First game of the season v schoolboys.
I’d been day dreaming cricket all winter. In dreamland the bat was always aloft; acknowledging years of toil .
I was also netting in my bedroom, pads and gloves on, in front a large mirror. Ready, confident, what chance a ton first dibs? It wasn’t impossible; hundreds weren’t going short in the county championship. They were six centurions in Somerset v Middlesex.
All those shots in the mirror over the winter; batting was never easier. The absence of a ball had something to do with it. I netted 10 minutes before the game. I was bowled too many times to count. A watching captain dropped me from 3 to 5 in the batting line up.
We met in the 1st XI Pavilion. A few of us inspected the wicket only to be told ‘piss off you are not playing the 1st team today, you are not good enough.’ It was put a bit nicer than that.
We played a development side instead on a lower field across the road- humiliatingly within the sight of the big game between Harrow School 1st XI and Middlesex Academy. One or two grumbled ‘bloody cheek, how dare you, we’ve been playing against the XI for a century’.
Harrow had 4 first class cricketers in their side and by all accounts a future England captain in Sam North East. I was going to ask him if he had any tips or even if he could spare, lend a hundred. He’d scored 17 hundreds when he was 13- all in one season.
I went in at 30 for 3 and took 30 minutes to score 1 run. I was bowled on 2, stepping outside leg to make room for a cover drive.