The Secret Cricketer: Keeping busy on a soggy Saturday

The recent, if predictable, deluge that only falls on Saturday afternoons in the summer has allowed the team to have a unique bonding opportunity. 15 men in a small, spartan room that smells of damp with notes of ammonia drifting from the adjacent rudimentary trough that doubles as the gentlemen’s WC.

The initial few seconds of uncomfortable male silence is enough to get the synapses snapping into a creative storm about how to pass the time until the rain stops.

Corridor cricket is a reliable standby that usually gets suggested by the younger players. The older lags amazingly still produce a newspaper and pen from somewhere and circle horses to make themselves a small fortune.

Doctor was singled out, quite rightly for having a fountain pen. As an indicator of how much the focus on minutiae had become, he was also derided for untidy circles around his horses of choice.

I never knew you could conduct such a thorough psychological assessment based on a person’s ability to draw a small circle but it transpires it’s quite accurate.

The rules of corridor cricket are incredibly complex and no one ever quite knows what’s going on. It’s like the sporting equivalent of ‘Mornington Crescent’. I definitely know that if the ball bounces once and is caught one handed, then that’s out.

Bizarrely, someone usually covers half of the tennis ball in plastic tape to replicate swing, but this has no impact whatsoever. Some of the younger players always have electrical tape on their person for this very reason.

Sometimes, if enough people appeal then, it’s out regardless of what’s happened.

This usually takes pace when someone has been in for a long innings. A long innings in corridor cricket is 10 balls or so. The best tactic to stay at the batting crease is to leave the ball as effectively as you can.

If the ball hits you anywhere, that can be deemed out, depending on the umpire or group consensus. These games can be played in a highly febrile atmosphere where there is no winner and no one keeps score. It does, however, pass the time effectively, in between checking the weather en-masse.

The pessimists always think it should be called off so they can spend the precious free time away from home hopefully pursing their chosen interest in drinking, gambling or romantic liaisons.

It’s on wet days that you find out more about team-mates. Where they work, their backstory, sometimes even where they live. This is what makes sport a great leveller, no one generally cares about social status or other divisions. The main thing is do you like someone’s character and enjoy their company.

I found out recently that our wicketkeeper, Tubs, has in the past been awarded a nationally recognised scientific award for his contribution to medicine. I was horrified to find out how old I was when George, our neuro diverse 15 year-old, had no idea of Tub’s reference to the TV series ‘Breaking Bad’.

He later went on to describe an opposing player as ‘that old man’ who I knew he was at least ten years younger than me.

Without being trite, it’s so positive having him playing as he is instinctively honest and we are keeping a list of his phrases and sayings. One that gets repeated is ‘I don’t like that’. Usually delivered with a dry tone after someone has told a poor joke.

Tubs has ideas that he is the epitome of sartorial elegance. He was taken off at the knees by George asking quite innocently ‘why are you wearing those?’ about his bright yellow corduroy trousers. No one ever found out but suspected they were bought by a secret love interest.

Ultimately there was no cricket. 15 men of different generations were kept off the street and out of trouble for a whole day doing nothing in what was effectively a gaol cell.

They all seemed quite happy about it, accepting that days like this are all part of a cricket season and secretly we’d be gutted if there wasn’t at least one day like this a year.