10 - Viva Lewes

CoriNthiaN
CriCket
Thinking outside the box
I am very fond of Malcolm, the progenitor and
obsessive captain of our occasional cricket team,
but I did become slightly concerned about the
future arc of our relationship when, shortly after
he founded the team, he started sending me texts,
often late at night, asking me for my shoe size, my
inside leg measurement, and a whole range of other
vital (and mildly embarrassing) statistics. It was
only after some time that he divulged to me that
he was spending his spare moments scouring the
internet and local sports shops for cheap cricket kit.
When he saw a bargain, he would try to marry it up
with one of the squad; hence the odd requests for
personal information. In truth, given our enormous
range of bizarre shapes and sizes, I imagine it would
have been a much greater challenge to go out and
find something that would not fit at least one of us.
The nadir came when I arrived home one evening
to find a plastic bag hung on my front door containing
an early birthday present from Malcolm. It
looked like a hammock for a pet hamster, but the
packaging informed me that it was in fact a ‘cricketer’s
support’. Admittedly, I had complained a few
weeks before that, when batting, even wearing two
pairs of underpants failed to keep my box in place
properly, sometimes leaving me with what appeared
to be a third kneecap halfway down one thigh, a
(frankly disappointingly) long way away from its
intended contents.
I had not just volunteered this little piece of
W W W. V i Va L E W E s . C o M
s p o r t
personal information to the team willy-nilly, as it
were, but rather had deployed it to parry the lighthearted,
yet valid, criticism of my dismal attempts
to run between the wickets, which were said to be
reminiscent of Danny DeVito’s portrayal of the
Penguin in Batman Returns. I confess, there had
been times when I was at risk of being lapped by my
batting partner.
This accoutrement, claimed Malcolm, was the
answer to my problems. But to me it looked like
something that normally would only be worn by a
much younger, fitter man, who also had a six-pack,
a litre of extra virgin olive oil rubbed all over his
twitching muscles, and an inebriated hen party
screaming for more. Damn it, the thing even had
a pocket at the front where the ladies could shove
their moist £20 notes.
I found myself somewhat perplexed. Should I, a
middle-aged married man, be receiving specialist
underwear as a gift from another middle-aged
married man? And, if so, what was I meant to give
him in return for his birthday later in the year
that could adequately express (a) my gratitude,
and (b) my firm conviction that a line had to be
drawn somewhere and I definitely did not want him
buying me any more foundation garments in the
future? And, most perplexing of all, given that he
had not sent one of his usual texts, how on earth did
he know that it would fit me?
‘Plum’
Photo: rob read
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