Jonathan Wilson

The first game back

The first time this year you had fun playing cricket

Jonathan Wilson
Jonathan Wilson
08-Aug-2016
The best preparation? One more gentle session  •  Michael Dodge/Getty Images

The best preparation? One more gentle session  •  Michael Dodge/Getty Images

You get back from the Euros in France exhausted, under-exercised and bloated. You have four days at home before a walking holiday in Austria and Switzerland. A team you've played against are short and ask if you can fill in for a T20. You agree, offering the pre-emptive excuse that you are essentially foie gras on legs.
It has rained and the outfield is slick. In the first over, the ball is edged above and wide of you at backward point. You chase, fall readily into a slide for the first time since you damaged your shoulder at the end of May, gather the ball smoothly and, as you keep sliding, have the wherewithal to toss the ball to a team-mate. It feels vaguely professional. You are encouraged.
By the final over you are stationed on the square-leg boundary. A ball is pulled to deep midwicket. Sprinting to your left, you think you will cut it off, but it skids on the damp grass. At full tilt, you throw yourself into the path of the ball. It skips up, is diverted a fraction squarer. At full length, you reach up your right hand and, just as the ball is bouncing over your torso, knock it down into your chest. Your shoulder sticks in the grass. Your body keeps going. You pivot up on your neck, like Jurgen Klinsmann in the 1990 World Cup final, spend an age with your legs off the ground, then flop to earth, the ball somehow wedged in your unusually paunchy midriff. You have been ungainly and spectacular, and have saved two.
You bat too high at four. This is not a team you've ever played for before. You may not play for them again. There is a tremendous sense of freedom. You block your first ball. You flat-bat your second to cover, take a couple of paces, stop, and just as you're about to shout "No!", realise to your horror that your partner is charging towards you. You don't even bother diving, but the bowler fumbles the throw and you survive.
You've netted against this bowler in the past. On this pitch, at his limited pace, anything short sits up. You pull to midwicket and run two. The next ball isn't quite as short but you're into position quickly and give it the full Ricky Ponting, wrists rolled, splice skyward. It finds the man on the boundary and you run one. It was the best shot you've hit this year.
You are out for six, bowled playing too ambitious a drive to a decent delivery that moved away. But for the first time this year, you had fun playing cricket. You did a couple of good things. You won with an over and a half to spare.
You are aware that this is the danger of your personality: your solution to any problem is to do it more, do it harder. You are not good at doing it wiser or doing it better
You go to Austria and Switzerland. You walk, a lot. You lose some of the tournament belly. You develop pains in your toes that marmot oil only partially relieves. Descending through a wood near Gasteig, you feel something bite the index finger on your right hand. You look down and see an insect, perhaps three-quarters of an inch long. It flies off, leaving a small spot of blood on the knuckle. By the following morning your finger is itchy, bright red and swollen like an overstuffed bratwurst. You wonder whether this may make it easier to turn the ball.
If your first (batsmanless) net session after your return is anything to go by, the bite, still an angry yellow volcano, causes you to push it down the leg side even more than usual. The only consolation is that, for no reason you can discern, you are suddenly able to bowl at left-handers. Again and again, coming round the wicket, you are able to pitch the ball on or just outside off stump and see it jag away against the angle of delivery. It is, you're almost certain, because of a kink in the Astro, but you'll take anything that makes you look good to the legions of dog-walkers.
You tire quickly. Your rotator cuff aches. A month of writing 4000 words a day and eating media-centre baguettes, followed by a fortnight of walking 25km a day with a 30kg pack, it turns out, does not make you fit for cricket. Your run-up has lost any sense of spring, your arm is coming over too low.
You are conscious of the danger of over-training; you suspect your early-season problems were at least partly caused by over-training. You stop after 120 deliveries. You are nagged by a sense of laziness. You are aware that this is the danger of your personality: your solution to any problem is to do it more, do it harder. You are not good at doing it wiser or doing it better.
You have six days till your first game back after ten weeks. You decide the best preparation is one more gentle session.
You jog home, weary but with a nagging sense that you could have done more.

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