Cricket
…

I never understood tactics and team mentality/skill in sports – I’d play football and keep getting told to stay back in defence (as it was my position), but I was never going to score so I’d just run up to the top of the field and stay near the opposition goal. It made perfect sense to me.

Take Golf – I just wanted to whack the ball as hard as I could – which is why I cut get a ball to the green within 2-3 shots – but then spend 10 shots trying to putt the bloody thing.

I’d apply this logic to any sport – if it involves a ball – its just about hitting/kicking/smacking it as far as humanly possible.

Fast forward 10 years. I’m stood in the ‘nets’ at a local cricket pitch dressed head to toe in the finest protective clothing a batsman can wear. I worked in a restaurant with several mates and the chef was really into his cricket – he suggested we all head down to the nets one afternoon for a bit of leather on willow fun. ‘Who’s first with the bat?’. I promptly stepped forward thinking ‘I’ll show this lot how to hit a ball (reflecting on my rounder’s successes many years before). It took about 20 mins to get all the gear on whilst my mates questioned my cricketing ability. I shrugged them off – what do they know?

So there I was in the nets, 17 years old, 9 stone. (10 stone including the padding) staring straight at my 30 year old, 18 stone, very good fast bowling chef.

At this time its worth noting that my previous cricket experience involved a £5 beach cricket set with a coloured tennis ball. This was a proper ball.

It left the chefs hands at roughly 400 mph, in that split second, I panicked and seeing the speed of the red missile, made no attempt to use the bat and did what man had done for many years when faced with danger. I twisted my body ‘side on’ in a kind of upright foetal position and yelped. The ball made contact with the ground and bounced straight into my (boney) thigh. It felt like non fatal ammunition. My leg was dead, I’m rolling on the floor in agony. Meanwhile the ball is retrieved and thrown back to the chef ready for his 2nd delivery, that was enough for me. I limped off saying stuff about ‘not being ready’ and ‘sun glare’…

Annoyingly, had I just stood still and let my protective clothing do its job, I’d have been fine.


Length? Just the regulation distance…
(Pat mustard, Fri 20 Apr 2012, 14:08, Reply)