The Secret Cricketer: Dealing with small pests

The great thing about sport and cricket, in particular, is that it can be a great leveller, throwing together Drs, lawyers and accountants with builders, labourers and, in our case, rat catchers.

The minuscule Ben, or ‘Rentokil’ as he is more commonly known, runs his own pest control business, which includes the apocryphal story of a rat the size of a small dog and the day he found eight squirrels in a loft around a small table ‘like they were having a meeting’.

Given his height and own dental imprint, it’s often remarked on that he secretly has a squirrel outfit and goes undercover. Ben’s crime this week has been to openly say he’s not interested in playing first-team cricket, despite probably being one of the best players in the club.

This approach does not seem unusual these days and is frowned upon by the draconian selectors because in their day everyone wanted to play first-team cricket, apparently.

Having played in that era, I know that is just a romantic, rose-tinted notion and quite often there were stories of dragging the gamblers out of William Hill at lunchtime to play in the first team.

Things have changed but not always for the better.

Last week was interesting from a refuelling perspective. The opposition who previously were renowned for having a fantastic tea, not the best because that title will always be held by Hatherleigh CC, who often had three cold joints on the table with actual vol-au-vents with prawns and dressing from a thousand islands.

All this effort was seemingly done in exchange for a short speech of gratitude from the home captain and a round of applause for the tea ladies.

They were the type of ladies who can only be described as formidable, engendering respect and no little fear from even the most dysfunctional colt.

On one occasion, after one of our more mischievous youths was caught red handed throwing carrot cake that had been lovingly made, he was robustly ‘clothes-lined’ as he nonchalantly exited the tea room.

In those golden days, no one even remarked on it, other than to casually underpin a learning opportunity to the miscreant.

Our team is, in part, a reflection of society with different ages and experiences. We now have a woman cricketer, Evie. She puts the fear of God into the opposition, merely for the fact that they don’t want to get out to her.

There seems to be a high level of respect for female cricketers and her introduction to the team has been tentative to say the least. The recent report by Cindy Butts, the chair of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket found there to be racism, sexism and classism in the game.

It couldn’t be further from the truth in our team and Evie soon settled in with a comment about the 5ft 3 in Ben, saying that she recently saw him in M&S shopping for baby clothes to go out in.

This broke any ice and now Ben is pretending to be upset on grounds of bring vertically challenged and marginalised/oppressed. They say cricket mirrors life and it’s certainly true in this case.

On the field, we seem to be fighting above our weight or, it’s been said, meeting teams who have yet to have their full allocation of students return from university.

Parity will be restored when this happens and we will undoubtedly plummet like a stone before winning our last game of the season to evade the trapdoor. We don’t have any students, so this is as good as it gets for us.

Availability is always an issue and some players have different priorities. There are those that plan their weddings with cricket in mind and holiday out of season and those that don’t. The two will always clash and this week has been no different.

One of our key all-rounders has chosen to spend time with his partner because he’s played every week so far ‘and it’s only fair’.

The selection committee are far from happy.