When Outlook invited me to write an essay for their cricket special, I said, “Sorry! Don’t know a thing about the game. It’s like I’m colour-blind, you know? But for cricket.” “Whoa,” said the man from Outlook. “You must be a total social pariah, right? So tell us what that’s like! Amazing. Seven-fifty words by next week?”
“Wait, but,” I spluttered. Too late. He’d put the phone down.
It’s not just cricket: it’s sports in general. I get no thrills watching teams of Neanderthals kicking an inflated bladder of polyurethane between goalposts or muscle-bound viragos in short skirts slamming fluorescent green missiles across a red clay court. In the case of cricket, it’s one team whacking a shiny red sphere so that the other members of the team can, ummm..., well! There we go. I can’t even understand the objective of the game. Fellows in white run about. The crowd roars. The score changes. And then one of the fellows...
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