Jonathan Wilson

Cricket equals pain

Your body hurts, your mind rebels, and your spirit can't handle the world changing around you

Jonathan Wilson
Jonathan Wilson
27-Jun-2016
Is a piece of fielding a good effort if no one saw you do it?  •  Getty Images

Is a piece of fielding a good effort if no one saw you do it?  •  Getty Images

The end of the ground furthest from the pavilion falls away sharply, dropping perhaps ten or 12 feet in the ten yards before the boundary. You have netted well. You feel good. You are looking forward to bowling. You swoop cleanly on a couple of balls edged towards backward point. You smell wickets. You are due. This is your time.
The ball is edged through a vacant third slip. You give chase. Your body for once feels right. Your chase is fluid and quick. The ball accelerates down the bank. You dive. For once, you time it perfectly. About two feet from the painted line, you make contact on the ball with your right hand. After twice being defeated by awkward bounces the previous week, the firm slap of leather on palm is welcome. The grass is greasy from the morning rain. You keep sliding. The ball has stopped and gets further away as you keep going down the slope. There is a pleasant sensation of weightlessness.
You clamber to your feet, scuttle back to the ball and lob it in. The batsmen have run two. Nobody is quite certain what has happened. Because of the slope, they can't see you. You are believed but that's not really the point: you have just pulled off the greatest piece of ground fielding of your life and nobody saw it.
It's only as you jog back to backward point that you realise something is wrong. Your right arm is limp, seems to hang lower than it should. Your knees hurt even more than normal. Surreptitiously - you don't want anybody to think you're criticising the bowlers by warming up - you try to practise a delivery. Your arm gets to the horizontal and there is an intense pain through the deltoid.
You think it might perhaps go away. It doesn't. There is a stiffness running down the side of your neck and the whole rotator cuff feels tight. A lump appears in the rhomboid minor on the left side. You admit you cannot bowl.
It doesn't matter. Your side fields superbly and the pitch is awkward. The opposition is bowled out for 112. Your captain graciously lets you bat at four. Your shoulder makes pulling impossible. You scratch around, score 4 (three of them overthrows) and then play a stupid shot to a ball that isn't as much of a half-volley as you think.
You have one more game before you head off for two months of work and holiday. Except you don't because your shoulder won't heal in time. You can barely sleep because of the pain. You go for a massage. The Hungarian woman with the terrifyingly blue eyes always laughs at how tight you are but this time she seems vaguely sympathetic as she tortures you back towards manoeuvrability. You explain you were diving to stop a boundary but she doesn't seem fully au fait with cricket.
Finally, feeling bloated and unwell, you force yourself to exercise. You do 60 press-ups. It's okay. The next day you go for a run. Your body clanks. There is no pleasure in it.
"I'm 39," you say. "Too old for this."
"But you went for it," she replies as she grinds an elbow into the tender shallow above the scapula. You can't work out her tone. Is she mocking? Admonishing? Impressed at your raw heroism?
"There was a hill," you say.
"Hills," she repeats, in a tone of what-can-you-do?
You go to Paris to cover the Euros. As ever in a tournament you work long hours, eat badly, drink too much and sleep too little. Your bed is too soft so your back aches each morning. Your shoulder is getting no better.
Finally, feeling bloated and unwell, you force yourself to exercise. You do 60 press-ups. It's okay. The next day you go for a run. Your body clanks. There is no pleasure in it. After five minutes your heart is pounding.
You plod along the Seine, red-faced. At each step you feel a blast of heat bouncing off your torso. Cutting back to your hotel to try to avoid the business of the Place de la Bastille, you run into a market. You turn off down a side street. Queues for restaurants spill into the road. You turn again but find your way blocked by a crowd of Orthodox Jews in black coats and fedoras. So you take another side street. There is a 12-piece orchestra in the middle of the road. You realise you are not merely lost but trapped in what appears to be a Monty Python sketch.
By the time you get back, you have run 9km and are exhausted. Your knee aches, your groin pinches, and most worryingly of all, your rotator cuff throbs.
The day of the referendum, you go back to London for a series of meetings with publishers. They seem to go well, but the leave vote devastates you.
You barely sleep that night. The next morning your despair manifests as a prolonged bout of retching. You speak to an Irish podcast about Ireland's chances against France. Inevitably they ask you about Brexit and about Sunderland, your city, voting leave despite the 32,000 jobs at risk if Nissan shifts its European operation. As you close the Skype line, you can't stop the tears.
You return to France. Everything feels at a fuzzy remove, everything is more expensive. England hammer Sri Lanka but it barely registers.
At the Parc des Princes, you bump into an old friend who lives in Paris. You agree to meet for lunch. "My treat," he says. You demur. "I've got euros," he replies.
Another night goes by without proper sleep. You try more press-ups but after 19 the stabbing pain in your right elbow is too much. The next day your stomach gives up.
All that spring training and you are in no condition for anything.

Jonathan Wilson writes for the Guardian, the National, Sports Illustrated, World Soccer and Fox. @jonawils