6 The Last of the Recognised Batsmen

Down at Milltown’s compact cricket ground, Dennis, our indefatigable captain, is marshalling his troops for yet another assault on the league title. He’s feeling every one of his 55 years; on the morning after a particularly hard game, he’s just too stiff to roll out of bed. One day he’ll pack it in and spend his Sunday afternoons mooching listlessly round a garden centre. But not just yet. The problem is that he loves his cricket. Unlike most love affairs, however, his passion has become more intense as the years slip by. What started out as a mere pastime has developed into a magnificent obsession.

The decision - about when to hang up his cricket boots - won’t be his for much longer. The spirit is willing enough, but the flesh is beginning to weaken. His eyesight isn’t what it was either, and he refuses to play in glasses. The price of this vanity is being hit by the ball on a regular basis; this makes his eyes water, so he gets hit even more often. After a long innings his legs look like something out of a Francis Bacon painting: ‘Batsman Screaming’, perhaps.

Dennis has come to terms with the disappointments of last season: having no new silverware to brighten up the optimistically large trophy cabinet in the pub. It’s hard to cope with failure. It’s harder still to fail at all, since the Milltown and District Cricket League operates an egalitarian ‘everyone wins prizes’ policy. It means that most teams in the league end up with something tangible at the end of each season.

Talk of ‘silverware’ rings a little hollow, though, now that the league’s trophy budget is being sliced ever more thinly. Instead of lustrous metal, the trophies are cheap and nasty: just plastic sprayed to look like gold. On top of each one is a figure who either bowls or bats, designed by someone ill-acquainted with either cricket or human anatomy. The batsman looks like he’s throwing a stick for a dog; the bowler appears to be dancing a jig. The gold paint soon peels away; after a few weeks the figures appear not merely deformed, but leprous too.

There are trophies for winners, runners-up, best individual performances and most sportsmanlike team. There are commemorative medallions for plucky losers. There’s the ‘clubman’ award: given to good-hearted guys who, though useless at cricket, bring other talents to the summer game. Like turning out uncomplainingly every weekend, even though they’ll bat last (if at all), never get a bowl and field down at third man where the horseflies are. Or mowing the wicket every Friday night. Or shouting “Drinks all round” on a slow night in the pub.

So it’s actually quite an achievement for the Milltown XI to have ended up with nothing at all. Maybe this feat deserves a trophy too: ‘Most Undistinguished Team in the League’. The plastic figure could be seated disconsolately, head in hands. Something based on Rodin’s statue, ‘The Thinker’. ‘The Plonker’, perhaps. On current form, Milltown could probably keep the trophy in perpetuity.

Dennis has made some dramatic changes to the personnel. Now, having brought in seven new players, he reckons he's only three men short of a half-decent team. He wants to deliver his traditional pre-game pep-talk, so the team has convened in the pavilion. That’s what we call it, though it’s actually just a shabby pile of breeze-blocks and chipboard, with all the architectural allure of an allotment shed. It’s been put together, over the years, in piecemeal fashion - sprouting another lean-to annexe whenever we needed somewhere to keep the mower, make tea, or site a rudimentary toilet. If we carried on building in similar style, we’d soon have a sizeable shanty town.

The roller stays outside, padlocked to a tree. If anyone wants to go to the trouble of nicking it, they’re very welcome. It’s big, heavy and almost siezed up with rust. We’re sick of the sight of it. We’ve pushed the damned thing up and down the pitch for years, to no apparent effect. Despite our best efforts, the wicket is as unpredictable as ever. Batsmen don’t know whether the next ball will shoot along the ground, or whistle past their ears. In a vain attempt to prevent injury, the players strap on an intriguing variety of protective devices, mostly hand-made from old pads, bubble-wrap and gaffer tape. Batting on the infamous Milltown strip can be an agonising business.

Dennis crosses his legs gingerly as he thinks back to when he acquired his first cricket protector. He was just a lad: though glad to be getting a game or two for the team, he was embarrassed to be stuffing a folded-up copy of the Daily Mirror down his trousers before he went in to bat. He paid a visit to the sports shop in town, but became flustered on finding a woman behind the counter. Tongue-tied and red-faced, Dennis gesticulated towards a display cabinet with one hand, and offered a damp palmful of small change with the other. He left, hurriedly, with the cheapest cricket box in the shop. It proved to be a false economy; the few pennies he saved almost cost him his manhood.

It was shaped like half an avocado pear (the box, that is, not his manhood...) and was moulded in pink plastic. The viciously sharp, unpadded edges should have made Dennis think twice before parting with his pocket money. However, it wasn’t until he faced some seriously fast bowling that the box’s deficiencies became painfully apparent. He got a direct hit from a cricket ball, seaming in at him like a heat-seeking missile, from just short of a length. It had the same effect on Dennis’s groin (I’ll put it as delicately as I can...) as a pastry-cutter being pressed into freshly-kneaded dough. Forty years later, the memory can still bring a flush to his cheeks and tears to his eyes.

There’s a poisonous atmosphere in the cricket pavilion today: a heady pot-pourri of sweat, fungus, unwashed socks, cheap deodorant, horse liniment, athletes foot lotion, talcum powder, mildew, hand-rolled tobacco and unrestrained flatulence. It’s gloomy too; the grubby windows are shrouded with spiders’ webs, where the trussed-up corpses of unwary flies are marinading gently. A prawn salad sandwich, thoughtlessly abandoned under a bench at the end of last season, is giving off a pale phosphorescent glow. Scientists seeking the perfect conditions for the propagation of virulent bacteria need to look no further than Milltown’s premier sporting facility.

The cricket hut is essentially a masculine environment. Women - even those up to date with their typhoid jabs and blessed with strong constitutions - do not cross the threshold on match days. In any case, the wives and girlfriends of the Milltown XI have better things to do with their leisure hours than watch a bunch of men chase a red ball around a field.

It was different in the old days. There seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of good-hearted women who’d be only too happy to make sandwiches, bake scones and mash the tea. Visiting teams knew there would always be a good spread whenever they came to Milltown. It was some compensate for the inevitable bruises. Nowadays, alas, the players have to do everything themselves. ‘Tea’ is nothing more than a catering pack of salt & vinegar crisps and a few cans of industrial-strength lager.

No matter; the sun is shining today on Milltown’s cricket ground, and the players are easing themselves into the new season with a strict regime of isometric inertia. The smell of new-mown grass has the same effect on club cricketers as a boat of steaming gravy has on the Bisto Kids. It makes them close their eyes, adopt angelic expressions and sniff the air. The members of the Milltown XI still have an appetite for the game. Or, to judge from the paunches on display, maybe just an appetite. With Dennis’s inspirational team-talk still ringing in their ears, the players take to the field with confidence: a confidence that lasts right up to the moment that the umpire says “Play” and a new season gets underway.

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