The Beamer

I’m no Dylan Thomas expert but when the famed Welsh poet described Swansea as an “ugly, lovely town” I’m sure he was describing it with great reverence. It was his home after all, yet somehow you can’t help but feel he hated and loved the place all at once. A contradiction in terms that may well be but I feel the same about cricket, this stupid little game that fascinates and frustrates at the same time. One minute you feel you have conquered it, the next, well, it conquers you. A bad workman should never blame his tools yet with the tools God gave me to play the game I feel justified in blaming them. In other words, why can’t I be consistent? The power of the mind dominates in all sports and God gave me an inconsistent one. Thanks to him/her (depending on your point of view) God gave me the cricketing equivalent of bipolar disorder, not helped by the fact I suffer with diabetes. Unless it’s kept in check, diabetes can have a debilitating effect on your game as the lev...

Apologies for not posting a team of the week for the past fortnight, it’s a poor excuse but I was away in France appeasing my poor cricket widow of a wife on a week’s long holiday. We stayed at a Eurocamp site in the South if you really wanted to know and very good it was too. According to the late Harry Thompson, author of Penguins Stopped Play and inventor and editor of Have I Got News For You, there are five stages of a cricket widow. Naturally it starts at stage one, where said wife/girlfriend is keen for you to play, supportive even. She even comes to watch until she realises she knows nothing of the game and finds it as tedious as I do painting walls and doing other DIY nonsense. Suffice it is to say, the stages deteriorate from here on in until it reaches Stage Five where the enthusiasm has evaporated and the only encouraging words she can muster is “You and your fucking cricket” as you walk out the door hopeful of success with bat or ball. This begs the question, ...