Another Season Over...

On a Sunday in late September, around 5 o'clock, a cry echoes across the playing fields of England. "Twenty Overs !!" To the uninitiated this means nothing, but to those in the know this marks the end of summer as surely as the first cuckoo marks the start of spring. Within an hour or so, the cricket season will be over. If, as occasionally happens, the last day of summer is a bright day, the sun will have a watery, yellow complexion and will have lost the brutal strength of July and August. Those blistering days will be consigned to memory and the skipper's bright red face will begin to assume its winter hue. More typically, the last game of the season is played in a torrential downpour, the ball sends up little plumes of water each time it pitches and cloying mud clings to every player's boots. Nobody wants to play in these conditions but everyone sticks at it as it is the last day of the season.

What lies ahead for these valiant, if slightly eccentric, men who insist on playing a summer sport in distinctly wintery conditions ? The first weekend of October marks the official start of the DIY season. However, there are some for whom the DIY season, like the football season, encroaches more and more into the cricket season. These poor souls are rarely seen and they lack that weather-beaten tan of the regular cricketer. For the rest, the departure from the bar after the last game is the point at which the cricket season ends and the dreaded DIY season really does start. Like soldiers in the trenches, the cricketer will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid what awaits him in October. Some have been known to sustain an 'injury' late in the season to avoid any tasks ''er indoors' has lined up for them. These injuries often don't clear up until March, by which time any major tasks can be put off until the end of the cricket season as 'there's no point starting that now'.

One desperate cricketer, particularly keen to avoid the DIY season, deliberately injured himself by repeatedly hitting the ball with his thumb rather than the bat, until it shattered horribly. Rather cleverly, he did this some two months before the end of the season so as not to arouse any suspicion from his long-suffering wife as to his actual motivation for this curious approach to batting. The last game of the season assumes a particular importance; everybody wants to play well. A dropped catch, a duck or a poor bowling spell will fester in the memory throughout the dark months ahead, whereas a good innings or a few wickets make the winter seem just a little less daunting. The most curious thing about the end of season is bidding farewell to people with whom a lot of time has been spent during the summer, but with whom they will have little or no contact until the following April. The only exceptions to this are the AGM and winter nets.

The cricket club AGM has many parallels with a wedding reception, in that it forces people who really don't like public speaking to stand up in front of their peers and make a speech of sorts. Generally, the skipper summarises the season, mentions everybody at least once and tries to break his own record for the number of times he can say the word 'basically'. The fixture secretary, in many clubs a jolly, round-faced chap but in some clubs a round-faced doom-merchant, talks about the fixtures that were positive, those that were OK and those that should never be played again. As a general rule, the fixtures to be dropped are either a long way from the fixture secretary's home or where he didn't score any runs. The treasurer then speaks. Often he will hand out several pages of close typed numbers that mean something only to him and a select few NASA scientists. The gathered members fall silent as they scrutinise the incomprehensible figures and then let out a collective groan when they reach the final page to see that subs will again rise next year. Actually, the role of treasurer is probably the most thankless in the club. Not only does it involve hours spent poring over loads of incomprehensible numbers and sending threatening letters to members periodically and for no apparent reason, it also involves retaining a team of 'heavies', ready to be despatched at a moments notice should a member fail to pay his subs on time or, even worse, to exceed his credit limit by as little as 2p. Once the speeches are over, the members adjourn to the bar before, suitably oiled, they return to their seats for the main business to begin. Every year there is at least one contentious issue, so contentious that within about three weeks of the AGM nobody can actually remember what all the arguments were about.

Once the AGM is passed, the winter hibernation can start in earnest. Some of the players are not seen or heard of again until the following spring when they emerge, with last year's mud still on their boots, having grown a healthy coating of fungus. Others, more diligent but rarely more talented, attend the winter nets, a somewhat pointless ritual at which sons try to maim their dad with hostile short-pitched bowling, or failing that, beamers, which can be lethal in the poorly lit hall. Others compete with each other to see how many balls they can lodge in the roof of the nets. In the cold hall, the bat hitting the ball sounds like a gun shot, as does the sound of the ball hitting the knee of the club's most unconventional fielder as he warms up for another season of bruises.

Winter passes slowly, with Christmas often bringing presents of new jumpers or whites. Somewhat bizarrely, these presents are often purchased by the very people (wives !!) who spend their summer actively opposing their other half's participation in cricket. Eventually, the clocks go forward, the evenings lengthen and the season is just around the corner. The early games of the season are often played on cold, damp days but with an enthusiasm generated by months sitting in front of the TV or assembling flat-packed cupboards. Poor performances are attributed to 'rustiness', generally by those who have attended the winter nets, whilst good performances are attributed to divine intervention or luck !! These are the days when everybody starts to re-familiarise themselves with people they haven't seen for months but with whom they will be spending the summer. Everybody marvels at how much the kids have grown since last season and, more pointedly, everybody wonders at how their fellow players have 'put on a few pounds' whilst unconsciously sucking in their own paunch. And so, it starts. runs, wickets, catches, mis-fields, exciting matches and bore draws until, once again, in late September somebody shouts "20 overs".