Old dog, new tricks - sort of

You're never too old to try something new. True enough, though to that it should be added "and discover you're really bad at it".

Thus it was that I took it upon myself to sign up for our work cricket team this season, having never played a competitive game at any level and gleaned pretty much all I know about the game from the glorious Ashes summer of 2005 which was spent largely in front of Channel 4.

Our first fixture took place on Wednesday evening, against one of our fiercest rivals. Thankfully I didn't get the opportunity to embarrass myself with the bat (I had the good fortune to be pencilled in at number ten but only three wickets fell in our allotted 20 overs), though I did a pretty good job of it in the field: one smashed four that a bit of alertness and an outstretched right forearm would have prevented and two misjudged attempts at catches, the second a skied top edge that I contrived to run underneath only to forget how to back-pedal when it became apparent it was sailing over my head.

Still, at least I wasn't fooling anyone by actually looking like a cricketer (the black tracksuit bottoms were the giveaway) and I did make one useful contribution, running out their best batsman for 49 (though this only delayed the inevitability of their win). In any case, I didn't have quite such a bad evening as my friend Tim - in the course of batting a handful of overs for the opposition, he managed to split the end of his bat, lose the sole of one of his shoes and suffer the even greater indignity of the elastic in his batting pants snapping...

Will I be doing it again? Quite possibly. Any sport that involves a large amount of standing around doing nothing is alright by me.