With reference to my post last week, I have never been asked to join a writers’ cricket team.
There are two good reasons for this:
Can’t bat, can’t bowl.
No, three.
Can’t throw.
Um, four.
Can’t catch. Especially rock-hard, shiny red cricket balls. Do you blame me? My fingers are bruised enough from typing.
I have, however, brought a cricket tragic to life in a novel, Blokes Send in the Clones.
Now, I know what my American readers are muttering. Really? A blog on cricket? For the second week in a row?
Believe me, I feel for you. Most Americans probably look at cricket the way a dingo looks at a sudoku puzzle — vaguely intrigued, absolutely baffled and quietly convinced everyone involved is making it up as they go.
But they now have a vested interest — because sometime Australian captain Steve Smith owns an apartment in New York and lives there when he’s not jetting from country to country to play, which means cricket now has a foothold in Manhattan. So there!
In the ninth book of my Windy Mountain series, Goody Moncrieff is a retired optometrist who lives in Slutz Plains. In his heyday, he was a fearsome fast bowler, dripping with gold chains and sporting a huge Merv Hughes-style moustache.
He now fills his days reading Wisden and anything he can find about cricket. He argues he had his signature moustache long before Merv, so the former Australian firebrand should actually refer to his walrus as a Goody Moncrieff-style mo.
He seizes on a chance to come out of retirement in my book — and it doesn’t end well.
I also can’t sing, can’t play a musical instrument, and can’t write crime fiction, which excludes me from joining a band called The Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, made up of well-known British (mostly Scottish) crime authors: Mark Billingham, Val McDermid, Chris Brookmyre, Doug Johnstone, Stuart Neville and Luca Veste.
Um, I was a pretty good marbles player 60 years ago.
Any writers up for putting together a team?
We could call ourselves the Mighty Tombolas.
JOHN MARTIN 