SPECTATOR SPORT
Retired hurt
Simon Barnes
I FAILED to score 1,000 runs in May this year. In fact, the closest I have ever come was a shortfall of a mere 993. Alt!, but I batted like a god that year: Bacchus, per- haps. This year, I did not score a single run in May, or June, or July, and the chances of scoring a run in August are diminishing fast.
There is a moment of truth that con- fronts all cricketers of similar merit. It occurs on the morning of the first match of the season, when you open your kit-bag for the first time since the previous September and are once again amazed at the failure of socks and flannels to clean themselves in the course of an endless winter.
Somewhere in my house lurks a kit-bag that has been unopened since the last match I played — in September 1994 when we, the mighty Tewin Irregulars, played the Vatican XI, a side mainly com- prising Roman Catholic priests and led by Barnaby Dowling, the Jardinesque incum- bent of the parish of Ely. They beat us by a considerable distance, and my only useful contribution was a slash through the slips that came quite close to putting Father Barnaby's eye out.
Happy moment! But really, I have not lifted a bat in anger, nor bowled my wily non-turning offbreaks, nor yet my occasion- ally-actually-turning leg-break variation (off which I once had a member of the Bar- bados second XI stumped off his third ball for 12), for all but two seasons. Perhaps I must admit that I have Retired.
There is something terribly aging about the word. It is not that I can no longer run about, it is not that I am concerned that I can no longer bat and bowl with distinction, for you never miss what you never had. But the chances of playing again before the kit in my bag disintegrates look remote.
Why is this? Partly, because of the Great Tewin Diaspora. People move: we have for- mer Irregulars in places like Uganda and the Forest of Dean. Also, at a certain age, the most unlikely people suffer from fits of ambition and want to work on Sundays. Others merely divorce: both members of our once fearsome opening attack fell vic- tim to the younger woman and daren't play for the Irregulars again in case their wives turn up.
And so Friday nights and Saturday morn- ings brought in more and more of those ter- rible calls: hate to let you down, but I've got to go to the office/paint the lavatory/go and see the kids. The Saturday night ring- rounds became simple desperation: still only six players and down to the letter T in the phone book.
More and more people seem to realise that they have Retired. And perhaps I have as well. I feel a little old at this realisation. It is not that I have lost my taste for folly and danger; no one with two horses (let alone the two I've got) can say such a thing. One loses many things: fitness, such abili- ty as one had, time. But perhaps one loses the most important thing of all, the taste for being part of a gang of men. Oh, I have wonderful memories of many a team-mate, great and continuing affection for them all: Steady Eddy, Murray, Salty, the Fish, Edge, the Finches, Ruby, and on and on, vast legions of irregular Irregulars that stretch across the decade-long history of our fabled and glorious institution.
It is not the eye that goes, it is, as it were, the muscle of camaraderie. The pleasures of a sweaty embrace when you lunge for a catch and for once emerge tri- umphantly ball-full; the joys of massed, bibulous hilarity and din at the Plume of Feathers afterwards; and also what Albert Camus called 'the stupid desire to cry when we lost'. Do I no longer relish the lagery hug of consolation at the end of a long hot day of defeat? I grow old . .. I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my flannels rolled.
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