Cricket

A lot of people in countries outside the Commonwealth, if they know anything about cricket at all, probably think it's a strange, genteel, thoroughly eccentric English game, exported by the Victorian empire builders, where players in white clothing spend several days in relative inactivity before shaking hands and declaring the match a draw. It does have it's livelier side, though, and I'd like to give a couple of examples, one old, one very new. I had a phone call from my brother this morning, to tell me he's off work at the moment, having had his arm broken playing cricket last weekend - he was hit by a lifting delivery (sorry for the arcane cricketing jargon) while batting, and has one, and possibly two broken bones in his forearm. My sister-in-law is somewhat less than sympathetic, because he owns an armguard, which he wasn't wearing at the time.
I know what it's like to have a coming together with a cricket ball, too, hence the reminiscent part of the post. I'd played cricket from almost as far back as I can remember, in the back garden at home or in the park, but it had always been with a tennis ball. The first time I ever played in a game with a proper cricket ball, in my first summer term games lesson when I was 12, I was smacked in the head while keeping wicket - it was a thoroughly inept piece of cricket all round, the bowler delivered a head-high beamer (a ball that doesn't bounce), which the batsman tried to swat away, but only succeeded in top-edging, I tried to catch it, but left just enough room between the wicket-keeping gloves I'd so coveted for the ball to go straight between and hit me flush on the forehead. I've still got a discernible lump where the ball hit me, nearly 40 years later! The crowning irony was that I'd volunteered to learn to be a cricket scorer for the various school teams - I wasn't, obviously, a very good player, but was desperate to be involved in some way, so I became a team 'official' instead, something I carried on with right through my school career, eventually spending 3 years as the 1st XI scorer (and playing the odd game, when we were short-handed) - and turned up in the classroom where the volunteers (all two of us!) were due to meet with a huge lump, including the imprint of the seam of the ball, above my left eye!
I don't do it so much these days, due to time pressures, but I can still, on occasions, spend hours watching cricket, mostly on TV, without any guilt at all - impenetrable it might be to some, but it's part of the English psyche, even in these cosmopolitan days.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B