It Really Isn’t

Cricket: A fearsome game.

So this past Sunday I had what The Girlfriend often refers to as a “Shaun Moment”, which basically involves me doing something entirely irrational and more than a little silly. Examples of previous Shaun Moments would include the year I gave The Girlfriend a Nintendo Wii for Christmas, the month I decided to invest half my salary in lottery tickets, and the fateful night I decided to consume a large tumbler of what I now know was not cream soda but rather something called “absinthe”.

On this occasion however, I decided to forfeit my usual Sunday ritual of lying on the couch, breaking wind intermittently whilst eating roast chicken and reading the Sunday Times, and instead spend the day chasing a hard piece of leather around a field, in what was meant to be a gentle game of social cricket.

Now, I haven’t played much cricket since high school, back in the days when I often had differing opinions to my cricket coach, leading to endless debates about my role in the team. ( I thought I should open the batting for the team, he thought I shouldn’t be in the team)

Nevertheless, the lack of match practice didn’t really bother me, as I felt confident in my natural fitness, my arguable cricketing talent, and the fact that I would be up against a bunch of internet geeks who were more likely to humiliate me playing cricket online than on an actual field.

So it was with this false sense of bravado that I walked up to the wicket to bat, having not picked up a cricket bat in several months, and then it was only to try and gently tap the vagrant who I found sleeping under my car.

I’ve always thought of cricket as a bit of a soft sport. Sure, there are times when you may have to face 150km/h balls from a maniacal Pakistani fast bowler, but at this social level of the game, it’s more likely to be a dibbly dobbler computer programmer who can just about turn his arm over.

Five minutes of batting however, and I was beginning to question that school of thought, what with my big toe having been severely abused not once, not twice, but three times by a deadly accurate and fiercely aggressive dibbly dobbler. Added to that, my hip and arm resembled something that had been chewed on by a rabid dog, as I had earlier made the suicidal decision to dive into the batting crease, not realizing that with the bone hard pitch, this would be the equivalent of throwing myself into broken glass. If this were not enough, my knees then decided to pack in, no doubt out of pure shock, having not been forced to exert itself in this manner in close to seven years.

The end result saw me scratching around and scoring a fairly respectable 31 runs, having faced approximately 672 balls.(I’ve always believed in a steady and measured approach to batting). I even had a bit of a bowl and took a wicket with my first ball, before reverting to type and bowling, what coaches and fans alike would describe rather aptly as “a pile of shite”.

Unfortunately my hands let me down though, and I ended up dropping a catch off the batsman who would go on to win the game for the other team, leading to various jeers, curses and insulting remarks by both teammates and the crowd.

In addition to losing the game then, the damage inflicted on Shaun Oakes was particular heavy. With a big toe as large as my head, bits of sinew and bone hanging off my arm, and walking in a manner which suggests an eventful night in a Pollsmoor Prison cell, I am currently resembling a man who has been a victim of a vicious assault.

Which is why I will probably stick to rugby or bare-knuckle boxing in future. Cricket is just a tad too rough for my liking.

Oakes signing off.

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