I never liked cricket as much as football but I still liked it. I never really got the chance to play at school, those in the school team always made sure they batted and bowled first and last. I did hit 10 of two balls then got out next ball but that was just a fluke. At school when cricket was being played I would mainly sit at the boundary and let the ball go past me. Payback for not getting a bat or a bowl!

At university I joined the cricket club but unfortunately my enthusiasm far outweighed my skills. My biggest problem in batting was my poor eyesight; it’s hard to hit a ball when you can’t judge where it’s going. In fact my poor batting did lead to an improvement in tea making and sandwich making. My bowling did improve slowly but I was no spin wizard like my granddad. And then one day I discovered that I could bowl a Chinaman (a leg break from a left hander) that would have been quite deadly if bowled more often.

One session in the nets quite literally put me on my knees. I was batting (using the term in the loosest possible sense of the word) when I got hit in the box area. It was a direct hit and the box was shattered. Mind you the bowler did happen to be built like a brick outhouse and the ball was going too fast for me to evade it. That taught me a lesson, not to tell him that Lancashire is not a patch on Warwickshire. I actually played for the university’s second team twice but only got to field. The first match was abandoned after a couple of overs due to a thunderstorm and in the second I did not need to bat and never bowled as the opposition were all out within 15 overs. In the first match I lent one of the opening batsman my bat as he had forgotten his. When he hit the ball it should have gone for four. Instead the blade of the bat went further than the ball and just missed the umpire at mid off. I didn’t know that the bat wasn’t properly knocked in.

I spent a couple of months on a training scheme which involved playing football and cricket with some kids. A couple of them were annoying so I forgot I was a slow left arm bowler and got one of them out with a Yorker that bruised his big toe. It must have been the beamer I bowled to him first ball that unsettled him. It only just missed his head.

I have since played in one Inter office match in which our office beat the Newcastle office. Whether just by sheer luck or a combination of skill or good captaincy by Slinger Smith we won. I even managed to get one not out, I must have fooled the fielders as the ball went in the opposite direction of where it was aimed at. My two overs of bowling were not as expensive as I feared. One of our fielders made two valiant catching efforts and ended with a bruise the size of a football on his chest