My first five-for

Eventually you reach an age at which everything is about age, when you start to look back at what you have achieved rather than forward at what you might achieve, when you're no longer straining for the summit but trying merely to delay the descent, knowing all the while that one false move could plunge you off the mountain altogether. It's rare then, as you skitter on the scree of mortality, to do something for the first time, but last month, I took my first ever five-for.

No longer are the best figures of my life the 4 for 22 I took bowling leggies for a house 2nd team on the rutted playing field beside the Deaf School in Newcastle in 1990 (two caught behind, one caught at point, one bowled with a full toss). They're now the 5 for 36 I took bowling - bowling what, exactly? I'm not entirely sure: let's just say "slowly" - for the Authors against the Bodleian Library at Warborough & Shillingford, a ground so picturesque that we were watched briefly by tourists from New Zealand on a Midsomer Murders tour.

Given I spend most of my life imagining I'm surrounded by the sort of brief player profile the BBC used to project in yellow italics around cricketers in the eighties, this is a seismic change. I'm not sure it has fully sunk in yet, largely because it was so unexpected.

Cricket is the most capricious of sports. One week I was sunk in gloom and again contemplating retirement after a fifth-ball duck and four ineffective overs in a joyless draw against a team who didn't seem to care their spinner had an action that made Phil Taylor look like Jim Laker; the next I was at the bar buying two jugs with the match ball in my pocket as only the third bowler since the Authors team came together again four years ago to take a five-for (a fact that is gloriously ridiculous and hopefully profoundly irritating to the many better bowlers than me who are stuck on four, and therefore worth repeating at every opportunity).

We'd struggled to 175 in our 40 overs and the Bodleian seemed to be cruising at 92 for 2 when I was finally brought on to bowl the 23rd over. I was, by then, pretty frustrated. I'd come in at 10 and faced six balls for two not out and I was very aware that with time and runs running out, one bad over would probably be the end of my game: there would be no second spells here. Was that, I was wondering, really worth giving up covering Manchester United v Liverpool for? That's not to be critical of our captain, Charlie, but rather of me; it would be ludicrous to pretend I'm good enough to demand to be more involved.

And let's be generous here: perhaps this was Charlie needling me as Mike Brearley needled Bob Willis at Headingley in '81 (he's writing a book on captaincy and therefore probably involved in all manner of psychological experimentation), making sure that by the time I bowled I had the full radge on.

Nick Hogg, another Cordon contributor, struck with the first ball of the 26th over: 104 for 3 and the door was open. I sent down three and a bit overs in which not a lot happened. But in the final 28 balls I bowled, I took 5 for 17 to finish with 5 for 36, and the Bodleian were all out for 149. Gratifyingly, the final wicket came off the last ball of my eighth over, eliciting a huge groan from our opener, presumably in anticipation of the pleasure he would derive from hearing me talk about it at length for the rest of time.

The strange thing was, it didn't feel that great. "Was that your best sporting moment?" a team-mate asked in the car on the way home. In some statistical sense, in terms of impact on the game and wresting back momentum that seemed to be against us, perhaps it was. But I could name a couple of dozen that had felt better.

The truth is, I didn't bowl especially well: I bowled far better in taking 2 for 20 in seven overs against the V&A, and 1 for 32 in eight overs at Hambledon, even the 0-15 in three overs in the midst of a Church of England charge at Ascott House. There was too much leg-side filth - an annoying persistent fault when I try to push it through - and a couple of balls dragged short and wide outside off (one of which took a wicket through an absurd drag-on).

Only two of the wickets were to good balls - a stumping off a flat, skiddy one (I find the mechanics hard to explain but sometimes, through no great act of volition, my fourth finger gets out of the way and so the overspin is less pronounced), and a much quicker, shorter one to a batsman who came down the pitch, taking the top of middle. Two were standard straight balls that the batsmen missed - if we're being extremely kind, they perhaps dipped a little.

It's true there was a missed stumping (difficult and down the leg side from a ball speared at a charging batsman's toes), an edge that went just wide of slip and three or four mishits that looped just over fielders, but I never had the control I sometimes manage; even after the penultimate ball - shoved down leg trying to push it through - I was punching myself in the thigh in irritation.

This was just a day when luck went my way - payback, perhaps, for a season in which misfortune has compounded the uselessness of my batting. And that, perhaps, is the true cruelty of cricket. It's not just fickle but cunning too, offering a boost right at the end of the season that essentially guarantees that whatever thoughts of retirement I may have had, I'll still be playing next year.