Golden ducks for a cause

Autumn is an odd time of year to join a cricket club. It's typically the season for introspection, for shuttering up the clubhouse, for mulling over the victories and losses of the past year.

For me, it had been a year marked more by watching than by playing. I calculate that I went to see professional cricket on some 16 different occasions during 2015, and if my appetite wasn't exactly sated, it was still ready to fast for a while, to allow the events to be more properly digested. Next year, perhaps, I would tone down the number of Tests I would attend, and focus on playing the game.

Focusing on personal on-field prowess isn't always very encouraging, though. When it came to reviewing my performances during 2015, I had to admit that it had not been an auspicious season with bat or ball. Nonetheless, at least I had managed to avoid most obviously embarrassing situations, or at least partly justify them to myself. That single-figure score? Run-out, honourably sacrificing myself to give the strike to our star bat. That time I was bowled behind my legs by that part-timer? The scorebook shows I at least achieved the respectability of double figures. That wicketless desert from July to September? Can be put down to those catches, well, put down. If all else fails, I can at least console myself with the fact that, this year, I avoided the indignity of a first-ball dismissal.

Yet that avian most feared by cricketers - the golden duck - can bring unexpected blessings. For those who have added it to their collection have the opportunity to turn it to a more positive result. Sixty years ago, the Primary Club got its own innings off the mark, with the formation of a group of individuals all marked by the fact they had been dismissed for a golden duck (run-outs explicitly excluded). Their motives were not mere solidarity in ineptitude, however: from the beginning, the intention was to support blind cricketers, starting with former England captain Freddie Brown's Fund for Blind Cricketers, and more recently British Blind Sport, among other worthy recipients.

I'd heard about the club before, possibly as a result of it being featured on Test Match Special (its supporters include Brian Johnston, Peter Baxter, Jonathan Agnew, Christopher Martin-Jenkins, among other notables), yet reprehensibly had failed to get around to joining. It wasn't as if I could claim exemption due to a particular skill at the crease. Indeed, despite the efforts of my subconscious to expunge my golden ducks from my memory, I couldn't forget the occasion when I played an unwilling walk-on part as the third victim of a hat-trick (all bowled). The fact that the bowler was serving up gentle - some might even say tame - offbreaks didn't do anything for my pride. Mild consolation was offered in that the bowler subsequently became a team-mate - although, over a decade later, we're still waiting for Tim to repeat the feat for our side.

Vice sometime turns virtue, by action dignified: time to put that moment of pain to good use. Stimulated by James Coyne's brisk and illuminating Nightwatchman overview of the state of blind cricket, I finally dug out my credit card, selected my tie (membership, as in 1955, includes a club tie, although a brooch is now provided as an alternative option) and duly enlisted in the Primary Club ranks.

The entire concept could be viewed as a bit of fun. Certainly the club doesn't take itself too seriously. From the start, members have been entitled to fine each other, should one fail to sport one's tie (or brooch) on specified days. While at first the fine was in the form of a drink for the challenging member, it has developed to incorporate a £2 donation to the club. Rule 5(b)i now specifies that club symbols must be worn on the "Saturday of any Test matches played in England". What Sophia Gardens has done to be excluded is not clear, but I am sure Primary Club members would be only too happy to sport them across the border.

Nevertheless, the club's light-hearted regulations serve to throw light on a branch of cricket that receives regrettably little recognition. Much has been made, and rightly so, of the intransigence of the ICC to pursue Olympic status for cricket. Yet blind cricket's appearance in the Paralympic Games would have similar, if not greater, seismic effects. It is an ideal to aspire to, but one with no clear pathway: blind cricket currently lies outside the ICC's remit, and internal support at the national level is often patchy at best. As Coyne points out, although ICC involvement would be no guarantee of success, they are arguably the only body that has any chance of globalising disability cricket, including blind cricket. Will they, and their constituent members, give such cricket the support it deserves?

In the meantime, charitable organisations such as the Primary Club do what they can - which is not inconsiderable. Over £160,000 was supplied in 2014 to clubs and schools for blind people in the UK. The grants have been used to help diverse projects ranging from the development of the Blind Cricket England and Wales women's programme to the funding of cricket expenses incurred at institutions such as the Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford. The RNC, indeed, has relied on such assistance from the Primary Club, and other charities such as the Lord's Taverners, to acquire crucial equipment, including a cricket mat and team kit.

They've managed to produce a set-up that emerged in 2015 as unbeaten Development League regional champions. They even boast an alumnus in an England shirt, Elyse Bezuidenhout, who has also been helped by the RNC to qualify as the first female visually impaired Level Two cricket coach in the country. More importantly, since 2011 they've introduced over 50 people with vision impairment to the game.

Which leads me to a two-pronged resolution for 2016. With the aforementioned centre for blind cricket on my doorstep in Herefordshire, I'd make it my aim to witness visually impaired cricket in the flesh. And as for the second resolution - well, in order to ensure the Primary Club tie gets an airing, it looks like I might find myself at one or two England Test match Saturdays, after all.