Despite the title, this is the story of a cricket match.
Please don’t be deterred by any lack of knowledge of the sport, we’re in the same boat here. Just bear with me, okay, and I’ll explain stuff as we go along.
About a hundred years ago I attended, for reasons not relevant to this tale, an Afrikaans-speaking boarding school in a town called Newcastle in South Africa’s Drakensberg Mountains.
There I had the privilege of being a ‘sot’, the local word for what in English Public schools is called a ‘fag’.
I was basically the valet, dogsbody, servant or slave of another anglophone who went by the splendid moniker of Lionel Bartholomew Wotherington.
(Could have been Warmington, or is that where Dad’s Army was situated?)
His initials say much about the family predilection with cricket.
Cricket fact 1: LBW stands for Leg Before Wicket, one of a confusing number of methods for a batsman (women were not allowed back then, in school or in cricket) to be dismissed.
LB, as he was universally known, was not the worst prefect I could have been indentured to, being a less avid aficionado of the Marquis de Sade than most of his contemporaries.
The school cricket team, of which he was captain and star batsman, had a match in some ghastly town on the Transvaal border, to which LB decided to travel on his ancient pre-(Boer?) war motorcycle instead of the team bus, and also that I, in my role as bag-carrier, should accompany him.
The less said about the trip the better as, dressed in shorts and a tee-shirt and clutching his huge bag of bats, boots and unmentionables, I clung on with closed eyes as we traversed the high passes of the mighty Drakensberg, arriving, safe and terrified, to discover that the rest of the team had not. A phone call had been received to say that their transport had malfunctioned and they would be arriving later.
'No problem,’ declared the bold LB. ‘We’ll just start without them.’
When asked, laughing, if he was a one-man team, he pointed to me.
‘Two,’ he announced. ‘That should be adequate for the task in hand.’
Fortunately he then proceeded to win the toss and chose to bat first.
I, of course, had no kit, and LB refused to lend me his reserves (Don’t be ridiculous, was his dismissive retort), so I approached the opposition for a bat and pads.
I should perhaps explain here that at 12-years old I was quite small.
More accurately, I was about four foot six, with a physique most flatteringly described as scrawny.
The pads, which are designed to protect the shins and knees, came up to my chin, and the bat was as big as, and significantly heavier than, me.
When I pointed out to LB that I could not lift the wretched thing, he was unperturbed.
‘You won’t have to, I’ll keep the strike.’
Cricket fact 2: There are two sets of stumps, or wickets, one at each end of a 22-yard stretch of grass (the pitch). There is a batsman at each of these; one defending his stumps against the ball being propelled by the bowler, the other looking on uselessly.
Cricket fact 3: After six balls (an over) a different bowler begins from the other end, so LB’s plan was to score a single run on the last ball, thus facing the next over.
All I had to do was watch for five balls, which he smote mightily to distant parts of the surrounding countryside, and then stumble the vast length of the pitch without falling over.
When the bus eventually arrived, good ol’ LB had amassed over sixty runs and I hadn’t yet faced a ball.
The opposition, the Vengeful Wildebeests, if memory serves, were irate. ‘Jolly well played, young fellow,’ LB told me. ‘I’ll let you have a crack at them now!’
I’d have objected, but was rendered speechless with terror. Vernon Wentzel, their fastest bowler, who LB had previously described as ‘quite scary’, glowered at me.
‘I’ll enjoy killing you, puny termite,’ he snarled winningly, in his clipped Afrikaner accent. I stood huddled behind my giant bat and pads, over which I could see his fearsome approach, and closed my eyes.
Something struck the bat, sending it flying from my hands.
‘One,’ called LB cheerily, loping down the pitch towards me, and indicating that I should do likewise.
I scurried off, joyously alive, when LB called again.
‘Another!’
The ball had been thrown at the stumps, missed, and rolled off down the field with another chap in hot pursuit.
Vernon was unamused.
As I hirpled back towards my original start point, the ball arrived in Big Vern’s hands.
I was still about a furlong from safety when he roared with glee and hurled the ball past me towards my stumps.
Cricket fact 4: If the ball hits the stumps while the batsman is running between them, he is out. The ball missed the stumps and skipped merrily over the far boundary.
Although at that moment unaware of it, I had just scored six, the highest possible total from a single ball, usually achieved by smashing the ball over the boundary without a bounce.
Mr Wentzel walked back so far for his run-up that I thought he was going on holiday to Rhodesia.
Alas, as I once again cowered behind my bat, he turned, charged towards me, with eyes flashing death, and propelled his missile with such force that I saw nothing of it.
I opened my eyes to a noise like a half-full match-box being trod underfoot.
Turning my head, I was elated to see my stumps in smithereens, and the fielders plucking splinters from their foreheads.
I was out, alive, and euphoric.
LB was on his knees, helpless with laughter.
‘Well played, young Ayr, well played!’