MIKE EDWARDS
THE CRICKET season should have started last Sunday. It didn’t. A hundred-odd days of rain in four months will do that.
Instead, the local cricket league postponed the season’s start until the second weekend in May. Normal service will resume on a Saturday.
By normal service, I mean a biting wind, temperatures that send brass monkeys scurrying to the nearest welder, and pitches like plasticine.
In their wisdom, the County Club decided to hold the two missing games on the Bank Holiday Mondays at the end of May and August. They can bog off. I have work on a Tuesday. I’m not sitting in my office contemplating balance sheets while recovering from the aches and pains I spend summer Sundays easing in a hot bath.
Don’t get me wrong—I enjoy cricket. It’s the after-effects that I have a problem with. Even when I was younger and fitter, Sundays were a day of rest and recovery from muscular and bony aches and the usual three-alarm hangover.
Now, I treat my liver with more respect. While my body is not a temple, it is at least an old tin chapel with a leaky roof. From a distance, it has a certain ruined grandeur.
My beloved is always keen to take me to cricket. It gets me out of the house and into the fresh air, far away from a computer screen or thoughts of work. My darling wife always says getting me out and about does me good.
It certainly seems to do her the world of good. She wanders around the boundary and always stops to chat with the young and lithe bowlers who tend to patrol the outfield.
She even gives them tips on performing their stretching exercises and watches carefully as they follow her instructions.
I’m always amazed at how keen they are to bowl after a good talk with the missus. You even see them volunteer to field at suicide point or shortleg when they’re not bowling.
Big Derek, our opening bat, is a man with muscles in places I don’t even have places. My wife is always solicitous of his welfare. I guess when you look like you’ve been chiselled rather than grown, there is far more to go wrong with your body.
The poor sod is always sweating after a boundary-edge conversation with my beloved. If we’ve been fielding first, Derek often has a cold shower during the tea interval.
Derek told me last season that my wife’s presence on the boundary was why he kept trying to bat throughout our innings.
Motivating young players that way is a gift.
Funnily enough, when I field on the boundary rope - a rare event - she’s never that keen to speak to me. I suppose she knows that, as a wise old head, I’ve had all the advice and coaching I need. It’s far better for my darling one to expend her energies and share her expertise with those who need inspiration.