Jiminy Cricket

As regular readers will know, I am not a big fan of South African radio. My particular poison is South Coast Fm ‘Durban’s number one radio station’. The music is dreadful and the djs are moronic. However, today they managed a droll moment. Occasionally they comment on a news story. This morning they drew attention to the fact that SA comes 38 out of 39 on a list of countries recently assessed on a range of security issues. The country was only ‘beaten’ by war torn Liberia. The dj casually thanked all his compatriots that contributed.

Today we had afternoon sport at school. Of choice, the kids would always pick to play football. But they play ‘soccer’ after school everyday anyway. In one of the school outhouses, we have some rugby balls and the essential bits of cricket equipment. So, feeling like a missionary, I have been trying to put them to use. Today’s cricket session began with me demonstrating four Comptonesque strokes with the bat. All then copied. Having learnt the art of batting, we moved on to bowling. Technique issues were quickly covered. And all the vital messages were hammered home – ‘line and length’, ‘corridor of uncertainty’.

Now we were ready to play.

Well it wasn’t the prettiest spectacle. Environmental factors created issues. As examples, the breeze kept blowing over the wicket behind the batsman; cattle made certain fielding positions difficult; the heat of the sun led to some very poor umpiring decisions. Nonetheless all tolerated the novelty of not playing football. And there was exciting controversy at the end of the match as both sides claimed victory (almost every player had a different view on how many runs each side had scored). I was happy to call the game a draw and none accused me of match fixing.

We have been busy this week with preparations for the half marathon. More to follow about this next week.

Tomorrow we are going away to celebrate my birthday. I know nothing about what the weekend involves. One small clue is that I was meant to be taking my malaria pills. I forgot. Hopefully this won’t lead to an unwanted present.