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I am what’s known as a cricket tragic.

Not because I’m any good at the game. I have always just enjoyed playing, watching, and reading the scores in the newspaper or on the internet. I inhale cricketing biographies as a lighthearted filling between serious tomes.

For some reason, the game provides me with a sense of peace, unwinding the tension life creates. I even enjoy fielding nowadays. Well – daydreaming in the field and looking at the sky, or the mountains. Presenting as a virtual fielder – not effectively stopping or catching anything.

I didn’t play much at school – I was better in the water. I dabbled a bit at university and then much more when I lived in England, where village cricket in summer is weaved into the DNA of a certain rural demographic along with Church spires and the pub.

Perversely, not playing the game seriously at any level has helped preserve my love of it. My enthusiasm was never absorbed by games that took the whole weekend or entire afternoons in the outfield. Playing cricket has always been an option rather than an obligation. The opposite is true for those of my friends who played cricket at a good level at school or university. Most will quite happily never play again, feeling cricket robbed them of the best parts of their youth, like a disease or a war.

I started my own cricket team while I was living in England in ’98. It consisted primarily of South African expats living in London. We played our first match at Eton against 11 Englishmen who we guessed were roughly of the same standard. I was wandering around the boundary during our innings in this first match, surveying the talent on the deckchairs when I bumped into an elderly gentleman.

“Marvelous, isn’t it?” he said, looking out towards the players arranged on the field. “I haven’t been here since May 1940. It was the day after I had returned from Dunkirk.”

The match stands out for two other reasons. Firstly, my wallet was stolen from the Eton changerooms, and secondly, I had forgotten to pack a jockstrap or any other underwear sufficiently constraining to hold a box. So, I helped myself to a brand-new Gray Nicolls jock strap I found in the change room. It turned out to be justified thievery – a so-called crime with extenuating circumstances. I was hit on the box by an energetic army fitness instructor shortly after going to bat. A few balls before he hit me on the helmet and then removed my off-stump.

I have played cricket all over England, the Mediterranean and around South Africa. At one stage, I played for a team that went on a cricket tour to an island in the Mediterranean every second bank holiday at the end of May. We routinely lost to Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese, and expats of various extractions. Our tour wasn’t really about cricket though.

The skipper usually chose a ‘string’ to accompany us who were selected from his broader female entourage. He played in a band, edited for a well-known scientific magazine, and spent time disguising his aristocratic lineage. The tour had far more to do with the string than the cricket.

My first game of cricket after the COVID-19 lockdown reminded me of my love for the game. We played it at the Groot Drakenstein Sports Club, which is situated between Paarl and Franschhoek and surrounded by vineyards and ragged blue mountains. It’s home to South Africa’s oldest turf wicket and has a fine bar in an authentic wooden clubhouse adorned with photos of Denis Compton, Len Hutton and a host of South African test cricketers along with the shields of innumerable touring teams. The cricket is viewed from the dappled light of the clubhouse veranda, shaded by a pergola entwined with grape vines. This heavenly scene was completed by a swarthy, tattooed Portuguese lady scorer, clear blue skies, and a slight breeze which freshened from the Groot Drakenstein Mountain end.

I had recently broken the big toe on my right foot after a heavy bench had fallen on it as I searched for someone’s car keys beneath a lunch table. My surgeon had informed me that I would lose my toe if it was hit by a cricket ball, so I borrowed a pair of safety boots from a friend in the shipping business and arranged to bat with a runner. Missing the match was unthinkable. I opened the batting and was hit on the toe with the second ball. Fortunately, the steel caps immunised me.

I swung hard after that, connecting gloriously, as the heavy boots provided me with a solid platform. The ball flew to the boundary, and when it didn’t, my runner panted dutifully between the wickets. I retired after the tenth over, satiated. I fielded at slip during our innings and dropped a fizzing chance that flew past my ankles. It was a wonderful day. Being alive in this Garden of Eden with a cold beer in my hand after months spent in one room on a series of endless team meetings felt like a miracle.

I played at Groot Drakenstein again last month. Our opponents were the Danish Vikings, on tour from Copenhagen. The tour had been preceded by four years of email correspondence with their captain, Denmark’s most famous cricketer, Ole Mortenson, who had famously opened the bowling for Derbyshire with Michael Holding in the early ’80s.

Social cricket matches against opponents who you don’t know are tricky affairs and it’s difficult to get the teams evenly matched. My early exchanges with the great man were uncomfortable. He is, after all, Danish. And the Danes are just close enough to Germany to appear standoffish.

The match got off to a fractious start when our young fast bowler, hurtling in from the road end, dug the second ball in, and almost removed the opening batsman’s top row of teeth. Fortunately, he managed to wrench his head from the path of the ball in the last fraction of a second. He called for a helmet immediately. In my experience, he would have been justified in calling for a new jockstrap and a glass of brandy.

The game stopped as I explained to our bowler that he should slow down and pitch it up, and we assured our guests that it was not our intention to put them all into the Franschhoek infirmary. The Vikings recovered to post a reasonable score. I brought myself on towards the end of their innings to ensure that they did. I had played too much tennis and golf in the week preceding the game and my back was in revolt. My first ball hit my right boot, so I went around the wicket for the second. My back spasmed as I delivered it, and I landed face-first in the pitch. Someone finished my over while I was helped to first slip where I remained for the remainder of the innings.

Ole is 66 years old now and he had broken his finger during one of the previous games on tour. You wouldn’t have known it when he bowled to defend their total. His fingers wrapped lovingly around the seam, and he produced enough snap in the wrist, swerve in the air, and cut off the pitch to give all our batsmen problems. Our top order just managed to see him off and we chased down the runs of the lesser bowlers at the back end.

We dined on a lamb afterwards which had been roasting on a spit all afternoon. Warm speeches were made and toasted with fine wine. Gifts were exchanged. Ole said he had never seen anything like it. I am not sure if he meant the scenery or my over. We spoke for hours about the old days, about the glorious Mike Procter who had passed away that day and how Viv Richards was Ole’s bunny. I left the ground on a cloud, in Valhalla, having bowled two balls, avoided fielding, and not batted.