Cricket - the pain and the pleasure

I think cricket has been a saviour for me and while it has always caused pain and soreness it has given me something to try and get fitter for and has kept me moving, so its return at the weekend was a source of considerable excitement. It was a source of humiliation when younger - how do you explain your legs simply would not allow you to run a three? how indeed can you yourself understand that without diagnosis? Thankfully I managed to accept what I could not understand and to move on. Twice I have been hospitalised after a game with "blood" in my urine. Of course neither time was it blood, rather it was McArdle's Disease causing my muscles to breakdown after over exertion - "rhabdomyolysis" to use the correct term. Sadly on neither occasion was my CK (Creatine Kinase) level checked, which might have led to diagnosis at a younger age. If you have such an instance after exercise always consider that McArdle's and muscle breakdown may be what you are experiencing. Every week after a game I would be stiff and sore, walking like an aged John Wayne, after a four day cross country horse trek, but by the next weekend I would just about be ready to go again

Because cricket has given me far more pleasure than pain. The ability to compete- I remember my House Master at school, Mr Perry, who wrote on my report that  cricket in the summer term had brought out a confidence in me not before witnessed. I had made the school team, having been hopeless at all other sport. I suddenly had a standing, and a place, a group of team mates, a degree of respect - Captaincy of the House team, a place where I could catch better than most. Recently, at an Old Boys dinner one of my team mates from that era recalled my fielding at silly point, or short leg, 40 plus years on. At University too I scraped into the XI and enjoyed the camaraderie that team sport brings. M would not allow any other team sport to  entice me, as in no other sport would my lack of strength, or of explosive power, allow me to hold my own. A good eye, sharp reflexes and judicious  running between the wickets have always enabled me to compete at a reasonable level on the field and thereby to enjoy all that goes with our glorious game.

So it was a real pleasure after lockdown to be back on the field on Saturday, to take charge of hand sanitiser breaks and then to keep wicket, pretty averagely, for 30 overs. My son would say I dropped a catch of his bowling - had he managed to bowl it a little quicker it would have reached me would be my response. There were byes, too many, but at 58 I consider anything down the legside a wide - umpires it seems are never keepers! yesterday I was far less sore than in prior years,  18 hours fasting before the match I am sure helped, as I was in ketosis, and my body was thus not seeking to get its energy from glycogen, (which by the age of 58 you would have hoped it would have worked out for itself that it can't!) plus the work I have been doing to get fitter. Cricket has been a reason to keep trying to do that. Soon I fear I will have to find another reason. But for this year there will be more matches to play, catches to take, and hopefully I'll get the wield the willow soon, rather than just the hand sanitiser bottle. Equally  we will hopefully soon be back to post match beers and a social tea between innings. That will be the icing on the cake.