Father-son bond on the pitch is golden but all too brief
Now his boy is taller than him, Marcus Armytage will have to drop down the family batting order
here may be two Ashes Tests to play, but an even surer sign of the end of summer round here than the tail of the harvest being gathered is the royal procession of Amazon vans arriving on a daily basis with new sports equipment for the impending Michaelmas term.
Parental respite is almost within touching distance. The autumn term starts next week, although with three children now going to three different day schools in roughly opposite directions, by the end of September I will either be a general in the Royal Logistics Corps or, more likely, lost and out of fuel in a Bermuda Triangle of educational establishments.
A bit like the Chancellor of the Exchequer questioning the cost of HS2, I did ask why my 14-year-old son needed a new pair of rugby boots when his old ones had hardly been worn in.
Last season’s editions, it seems, are size seven, but he is now sporting size 11 clodhoppers. In the blink of an eye, he has developed policeman’s feet and I am no longer the tallest member of my immediate family.
That growth also means that the all-toobrief window of a season when I could play in the same cricket team as him – roughly on a par and without being hopelessly outclassed – is also, like the summer, drawing to a close.
Last year I was top of the family batting order, but next year I will have to ask him to slow down when he is bowling at me “because it’s Dad”.
It has been a good summer of cricket on the lawn (two runs for hitting it into the lavender, six if you hit it over the hedge, out if you hit a duck, dog or chicken, roof or window or hook it over the wall), on the school square, village green and, of course, primarily on the television.
But the sound of leather on willow round here has lost some of its allure since one of the vans dropped off his early birthday present, a new bat.
Not just any old bat, but one he custom built online – an option we can probably say with some certainty not open to WG
I thought the middle of the bat was like a G spot – only existing in the imagination
Grace – and which he has been knocking in for weeks now.
We drew the line at him taking it and the breaking-in process on holiday and though knocking in a bat is a boy’s rite of passage, to be honest I preferred it when the builders were in because you occasionally got a variation in the tone of the banging.
I still play with a Gray-nicolls Scoop 2000, a trusty old steed which gets admiring glances from wicketkeepers in much the same way as you would if you were overtaking someone on the fast lane of the motorway in a Ford Capri – it’s a bit retro.
But if there is anything wrong with his B3 bat it is his fault. He chose the size, weight, middle position (I thought “middle” was like a G spot – something that only existed in the imagination), toe shape and size, and edge shape, everything down to the colour of the stickers and handle.
As long as it has lasted, playing with him in a couple of scratch teams has been good fun.
The father-son dynamic is an interesting one. The only time I ever played with or against my father, in a boys-v-dads game at my prep school, I ran him out before he faced a ball.
I do not know why I did it. It remains one of the biggest regrets (and there have been a few) in my life and had he died in the traditional way – on his deathbed, surrounded by family – instead of in his sleep (the preferred way), I would have tied up that loose end by saying sorry for it.
But although it remains a competition within a competition, I am not sure the current father-son bond has ever been stronger than when we have opened the batting together this summer, and when someone skied a ball off his bowling there was more chance of me dropping a baby than there was of dropping that ball.
Of course, he has got more runs than me but that is the bat, isn’t it?