Practising what he preaches

Rites of passage take many shapes and forms. Some cultures choose to fling their aspiring adults off ancient bridges into rock-infested gorges. For others, it's the little things that count, like the first time you patch up your razored chin with torn-off squares of bog-roll.

For aspiring cricket journalists, however, there is one humiliation that has to be endured above all. Given that we spend our waking hours mouthing off about rubbish shot-selection and leg-stump half-volleys, it is only fair that, at some stage in our careers, we should have our own sporting credibility destroyed by a team of Test cricketers.

My opportunity to grovel arrived yesterday, in a guest appearance for the Barmy Army against a side that was laughably billed as a "Sri Lanka Veterans' XI". The Barmy outfit was much as you might expect - a motley ensemble of club cricketers, fanzine editors, university lecturers and inveterate backpackers. The veterans, on the other hand, were neither motley nor venerable, and they certainly weren't what we had expected.

All the same, we had prepared for a feisty tussle. Arjuna Ranatunga himself was rumoured to be leading the opposition, but in the end he was waylaid by parliamentary business. In his place, however, were 11 of the most youthful veterans since the fall of Berlin. Current international cricketers tumbled off the Sri Lankan team-sheet - Niroshan Bandaratilleke (seven Tests, three ODIs), Sajeewa de Silva (8, 38), Ruchira Perera (of Lord's 2002 fame). All of them had taken Wednesday afternoon off, and were queuing up to mug a team of ... well, mugs.

The organisation that had gone into the match was astonishing. With all the proceeds - a cool half-a-million rupees all told - going to the cancer charity, Hope, no detail was left undealt-with. We were kitted out in sponsored shirts, provided with official sun-hats, talked up in the local papers and sent out to do battle at the one-and-only Colombo Cricket Club, where the real England team had played their first-class warm-up earlier on the tour. No pressure then ...

The CCC is a beautiful ground waiting to happen. It has a brand-new and extremely elegant scoreboard at the top end of the ground (which had Danny, the Army's official scorer, in paroxysms of delight), and a new swimming-pool complex is currently under construction on the opposite flank. The centrepiece of the ground, though, is its wonderful open-fronted colonial pavilion, with wicker chairs and whirling fans, where the players and spectators can sit and idle the day away with a cold beer and a burger from the stall on the grass below. The opposition players, that is. The Barmy Army, on the other hand, had been condemned to fielding first in the midday sun.

If, in the past three months, there has been an England press conference where the words "heat and humidity" have not been used, then I will eat my sponsored hat. This morning, however, I feel great empathy with the players. Merely jogging onto the pitch was enough to make me question the wisdom of excessive movement. By the end of the fifth over (Sri Lanka A, 52 for 0), I had been blinded by a torrent of sunblock and sweat pouring off my scalp. By the end of the tenth (120 for 0), I was battered and bruised from floundering around on the rock-hard outfield. And then, to compound the misery, I was called upon to bowl.

Phil DeFreitas once went through an entire tour of India without picking up a single first-class wicket, so I am not the first medium-pacer to suffer in the subcontinent. But even with Kambli and Tendulkar in full flow, Daffy might have escaped with figures slightly better than my five overs for 57. Mind you, they were more or less par for the day, as the Sri Lankans rattled along to 304 for 1 from their 30 overs. As one eminent cricket writer commented, as he watched the carnage unfold in front of him: "Beatings like this are good for the soul."

Good-length deliveries, I quickly realised, were not the order of the day - they were merely bludgeoned over the top for one-bounce fours. The only hope was to spray it all over the place, and hope someone mistimed it to one of the 10 fielders (including the wicketkeeper) patrolling the boundary. Although my cunningly disguised legbreak emerged as a filthy beamer, and was planted for four behind square, this tactic did actually pay off. Unfortunately the man at midwicket was busy gassing to the spectators, and attempted to wear the catch instead.

That was just one of about five or six horrendous drops in the course of a ragged afternoon's work, so it was a massive relief when the stumps were finally rattled - take a bow, Ian Howarth, who picked up his first first-class wicket in the 29th over of the innings.

After some extremely unsubtle collusion in the lunch break, the Sri Lankans throttled back a touch when it was their turn to bowl, and limited themselves to one or two sharpish deliveries an over, plus an assortment of pies in between whiles. All the same, it took a valiant half-century from the former Berkshire opener, Peter Bradbury, to lift the Army to a respectable 264 for 7.

It was valiant for more than just the obvious reasons - not only did he cope with the heat and humidity, but the hangover as well. For he had just got married the very night before, and even forewent the champagne breakfast in order to take part.