The Worst

I fell in love for the first time on Thursday morning, 31st July 1975 - my first sight of cricket on BBC TV,   the Second Test match at  Lords.

No anthems to start with, but there was elegance and  fury . Tony Greig was the tallest and the blondest man I’d ever seen, and David Steele, on debut, looked old to me, old as in Clive Dunn singing “Grandad” old. I was immediately in thrall of this new thing I found. The following Summer there was the Windies tour, a side that were as cool as they were frightening, and that winter England toured India and won the series. I was beyond hooked. 

Before long my brother Niall joined Civil Service Cricket club in Phoenix Park, Dublin. I was almost too nervous to join. There was a big difference between listening to the Beatles and actually being in the band.

Niall  joined in 1980, I followed two years later. Niall was a keeper, and a  really good one too. My parents would say his hands were blessed. He could hit the ball miles. But It became obvious straightaway that I was terrible, I batted left handed  - picture Rory Burns without the grace and elan. 

I took something that should have been joyous and fun and made it tortured and careworn. I was  a rubbish fielder. In normal life I was reasonably coordinated but when I took the field I looked like I’d been stitched together in a really bad chop shop. 

The figures do not lie, it took me two years to take a catch, four years to make double figures. I took it way too seriously, I read Boycott’s advice that it paid  to turn out well. When I walked to the middle, collar up,  I looked like a cricketer but once I took guard the sweat rolled out of me. If I lasted to the end of the over I was a sodden mess.

I had a couple of good days, I batted 15 overs one dark Sunday evening, a nought not out to get us a draw.  A proper bar filler. A couple of years later I biffed 18 in maybe 10 balls, four fours, I forgot myself on a gorgeous sunny day. I got out the second I thought I could bat.

The one thing I could do was skipper, I watched and read about it, got fielders I the right places,  but  I also knew I could ruin an opposition player’s afternoon.  Much like Salisbury, the Victorian PM, I played a negative part in a great work. I lost a couple of dressing rooms too, but the folks still talk to me.

So what good came of it? As the Buzzcocks once asked, what do I get?  A 1994 Intermediate B League winners’ medal that I lost when we moved house. Far more than that though, I know that everyone scored more runs, took more catches and bagged more wickets than me. I know too that there were so many people that gave to the game more than I did.  

But I never met anyone, in all my time on and off the pitch that enjoyed the game as much as I did. And I still do.