The Pain in Rain

Good old cricket. Just when you think the game is treating you kindly and you've spent a lovely afternoon in the sunshine, and taken a couple of wickets, it comes back to bite you with a vengeance.

This week's match was a thoroughly miserable affair played mainly in a persistent drizzle on a cold day. The much needed warm up prior to play further exposed my weak right knee which feels as if there is a sharpened stanley knife blade floating around the joint.

My batting was a carbon copy of last week's innings. Same number of balls faced, same pathetic shot, same flattened off stump, and same score (0).

Going out to field was horrible. It was cold. It was wet. In the first over, I dived to my right for a catch and the VERY hard cricket ball slapped into my right palm. I didn't hold on and my hand just went numb.

In the next over, I crouched to stop one travelling fast along the ground but the aforementioned knee prevented me reacting as quick as I would like. It missed my hands and clattered me in the privates. I felt physically sick and nearly had to go off.

It got worse.

I was brought on to bowl and the combination of my slow pace, a dead pitch and a wet ball meant that I was publicly massacred. To top it all, I missed a caught and bowled chance which slammed in to my other hand so that one got numb too.

Predictably, I was removed from the attack and staggered over to my fielding position. Both hands were stinging, my wotsits were throbbing so much I felt sick, I had induced the ire of my team mates with a woeful bowling performance and two missed catches, I was freezing cold and I was wet.

I need medication. I need rest. I need to re-embrace retirement!