Sorry for the long gap. I have just returned to the US of A from three weeks in England where I played one game of cricket. I mention this because cricket is to be the subject of this blog. For those not in love with the game I will not be at all hurt if you give this missive a miss and carry on with your life as if this blog never appeared on your computer. But of course it's more than about cricket, it's about life, about different cultures, about tea, travelling to the countryside, meeting fellow human beings, focusing on a small red leather ball rather than deeper issues such as the relentless death toll in Afghanistan, the diving US economy, the desperation of America's first black President, famine in Somalia and the Arab Spring which turns out to be an Arab Winter. That little red leather ball has left its mark on my whole life, from about the age of seven, and, on this occasion, has left a very angry-looking bruise on my right shin which, in the humid heat of Washington DC, appears to be getting angrier each day and transforming my perfectly decent leg into a swollen yellow and black lump. Gangrene, I have no doubt, will set in in due course.
Cricket has always been a dangerous sport which is partly, I guess, why I have always enjoyed it. Danger in one form or other, though without meaning to sound too Hollywood dramatic, has played a part in my life since 1991 when I covered my first of many wars, learning the art of dealing with maniacal militia, banditos and insurgents, dodging bullets, artillery shells and mortar rockets - and glue-besotted child soldiers with long-bladed knives and Kalashnikovs in Sierra Leone. I'm digressing, apologies, but it has just struck me that cricket has much in common with knowing when to duck and when to run in war zones. The ball hurtling and swinging towards you from 22 yards away - it always seems much closer when the bowler puts his front foot right on the crease, a centimetre from being called "No Ball!" - brings back memories of mortar rockets literally - or liderally as the Americans would say - flying over my head in Bosnia, AK47 rounds skipping between our convoy of cars driving in the mountains outside Tusla in Bosnia, dodging the sniper's bullets at Vitez at sniper's alley, diving to safety from rampaging Russian BMP armoured personnel carriers at Pristina airport in Kosovo, stepping daintily between the unexploded cluster bombs and rockets in the Kuwaiti desert from the 1991 Iraq invasion, cowering from the withering Taleban fire across the poppy fields in Helmand, and looking in the eyes of the deadly Shia fanatics in southern Iraq and waiting for the next explosion in Baghdad. Oh yes, there are a lot of similarities with cricket!
But I had not set out to inject warfare into my musings about cricket. This is about a game I have loved all my life - and partly feared. That terrible waiting for the bails to fall when it's your turn to bat, that first over when everyone on the field expects you to bowl on the spot and get wickets, that moment of panic when a ball is skied and it's coming towards you from a great height and the whole match depends on you grasping it in your hands, that occasion when one of your sons is plumb LBW (when the ball smacks the pads in front of the wicket - leg before wicket) and, as the umpire, your index finger on your right hand knows instinctively that it should be raised boldly into the air to declare he's OUT. but remains in the pocket which causes outrage from the bowler and the whole of the opposition, including the man on the boundary at cover point. There are things that are more important in life than giving out your son LBW.
Anyway, cricket is in my blood and there I was, living as I am in the US of A, thinking that perhaps my cricketing days were over. The fear factor had taken precedence over the love factor. Perhaps I could survive by never playing again, I could just umpire or make the tea or sit in a deckchair and ruminate on the moments of glory - not many - when I returned to the pavilion a hero in the team's mind, having completed a 50 or taken five wickets or engineered a wondrous acrobatic twirl to catch an impossible catch. I know cricket is played in America, I know there are clubs everywhere where Brit ex-pats, Indians, West Indians and Pakistanis continue the traditions of the game, but I was afraid to offer my services in case I fell short. I can fall short amongst my dear cricketing friends in England, they would sympathise, but in America playing for a hot-shot team of 20-year-old fast-bowling Indians, this ageing cricket-lover might soon be patronised as the old English goat who thinks he can play but who can no longer contribute much, apart from filling up the numbers. You see, the Fear Factor had taken over. Also, I can't see America as a cricket-loving nation. They do baseball. As someone delightfully said to me: "Cricket, that's on horseback, right?" A friend in Philadelphia tried to explain the rules of baseball and I reckon I made a pretty good fist of it, but I still don't get it. Where is the elegance, the sweet late cut, the flick off the legs, the gentle push through the covers, the sweep (or attempted sweep in my case), the snick through the slips that has the fielders scrabbling desperately for air? Only the mighty clout over mid-wicket's head bears any comparison.
So there I was, standing at the wicket, as one of the openers (!), awaiting the first ball I had faced for two years. It was a moment of acute introspection, worrying about failing, imagining I had forgotten how to watch the ball and choose the right stroke, anticipating a clump on my unhelmeted head. Humiliation was upon me. But I thought, as the bowler marked his spot and began to run up looking determined and menacing, at least if I was out first ball I could take satisfaction from the realisation that my time as a player was over, that age had caught up on me, that I was never much good anyway, and that there was more to life than cricket. The bowler bowled, I watched the ball as it curved towards me and then suddenly veered away. I reached forward and struck it sweetly, not quite a late cut, but a cut of some nobility, and the little read leather ball swept away towards the boundary for four. My first shot for two years was a boundary. I had stared the bowler (gunman) in the face, I had shaken off the fear and had dealt with his venom with finesse. "Good shot," said my fellow opener. A faint sound of clapping could be heard from the pavilion steps.
I was back in the cricketing groove I had known and loved for so many years. Let it be recorded that I scored 30 runs. The Fear Factor had gone, the Humiliation had been spared, the adrenalin was flowing, and when I was finally out, heaving a full toss into the hands of Mid On, it didn't matter. I was on the scoresheet. There's a phrase in journalism when a reporter is at his desk and his hands are idle. "Not bothering the printers today?" Well, on that bright, sunny day on that cricket pitch near Marlow, I had bothered the scorer - with a row of 4s and 2s and singles. I was back! Today as I sit in my quaint house in Old Town Alexandria, I have my spectacular bruise to remind me of that afternoon. I might even go looking for a cricketing team in Washington, although it sounds like I may first have to learn to ride a horse!
