WHAT have a dead fly, football, and a fiercely-thrown but

badly-directed cricket ball got in common?

Well, between them they’ve put an end to my cricket season

just when I was on the brink of getting my first 50 of the

summer.

I hurt my back picking up the fly and I hurt my finger (only a

little one, but I think it’s broken) trying to catch the

ball.

And football means on Saturday afternoons I revert to

reporting on sport rather than playing it.

Admittedly, it was only Division 2A of the Kent Cricket Feeder

League (East) that I was playing in but we take it pretty

seriously.

We clap when we hit boundaries, cheer when we get wickets (not

whoop, like those loud-mouthed South Africans) and look pretty

damned well pleased when we win.

I may not have been the youngest in the team – though I hasten

to add I wasn’t the oldest. Just.

But one of the beauties of the cricket is that you still can

play it into your middle age, at least as long as your back

doesn’t hurt and all your fingers are unbroken.

Mind you, I grimaced when the captain for our first match of

the season took one look at me and said: “You don’t look like

you run many quick singles, No 11 please.”

That the captain didn’t know about my burst of speed – I was

once London schools hurdles champion and subsequently ran

London Marathons in under four hours – is understandable.

We were two clubs newly amalgamated for this season so in the

dressing room for the first match we were rather like a

wedding, with the separate families staring at each other from

opposite sides of the room.

Now Raggie and Chicky and Bassa and J-Boy are my buddies and

I’ll miss their smiling faces as I head off for an early

winter.

For a while I had the third most dismissals of all 80

wicket-keepers throughout the Feeder League but a game at

Betteshanger spoiled it when I got two (nice) catches but the

scorecard was put through with the dismissals unattributed.

Professionals don’t have to put up with that.

And speaking of professionals, did you see Geraint Jones let

four byes through his legs on the second bounce in the Twenty20

final?

I haven’t done that all summer, though I don’t think that

automatically makes me a better wicket-keeper than him. Well,

not with my back and finger.