Old scorebooks will tell you that I have never been a great cricketer. And that would be true. I am also out of practice, having played only twice in the past 10 years. My left shoulder pops out of its socket at the slightest provocation, ruling out most cricket shots. And I am extremely unfit.
But I love cricket almost as much as I love my dog Waffles. I think about it at night. In my utopia, I play for England. And while my skills have not been great to date, one day my luck could change. Which is why I played last month in Yorkshire, at the age of 41.
I travelled north with modest ambitions. When our side was fielding, I aimed to bowl two overs, as quickly and unmemorably as possible, and to stand for the rest of the innings in some leafy part of the ground where the ball had little chance of going. I would clap now and then to express esprit de corps. When batting, I hoped to score at least five runs, which is what I got last time I played, and to keep my left shoulder intact.
Both teams were a mixed bag of bashful middle-aged men and 18-year-olds who had been playing cricket all summer. Keen to put on a good show, I went to practice before the match started. I bowled a few times in the nets and was pleased to see the ball travel broadly as intended. Nothing was supreme but it was all pleasantly mediocre. Then I batted. I missed one and got a dead leg, but again it was fine. Buoyed by my training, I prepared to enter the fray.
Our team elected to field first. The captain, a distinguished man in his fifties, set about arranging his field and asked if I’d be strong enough to throw the ball from the boundary to the wicketkeeper, about 40 yards. And I said no, definitely not. Which was wrong. For a start, I could probably transport it most of the way if push came to shove. More to the point, I forfeited my leafy spot away from the action for one right next to the batsman, where the ball flies at you all the time.
I have never been a graceful fielder, but I don’t remember tumbling over every time the ball came near me in the past. I dreaded a catch. If the ball so much as trickled in my direction, I rose up like a startled hare and hit the deck.
I was brought on to bowl when the other side’s best two players — two destructive youths — were in full flow. After three deliveries — at least two of which were thrashed for four — I was knackered, depleted by all my practice earlier, as well as the dead leg.
Batting is an unpleasant business. You can be out first ball; you can be hit in the face. It is a lonesome and perilous existence. But it is not completely merciless. If you get out, you may feel sad, but you get to relax afterwards. By contrast, if a person is brought on to bowl even a single over — six deliveries — they must complete it before giving someone else a go. It sounds straightforward — just six balls landing roughly near the batsman — but by the time I was bounding in for my fourth delivery, it felt like an uphill struggle. Existential questions snuck into my mind, like, “What are you doing?”
An over is six legal deliveries. That is, if you bowl a wide, you have to bowl the ball again. Likewise, if it bounces twice or sails way above the batsman’s head. In theory, the six-ball over could go on until hell freezes over.
Which is roughly the region I occupied for the rest of my bowling spell.
I bowled three overs in total, which ought to have been 18 deliveries and was really about 30. And when I wasn’t bowling wides or sending pies high over the batsman’s head, I lobbed down these hit-me full tosses that repeatedly — and spectacularly — got whacked for six.
Mid-way through my third over, I had a case of what is commonly known in cricket circles as “the yips”, when the mind is so scrambled it cannot control the body, the wicket appears a mile long and you start searching for your mother in the crowd.
By the time I shuffled in to bowl my final ball, I scarcely had the strength or the wherewithal to propel it the necessary distance. But I still had mystery. Since I didn’t know where each projectile would go, nor could the handsome batting prodigy 22 yards away. True, he was striking most of them into the countryside, but when this final ball wafted out of the sky, as some floaty, waist-high humdinger, he was so surprised he spooned it up in the air.
Forty-one feels like a good age for a bowler to retire. But my batting remains untested because it rained for the rest of the afternoon and we couldn’t play on. Who knows how it might have gone? Even with my shoulder problems, I might have scored more than five runs. And besides, my bowling wasn’t all bad. When the batsman spooned it up, presenting the easiest catch in the world, I actually caught it. And tumbled over.
Alexander Gilmour is the FT’s Food and Drink Editor @AIMGilmour; alexander.gilmour@ft.com. Robert Shrimsley is away
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