The Sporting Life

Physical activity is not something I find myself involved in very often. In fact it would be approaching 10 years since I would have played any sort of sporting game. Just last Thursday I was telling a young lady in the bar Prudence that I don't do anything that involves taking my jeans off. Cricket, however, is a sport that one can play fairly well whilst wearing jeans, so when my friend Dan asked whether I wanted to join a social game with him and his buddies, I didn't really have any excuse to say no.


Ever since leaving my all boys school, I've done my best to avoid groups of males. Any socialising between males without the a female presence to inhibit their more base behaviour was something I had no intention of experiencing again. However, I was quite gratefully surprised at the civilised group of chaps that had assembled for this occasion. There was a lively banter on the field, but it was pleasantly lacking any of the crude misogyny and testosterone fueled bravado that you may have expected from such a gathering.

Back in my youth I used to be an off-spinner. Right arm off-spinners are not usually the glamour boys of the cricketing world. Occasionally you'll get a Muttiah Muralitharan or a Saqlain Mushtaq who'll make the discipline seem vaguely exciting, however I was always very much in the Tim May mould - nothing flashy, never a poster boy, but I kept it tight and was occasionally able to make a handy contribution. Tim May's Wikipedia profile describes him as "habitually 12th Man", which is as good an analogy for me as any.


I'm not shy to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I took a few wickets, held a couple of crucial catches in the context of the game, played a few well timed shots with the bat - one back-foot cover-drive would have made the highlights on the 6 o'clock news had the game been of a professional level - and most importantly, my team won!

It would be reasonably accurate to state that the last time I participated in a sporting event would have also been the last time I experienced any direct sunlight. As the day was quite warm I had managed to take the necessary precautions to avoid sunburn, however I hadn't counted on the effects of heatstroke and spent the evening nursing an awful headache whilst throwing my guts up into the toilet bowl. I'm of the understanding that these games will be played quite regularly, so I'm hoping that the Autumn will have more of a presence by the time the next game is fixtured.