Why cricket is like the Eagles song…

He’s 49, has a dodgy right knee, and retired from the game sixteen years ago. But none of that deterred New Zealand legend Martin Crowe from making his much-heralded comeback to serious club cricket.

On Saturday Crowe captained the first-grade reserves of Cornwall CC in Auckland, and has set his sights on a return to the Auckland side proper, and even an appearance for the MCC in their English season curtain-raiser against Lancashire in Abu Dhabi next March. Along the way he hopes to notch up the 392 he needs to reach 20,000 career first-class runs.

It’s a stirring ambition, and we wish him all the best, if only because Crowe is an inspiration to ageing cricketers everywhere – the superannuated village hacks who just can’t resist the idea of another season, another bash.

Cricket is probably the only team sport which you can continue playing for as long as you can walk around. That’s partly because only in cricket are you still useful just for making up the numbers, even if you don’t contribute much with bat or ball. That doesn’t really apply to rugby or football.

That said, in my own experience of the village game, the conspicuously older competitors – and the same applies to the youngest ones, too – are usually those to be most feared. Because if they weren’t still so effective, they probably wouldn’t have bothered turning up.

Although your outfielding loses its zing, and your running between the wickets becomes less sharp than it once was, your basic skills (if you ever had them) hold up for a surprisingly long time – and your extra wiliness and experience more than compensate for loss of pace and agility.

More often than I care to remember, my own village side has successfully run through an opponent’s top order of young shavers, only to then fall apart when the wicket-keeper’s 68 year old granddad arrives at the crease. “This old bloke can’t be up to much”, we agree in naive arrogance, before the pensioner’s clean-hitting and impeccable judgment deftly takes our attack to the cleaners.

Older village players generally fall into three main categories. First is the clinically correct, if now stolid, batsman. He won’t take quick singles, or use much backlift, and looks slightly doddery at first. But if you drop short, or overpitch, you’ll soon realise why the oppo still bat him at four.

Next comes the crafty “slow” bowler. Aged around sixty, he comes in off three paces, and naturally you expect some gentle floaty off-breaks. But what you don’t know is that for twenty years he opened the bowling for a top league side, at demon pace, before retiring into pub cricket. This means he now bowls almost as fast as he once did, and with an immaculate line and length, but catches you totally by surprise. This is a classic piece of village cricket deception – passing off the best players as the worst ones.

Finally, there is the kind of hopeless hack I am, and will continue to be in years to come. Always was crap, still crap, but continues to turn out nonetheless, just on the off-chance, and because you can’t quite imagine not playing any more.

There’s a ludicrous optimism lurking in the daydreams of every cricketer, no matter how talented or useless. No matter what you’ve achieved, or failed to, and whatever the evidence of your career – you still believe that next time, next season, next innings, things will be different. You will make that century, or take that five-for, or hit the winning runs. The dream never dies.

Cricket inveigles itself into your soul – not just the game itself, but the camaraderie, team-spirit and banter. You can’t face no longer being a part of it, which is probably why Martin Crowe – despite all his glittering accomplishments – simply couldn’t resist picking up his bat again for one more go. As the Eagles might have said – you can check out of cricket any time you like, but you can never leave.

Maxie Allen