POSTSCRIPT

With the season over, I can now rest easy in my bed at night.  For a few winter months I no longer need to worry about where my eleventh man or even my tenth man is coming from.  I need not care whether it rains or whether the Chip Goat field resembles an area of marshland on the Norfolk coast.  I can forget about those moments when an opposing captain has collapsed laughing when he has seen the wicket that has been prepared for them to play on at Chip Goat. 

Techniques in man-management can be consigned to the dust-bin (as least temporarily) as I don’t have to deal with team-mates squabbling and fast bowlers sulking. The batting order won’t keep me awake all night as I ponder whether Kevin’s 13 not out should promote him above Max who is batting like a scolded cat (not that I have seen many cats bat).  Time is always pressured during the cricket season.  At incredibly dull work meetings I always find drafting a batting order on the back of an agenda focuses my thinking for that important cup tie later in the evening.

The other cause of sleepless nights during the cricket season is that perennial dream (that I understand many cricketers suffer from) where you feel you are about to be timed out before taking guard at the wicket.  You are in the pavilion looking out, first one wicket goes then another and now its your turn.  You can’t find your protective box, the strap on one of your cricket pads breaks and just when you are nearly ready in the Kevin of time, you stand up and split your trousers.  You struggle to the pavilion door but the door is jammed and nobody can hear your shouts.  The only way out is through the toilet window.  Quite why I should experience this dream as an opening batsman I don’t know.  I suppose the dream is comparable to the one where you are running away from a mad axeman and you keep running slower and slower the more you try to speed up.  I am sure a psychiatrist would have a field day analysing this particular cricketing dream. 

The thought that perhaps cricket is becoming something of an obsession crosses your mind but is of course instantly dismissed.  After all it is not normal to go on holiday in the summer.  How unreasonable can your partner be expecting you to go to that wedding in June.  Weekends away should surely only take place when you are due to play away at Windy Sigton.  Above all never let your team-mates down, well not very often anyway.

Captaincy is certainly hard work, let nobody tell you it is easy, although the pain and problems that have come my way this season should not detract from the entertaining and relatively successful season Chip Goat have had.  It is a long time since we finished in the top half of the Langton league and the players that played in that winning Dormouse Cup final will have that memory to cherish forever.  Success always seems that much sweeter when you triumph in unexpected circumstances.  Chip Goat were never expected to win anything and it is always nice to prove your critics wrong.  Roll on those winter nets!

THE END