My earliest memories of cricket take me back to when I was at school. Unusually for a girls’ school we had a cricket team. One of the girls’ fathers, known to us as Roopey, had been a county player. Roopey was our sponsor and also our coach. Most of the time we played other local girls’ teams, and sometimes, if we were lucky, the boys’ under fifteens. But such was Roopey’s enthusiasm that he would get us fixtures with touring teams. We all loved Roopey, and Roopey loved us, though not as people might insinuate today. He was a jolly good coach and thoroughly decent man. I also played rounders, but I much preferred cricket. Because of Roopey and the aforementioned opportunity to meet boys…
Everyone was excited, I recall… The Bangalore Pashmeekers were on their traditional early season tour of the home counties. Their reputation proceeded them, especially that of the Puri Sisters: Anika, Anima and Anita. We had played them the year before, and we had gone down to spectacular defeat. Anita bowled us out; Anima took the catches behind the stumps, and Anika batted us off the park. Now the girls wanted revenge – none more so than our Captain Hazel Flint, or Flinty as we called her.
I almost didn’t play. A couple of days before I had twisted my ankle, whilst attempting to climb a gate in a pair of heels. The things we do for a snog at seventeen!
The Pashmeekers were batting, and as in the previous year, Anika Puri was taking us to the cleaners. They were 111 for two, and Anika was well on her way to fifty – having taken Flinty for a couple of classy fours, one through the covers and the other a delicious on drive that bisected me and Mousey, who was, I should mention, my best friend but not the best of fielders.
Flinty and the girls were desperate for a breakthrough. “How desperate?” I asked at the change of overs.
“Listen,” said Flinty, “I don’t bloody want to lose to this lot again. They were insufferable last time.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “There’s something I can do, but it’s a bit manky.”
Flinty looked at me with alarm.
“It isn’t cheating?”
“No,” I said, “it’s perfectly legal. Roopey told me.”
I set up to bowl my dibbly dobblies as I thought of them to myself. Anika was backing up rather keenly at the crease. As she was about to set off for a run, I did a pirouette and removed the bails with the ball in my hand.
“Howzat?”
The Indian master (and Roopey’s friend naturally) looked at me and said:
“Are you sure you want to do that?”
“Oh, yes,” I said and looked around at the girls who were all stunned into silence.
The Indian master put up his finger:
“Sorry, Anika. You’re out.”
“But she hasn’t even bowled the ball.”
“Anika,” the Indian master said, “you must accept the Umpire’s decision.”
“But it’s cheating.”
“I’m sorry to say it’s within the laws, if not the spirit of the game.”
I looked around at the girls, but no one was celebrating.
The following over Flinty took me off, and I was sent down to cow corner for the rest of the innings.
The Pashmeekers continued to pile up the runs. Anima, who had come in after Anika, made a very nice forty. Their final score of 170, however, was not insurmountable. In the break between innings we heard that Anika Puri was still inconsolable – sobbing into her batting gloves.
No one was talking to me – all except Mousey, of course.
“What are you going to do? – Flinty says you should be off the team.”
“I’ve made a right Horlicks of everything, haven’t I?” I said, all ready to burst into tears myself.
As it happened, the opportunity arose to make amends. Our innings got off to an inauspicious start – two wickets down, but Mousey who batted at two was a sticker. And that day she stuck. Together with Flinty she took us past the hundred. When Mousy was out for a very good forty, I realised that we were probably going to win.
We were six down, and Flinty was at the crease when I came out to bat. We needed thirty runs for victory, and I was determined I should not be party to it.
Flinty was batting as she normally did – with calm authority – and those crisp clips and neat tucks off her skirts. It always amazed me how it never rose up and remained forever pressed to her lovely thighs. Meanwhile, I was swishing and swiping at the ball as if I had forgotten how to hold a bat, or had mistaken it for a Rounders stick.
Flinty was obliged to come down the pitch. “Get a grip on it,” she muttered between gritted teeth.
The next ball I swished or swiped as before. The ball popped up and went bouncing off into the covers.
“Yes” I screamed, charging towards Flinty. For, in case you have not guessed it, I was determined to run myself out.
But at the other end, Flinty was ball watching. When she turned and saw me screeching and haring toward her, she had no time to react.
Flinty slipped, and her skirt rose up to reveal a pair of sensibly white Marks and Sparks knickers. Humiliation!
And it was all my fault.
I had run out Flinty and mankaded[1] a Puri Sister.
Furthermore, I had been sent to Coventry by the entire upper and lower sixth.
Could things get much worse?
A few days later, everyone found out that I had also snogged Flinty’s boyfriend. It was for this reason that I decided to run away from school.
That, however, is another story.
[1]So called after Vinoo Mankad ran out Bill Brown in this way during Australia’s 1947 tour of India. – Lance.