As a child, I never really took to sport. This was despite the best efforts of my grandfather who collected all the Esso 1970 World Cup coins (I think I still might have them somewhere) and the FA Cup badges a couple of years later. I still have a pretty pristine football quiz book dating back to those years, too. I still don’t have a football team that I follow, despite having grown up on the outskirts of Manchester. Nowadays I will take a peek at the scores but that's more to gauge what the mood of people I speak to is likely to be than for any sense of affiliation.
At school they made us kick a ball about, or at least they tried to. I was usually found shivering on the muddy periphery waiting for the ordeal to be over so I could bang the mud off my boots and head off home. Once, the rather keen sports teacher was still kicking a heavy football against the end wall of the school when he miskicked it and it hit me on the head as I was still on mud removing duties and, kinetics being what they are, bashed my head against the wall a fraction of a second later. I think that was the moment I decided football would never really be for me, and the strange aerial ballet I would perform as the ball sailed unmolested past my toe tips in the unlikely event the ball was ever passed to me (usually more in hope than in expectation of usefulness on my part) only ever served to prove the point.
When we weren’t proving our incompetence on the playing field, we would be sent out “cross country running” for which I was equally unskilled, usually coming in second to last in front of the slowest lad in the class who was usually a good few minutes behind. This was no achievement because I think even I’d’ve had to be going backwards to be slower than him, or maybe he just stopped off for a crafty ciggy and was actually a potential Olympic sprinter.
Sport failed to inspire me and I opted out of it at the first opportunity at school in order to study, unbelievably it seems to me now, music instead. The gymnasium was still a requirement, though, despite being filled with untold perils and strange sweaty smells and it really never appealed. In the wider world, the blind tribalism that sports fans seem to have for their team always seemed a little bizarre to me and so I was always unlikely to embrace it. Somehow I came through the school system unscathed despite (or perhaps because of when I consider some of the beatings that got dished out) not having my own team to fly the flag for.
I still can’t fathom why so much hate can be vented over something that’s supposed to be something you enjoy just because of the colour of a shirt someone is wearing. It bewilders me that someone you admire and adore can become an object of derision and loathing when they put on a different outfit, despite being exactly the same person. Then I wonder, if it is the game itself that is so loved, why does losing to someone who’s obviously played that game very well inspire such venom? Doesn’t the sheer beauty of great play transcend personal allegiances? Then of course there’s the whole “we played brilliantly” thing which seems to deny the abilities of the group of players actually achieving the performance in favour of the skills of a group of spectators for their watching abilities. You see? I know a lot of people do understand this concept, but it remains a bit of a mystery to me.
I still can’t fathom why so much hate can be vented over something that’s supposed to be something you enjoy just because of the colour of a shirt someone is wearing. It bewilders me that someone you admire and adore can become an object of derision and loathing when they put on a different outfit, despite being exactly the same person. Then I wonder, if it is the game itself that is so loved, why does losing to someone who’s obviously played that game very well inspire such venom? Doesn’t the sheer beauty of great play transcend personal allegiances? Then of course there’s the whole “we played brilliantly” thing which seems to deny the abilities of the group of players actually achieving the performance in favour of the skills of a group of spectators for their watching abilities. You see? I know a lot of people do understand this concept, but it remains a bit of a mystery to me.
So sport still didn’t move me, not until the long summer of 1981.
In those days daytime TV seemed to mostly consist of either the test card or Test Match Cricket, and for many years this had just been something to get away from. In 1981 however, there was the England (and Wales) versus Australia Ashes series to watch and I gradually got sucked in to following the games. Maybe there was something in the air that year that was a bit “crickety”, because I seem to remember reading “Life, the Universe and Everything” about that time too, which might also have helped to stir the pot of my interest. At that time, I wasn’t an addict, I could take it or leave it, but gradually I started to understand how this strange game worked and, to me, it seemed amazing.
Eighteen months later, in December 1982, I attended the only school reunion I’m ever likely to. It was only six months after we’d left and I think it was more of a follow up thing more than anything, just to see how we were surviving in the big wide world. I remember being in the Library and getting fairly tanked up on cheap white wine because of my usual social angst, when I got cornered by Mr. Parr. I’m not convinced he’d ever actually taught any of my classes, but he was a decent enough fellow and was obviously going around trying to make conversation with any of the socially awkward of us who perhaps looked a bit lost in the crowd. We got chatting and somehow the conversation got around to cricket and, somewhat bizarrely, I managed to have a conversation about this mysterious sport, which I knew next to nothing about, for the better part of an hour. I seem to remember, through my wine-soaked memories, just saying “Botham” a lot and maybe throwing in the odd “Gower” for luck, and letting him do most of the talking, but it doesn’t matter. By the end of that hour I think I was pretty much hooked on a sport that has entertained me ever since.
In later years I followed Test Match Cricket (and the odd one day match) on television until it sadly drifted onto TV channels I either didn’t have or didn’t want, and in the meantime I discovered “Test Match Special” on the radio, which has ultimately been my salvation when it comes to following the England (and Wales) Cricket team as they have spent the subsequent thirty years trying their very best to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and, possibly, getting just a little bit of insight into what the tortured mind of a supporter of a club feels like when they let him down. I still get into trouble though. When I suggested to someone that I thought that New Zealand actually deserved to win a certain game a few years ago because both sides had played a pretty even series pretty well and were fairly well matched, the avid England (and Wales) supporter I was talking to really couldn’t grasp what I was talking about at all.
Maybe I really never was designed to be a club supporter after all. Perhaps I’m just too even handed, who knows? Some might criticise the ridiculous number of hours I’ve spent listening to the game on the radio as a colossal waste of time, but it’s something I really enjoy, and even people who don’t appreciate or enjoy the game would be hard-pressed not to find the banter of TMS entertaining.
Anyway, the latest Ashes series starts tonight and I’m looking forward to it. I dream that one day I might be able to actually follow the tour round as a member of the crowd, but I don’t think I’ll ever be that wealthy, so I’ll enjoy it the way I always do, via the radio. At least nowadays I can see the highlights as we now have that TV channel in our little corner of the world. Naturally, I hope England (and Wales) will do well, but nearly thirty years of following them means that my expectations aren’t very high, but I do hope that this time they do at least make a contest of it.
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