Cricket is about balls

England regaining the Ashes reminded me of my childhood. I was hit by a cricket ball in the epicentre of my sex life when I was about thirteen years old. I thanked God I was still a soprano. From then on, having been already hit on the nose when I was nine, I became very wary of cricket balls that bounced higher than ten centimetres. If anyone asked me to be the first batsman to face a fresh fast bowler, I told them to ‘f…find someone else’.

These revelations should tell those who know nothing about cricket and say ‘it’s boring’, that saying ‘cricket is boring’ is as daft as saying ‘sex is boring’. The fact that sex is boring is obvious, to some. I know sex is boring because my agreement to participate in it is, for obvious reasons, limited, and has been since I was thirteen years old. Headaches were another problem. How I fathered two children remains a mystery to me.

‘Cricket! Lovely cricket’, has been around a long time. They say it’s been played since Tudor times, since Elizabeth 1^st was Queen of England, from a time when we were kicking Spanish arse all over the globe. Had the Spanish played cricket, England may have rejected Protestantism and reverted to the Roman faith. Then again…Plus, had we English set out to conquer Europe instead of constantly protecting it from French and German tyrants and ogres, cricket could have been on a par with football.

Although we gave the World According to the British Empire, cricket, the myth about the English inventing football has now been exposed. We merely sorted it out. The Chinese were playing football before the birth of Jesus, as were the ancient Greeks, and the bloody Romans. I say ‘bloody Romans’ because there is another theory, and it is bloody.

It’s not widely known that when ancient Brits saw the Romans kicking a ball about they were impressed. So much so that they wanted to give it a try. Unfortunately, the Brits had not yet invented a ball of any shape or size and were too proud to steal one from the Romans. They had also noticed that Roman heads were very round - very round indeed - and the next time they had one available they hammered it into shape and gave it a good kicking.

The game took off. Teams painted themselves woad-blue and off-white and fixtures became commonplace. Tired of their heads being used as footballs, the Romans went back to Rome to invent corruption and took their balls with them. Throughout Britannia the great game went into decline. But it was not forgotten, especially north of Hadrian’s Wall, in a place we now call Scotland, a great place to be let out of gaol, apparently.

The Scots had noticed that since the Romans and the English Brits had been interbreeding, English heads had become increasingly round, and they took up the game enthusiastically. Having no pride they even stole the blue and white colouring scheme.

One small difference between the balls led to a great discovery. The Scots noticed that if they used The Wall to shoot against during training sessions, that unlike Roman heads, English heads tended to crack, then break. So they came up with the novel idea of wrapping them in stretched sheepskin, which made the balls last longer. They did the same thing with rotting animal guts and came up with haggis. I have to say that the Scots were canny enough not to kick haggis about. Too risky.

During one kick-about, a wrapped English head was thumped over The Wall. Their secret was out. When the English discovered that one of their own heads was encased in skin they were annoyed enough not to throw it back over The Wall, as had been the custom. Instead, they stormed The Wall and put paid to their nearest neighbour’s propensity for kicking English heads about by incorporating it, and their pretty little country, into our Empire.

By then, the English were toying with the idea of inventing proper cricket, but had not come up with a ball worthy of the game. After a few smacks with a lump of willow tree, their ball, made of cork imported from Portugal or Sardinia, went out of shape. Someone took another look at the Scottish ball…Bingo. So they wrapped their own balls in pigskin and stitched them together with chicken sinew. Now they could be battered mightily and still keep their shape. Game on.

Next week, if anyone’s interested, we’ll expose snooker balls for what they really are. Or we can talk about the Ashes. Either way, please bear in mind,

“a game is only as good as the balls with which it is played.”

Note to Wikipedia enthusiasts: don’t take any of the above for granted.