"Something is added to cricket by the angle of the sun as it stands at four o'clock in early September.
The
shadows are longer, there's a suggestion of colder days approaching, of
Circular Time, of aspects of our lives dying away and returning.
The other sort of time is called Linear Time -- Life is hard and then one dies.... if that's something one is liable to do.
Cricket, to me, seems to stand for The Former and against The Latter.
It's
something that dies but returns and writes mortals into History, in
stories and statistics. Perhaps that's why it appeals to me.
I, also, die and return, like a hardy perennial.
However,
Linear Time is currently impinging on the Hampshire town of Stockbridge
in the form of an end-of-season struggle to avoid relegation from the
top-most league of village cricket.
They're
raging against the dying of the light, they need wins not draws. They
need umpires to take the brightest possible view of those stormy skies
overhead.
They
need to play in horizontal rain if they have to. I've seen them do just
that in the last couple of weeks, but I've joined them so late this
year that I may not be much help...."
