Jonathan Wilson

I'm not ready to retire, even if my body is

Redemption, fate and hope are words that swirl around in the mind as the dreaded day looms closer

Jonathan Wilson
Jonathan Wilson
04-Jun-2016
Time to enjoy the game as a spectator? Not when your bowling arm is still attached to its socket  •  Getty Images

Time to enjoy the game as a spectator? Not when your bowling arm is still attached to its socket  •  Getty Images

Because you've been ill and haven't been to the gym in ages, you don't cancel your training session the day before you go on tour. This is a terrible mistake. You are erratic in the first game, struggling with your run-up, but get a questionable lbw with a flatter, quicker one. You are not bad enough to prevent a victory by three runs.
The pitch for the second game features a significant right-to-left slope as you bowl. It's the penultimate Saturday of the football season. Sunderland are down 1-2 against Chelsea when you go out to field. You tell yourself you'd willingly bowl abysmally if Sunderland come back to win.
Your run-up disintegrates entirely. Your first over is abysmal. Your second is better, and from the second-last ball, you dive to your right and deflect a crisp straight drive onto the stumps, running out the non-striker. You are not sure how deliberate it was but you claim it. Your third over is good and you get another lbw with a ball that drifts in and straightens down the hill. You go to pot after that but are not bad enough to prevent a win by 25 runs. Sunderland have implausibly scored twice in three minutes to win 3-2.
You turn up early for the third game and work in the net. Your run-up is back and you find the right tempo. Your side bats first. Early wickets go down, and although you recover, it's soon apparent your total is nothing like enough. By the time you come on, the game is all but over. It is hot. You ache from a third game in three days. Your run-up is fine but your arm feels as though it's being controlled by a distant and vindictive puppeteer. The strip seems impossibly vast, the batsmen huge. You bowl as badly as you've ever bowled, so badly you're not actually that expensive. You hasten a defeat by six wickets.
You tell yourself unconvincingly that you will not retire. Your redemption, you try to persuade yourself, when it comes, will be greater for the depth of the abjection. If it comes.
Your run-up is fine but your arm feels as though it's being controlled by a distant and vindictive puppeteer. The strip seems impossibly vast, the batsmen huge
You thank your captain and say goodbye. "Good..." he says cheerily before a fractional hesitation as he thinks of an appropriate word. "Competitiveness." You barely sleep that night. You wonder if that is the end. You go to the gym the next day and, as you begin your fourth set of bench presses, you feel a sharp pain in your elbow.
You go back home to Sunderland and see them avoid relegation. You wonder whether the Faustian pact was really worth it. You go for a run along the beach. After the illness, your fitness is returning. You go for a couple of drinks after the game and walk home from the pub. It turns out the insole is creased, so you wake up with a blister on the bottom of your big toe.
After a five-day break you return to the nets. Your shoulder is tight. You wonder whether the problem all along was a fatigued rotator cuff, which at least sounds professional. You accept an invitation to play a game for a different team. Twice you slide to try to cut off boundaries; twice the ball bounces over your hand. A catch loops over your outstretched arm at mid-off. Your first over is a maiden, but then the leg-side full tosses return and a short midwicket boundary ensures full toll is taken. But you have four decent lbw shouts turned down. You realise that, badly as you've bowled this season, in 19 overs there have also been two missed stumpings, two drops and two instances when a ball has plopped a couple of yards from a fielder.
You bat happily high in the order. You defend a couple of balls well, then work a single. Punching a ball off the back foot in the next over, you are caught by a ridiculous full-length diving catch three inches off the ground at short cover. You should be devastated but feel oddly light-headed. Fate, you realise, has overplayed its hand. Nobody can be that unlucky. You are being tested.
You return to the nets, with a batsman this time. You work on keeping arm up and head high. You realise you've been closing off your left shoulder. You open it. The ball starts to come out nicely. A few balls dip. A couple of balls turn sharply. You try a much quicker one, drag it down short and wide of leg stump, by far the worst ball you've seen all day. You glance up and see Mark Nicholas walking past.
This, you realise, is Fate's last trick. You know you are bowling better than you were at this time last year: a little quicker, a little more dip, a little more turn. Once you start pitching it in vaguely the right place during a game, wickets will follow. They must follow. Misfortune, weirdly, has inspired confidence.
But the next day your right shoulder and left shin ache just as much as they always do. And you reflect that there's nothing so dangerous as hope.

Jonathan Wilson writes for the Guardian, the National, Sports Illustrated, World Soccer and Fox. @jonawils