All The Ones...Eleventy-One.

Several things to report.

Last night's company cricket match did indeed go ahead.

For reasons unbeknownst to this here chronicler, our batting order was decided by drawing lots, whilst the opposing team chose their best bowlers to go first.

Unsurprisingly, this here chronicler drew out a small piece of paper bearing a:

1

Lead batsman. First over, first ball.

At this point several years of maturing and social graces were stripped away and I popped the cap on the can of traditional schoolboy prejudices.

The guy squaring up to bowl at me was wearing glasses and brought to mind what Billy Bunter might look like if he lost a lot of weight.
With this as the only evidence of what was to come, I felt happily smug and confident..until Mr. Bunter took a very long run up indeed.

In fact, for a while, I thought he was going home.

Out of that first over I can put my hand on my heart and say I saw three out of the six deliveries as they went by, and I scored a less-than-thrilling 1 run.

This was a short game of 20 overs, where you're meant to push your luck, take runs where you can, and generally twock that little hard red ball all over the place.
The spectators began to moo. Presumably to illustrate their displeasure, but I can't be sure.

In the second over my batting partner also managed to score a less-than entertaining single run. Facing our post-Atkins Billy Bunter, I blocked a couple more deliveries and decided that something would have to be done. I would try A Tactic. I would show the bowler the wicket and drive the bat hard across it to attempt to score some runs.

I was informed that this didn't work by the sound of leather on stump, followed shortly after by the pinking of the stump rattling to the ground about three feet away.

As I was on the walk back to the pavilion, the bar opened, which was nice.

So, in my innings as an opening batsman, I scored an epic:

1

I sat on the white plastic garden furniture and watched the sun through the clouds and the wind high in the poplars around the edge of the playing fields. Small children played giggling around their parent's feet, rolling a red cricket ball up and down the white concrete strip in front of the pavilion. One of our batsmen made good contact, and the ball bounded angrily towards the pavilion. Conversation stopped. There was a toddler on the grass in its path. His father, chatting idly after batting, literally dropped his drink to the floor and dived over his son, rolling a couple of times after stopping the ball. There was a moment of silence as everyone took a deep breath. The toddler's mother spoke.

"Darling, you stopped that from going to the boundary."

She picked up her son and walked into the pavilion as everyone looked at each other open mouthed. The game continued.

After a couple of pints and, as luck would have it, our regular cricket players who actually were batsman playing against their bowlers who weren't, our score was a respectable 120 runs in 20 overs and we went in to field.

More schoolboy prejudice swung into play as our loud and boisterous captain dished out the bowling. My less-than-inspiring wicket had not instilled him with confidence.
But this is the thing, you see. I can bowl.
God knows how, as my Dad told me the basics at the age of 12 and I practised with a tennis ball bowling up a crazy-paved path, and not much since then, but I can.

It might have something to do with being 6'2" and having long fingers, I have no idea. But as the bowling was divided, that old familiar hollow feeling crept up from memories of Games and summer lunchtimes; Picking Teams.

Back then I was generally left in the embarrassing red heat of peer selection until second to last, with the kid with pint-glass spectacles and a wheeze you could hear three pitches away, and last night I was going to be damned if I wasn't allowed to bowl. I told the captain I was going to. He didn't contest it.

So I did; just one over, because Captain Courageous wanted to bowl against his old boss, but in that one over, in those six balls, the number of wickets I took was:

1

And, rather satisfyingly, it was Post-Atkins Billy Bunter.
There. The excessively unlike me sports-boasting is done with.

Oh, and we won, by the way.

Next up on the list of Quintessentially British Things To Do Before I Leave Britain: Play a round of golf.