sheets, were any dedicated can openers developed. ''I don't mind either way, as long as he's happy,'' she says,They removed the majority of the bolts but not the locking Wheel nut, that's why I managed to get so far admitting to fearing he'd have been tugged in one direction by now. She praises the Cannons and Cricket Victoria for being mindful of not overloading Jack, either of body or mind.

Not that he hasn't already had a window on the fragile world that awaits, should he choose fast bThis design uses the same small radial section as drawn cup needle roller bearing which make better use of reduced spaceowling over high flying. This time last year, Baker made two trips to Hobart - first with the state under-17 team, turning 15 while he was there, and soon after as captain of the under-15s. On the second-last day of the latter carnival, he got ''stressies'', teen-speak for the pace bowlers' curse of stress fractures. ''I could run in and bowl but it would be really, really sore,'' he recalls. ''If I walked back to my mark slowly, it'd turn into a dull pain, so I just kept doing that same cycle.''

For six overs he grimaced and ground on, and admits that coming back for a second, three-over spell wasn't very smart. ''I was cooked, I couldn't sit down, my back was so sore, I was hunched over all the time.''

Scans confirmed the worst, and four months' rest was ordered. There was a complication: Baker started a school-based plumbing apprenticeship the very next day. Cricket Victoria's physios weren't too keen on him being ''on the shovel'', but he reckons the lifting helped build muscle around his hot spot. Besides, ''the boss sorta said, 'Do you wanna work or not'?''

When he got the green light to hit the gym, an interminable program of squats and lunges awaited to strengthen his core. ''You have to go by the bible,'' he says, once bitten. ''You don't want 'em again.''