Regular readers will know how much I enjoy my cricket, but
now that the test match series has started in New Zealand, I’m in a little bit
of a quandary because the time difference means that my old favourite, the
“ball-by-ball commentary” is tending to start off at about the time I’m
thinking of heading off to my bed of an evening, and by the time I drag myself
out from underneath the duvet, play is pretty much over for the day.
So…
Do I stay up and listen, thus risking a day of having a
tetchy and zombie-like presence for everyone who is forced into close contact
with me…?
Or…
Do I risk a night of insomnia and lying there in bed knowing
that there’s a game on and worrying that I don’t know how it’s unfolding…?
Because even if I crack and get up, “Just to have a quick check on how it’s
going…” I then run the risk of finding out that things are “Nicely poised” for
a “Bit of a classic” that I “Wouldn’t want to miss” or that they’re going so
disastrously wrong that I would need to stay up just to see how utterly awful
it could get…
I do have a theory that “my” team do always tend to play
better when I’m not actually listening, and the thing almost guaranteed to make
a wicket fall, or to stop a promising innings dead in its tracks is for me to
tune in and try to find out how things are going.
This is the kind of superstitious nonsense that keeps entire
armies of sports fans wearing their “Lucky Pants” come match day, or some other
such rubbish, but which does, at least, help me to try and get some sleep, even
though the theory is patently ridiculous…
Especially given the way that lot can play and drag me along
the terrifying roller-coaster ride that they tend to insist upon taking me on.
Regularly “Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” and so forth. It’s been a
long hard road we’ve travelled together down the years, but we do seem to be
rather stuck with each other now…
The first night was, rather thankfully a washout and so,
having reluctantly decided that I was far too tired to stay up, it turned out
that I didn’t miss anything anyway.
But when play did finally begin, the team I follow made such
a lousy start that I was far too frightened to sleep, although as things very
quickly went from bad to worse, I was rather grateful to have my bed to escape
to as the hands on the clock moved perilously close to midnight, and this on a
“school night”, too.
However, this did also mean that when I DID wake up in the
wee small hours like I normally do, instead of trying to turn over and make another
pointless attempt at grabbing another ten whole minutes of rest, I found myself
fretting and wondering and so I got up and headed towards the keyboard to crank
up the internet to find out just how bad it got.
It got pretty bad, to be honest, and I’m rather glad I
missed it, seeing as I would have had waves of angry adrenaline rushing around
my system and wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of getting whatever little sleep
that I did actually manage to get.
I can’t keep doing this to myself…
I try to convince myself that it’s only five nights on the
run, tops, and some of those are at the weekend so I don’t really need to worry
about the lack of sleep, and it is, after all, just a game…
But I don’t think that I’m even kidding myself with that
idea any more, so you might as well prepare yourselves. There may very well be
some rather insane late-night ramblings coming your way over the next couple of
weeks (it is, after all, nice to find the “extra time” to write, even if it
does turn out to be utter nonsense), or I
might just be far too tired to write anything very much.
Obsession…?
You worry about cricket and I worry about my cat. Some people seem not to worry at all. How do they do that?
ReplyDeleteI don't know, but I suspect that I wouldn't like them all that much...
Delete((Nice bit of early morning poetry there, by the way...)) :-)