Batting Masterclass with Ramps

"Answer a simple question and you could improve your skills with a cricket legend", proclaims the Guardian.

I don’t have a bat! Not only do I not have a bat, but I have never actually held a cricket bat in my life!

I used to play rounders at school, and I have to be brutally honest and say I was rubbish. I had no problem watching the ball as it sped towards me, but maybe because my fellow school mates liked chucking the ball rather than pitching it up I used to lose sight of it at the last second. Mostly because I would close my eyes, hit wildly, and hope for the best.

I don’t think I ever hit the ball once in six years.

I can report however that I fielded like a diva. Collingwood had nothing on me!

Other sporting misdemeanours have included:

Being hit in the ribs by a canoe (don’t try this: it hurts)

Nearly killing someone with a javelin (so near, and yet so far)

Being hit on the back of the head with a hockey stick

Spending the best part of fourth year on the sidelines with a bad back

Putting up with a swimming teacher who liked to try and drown the non-swimmers when he got the chance

I have to say the javelin one was a close thing. The idiot girl walked right in front of me when I was running up to hit my mark. Thankfully for her I was rubbish at javelin as well and the thing fell short and stuck in the ground just a foot away from her. I’m a great believer in natural de-selection, and every time I see her on the bus with her excitable offspring I think how very lucky the boy was that his idiot mother wasn’t turned into a giant kebab.

The back problem was another bad one. I’m not fond of pain: I think you’ve got to be a little strange if you do, frankly. But that’s probably a discussion for another blog entirely! We had to suffer those ridiculously low science work tops with the equally ludicrous high ‘bar stool’ chairs, and it totally ruined my posture. I have quite a long back compared to my somewhat shorter legs (it’s my rotten genetics, sue the parents!) and fourth year was a write-off for me. But it had its compensations: I spent most of it on the sidelines in the gym! In the end there seemed little point in going along and I used to bunk off to the school library in search of a good book...er, that is to say I spent my time deep in study!

All this was fine until it came to getting our fourth year reports. Whilst I was expecting a ‘who is this girl, we’ve not seen her in PE for almost 12 months’, to my shock I got an incredibly good mark! And the most galling thing was it was my best mark for any subject that year! Turns out they got me mixed up with some poor soul with a rather similar name who excelled in PE...I hate to think what sort of grade she ended up with!

All this is offered up in proof as to why I think I deserve a batting class. I get the impression you're supposed to be under 10 and thinking of playing cricket seriously, but if I could just learn to hit the ball once I would see this as an improvement on 20 years ago!