Indoor Cricket

The thought of nets at Tiffin has turned Wickman's mind to indoor cricket. Ever played indoor cricket? Wickman doesn't mean that odd game people play in gyms. Oh no. Wickman means proper indoor cricket. The sort you can only play with a sibling because only a brother would be so desperate to ram a victory down your throat in a game as totally unlike the real game as indoor cricket. And know that the bragging rights were totally between the two of you. No point telling his mates he'd won at it. He'd have to explain what he was doing for hours on end in a dark corridor with bits of balsa and a squash ball + gaffer tape.

You can only really play this version properly if you live in a block of flats (as Wickman and Wickbro once did half way around the world in a country that had about three cricket pitches at a time when Wickman Snr was too tight to pay for membership for his eldest progeny at one of the cricket clubs) and be too lazy to go down in the lift and play in the carpark. You then need to have been so shite at woodwork that they would only let you play with balsa wood because it was so cheap. You glue two bits together. Then you get a jigsaw and cut a bat handle shape out. With some sandpaper you spend what feels like days (probably five or six minutes - you don't want to get caught by the paedo woodwork teacher making a suspicious hand motion) sanding the handle down. It's still fairly square, but with a bit of electrician's tape... yes... perfect.

You need a whittling tool for the next bit. No self respecting David Gower fan in the 1980s wasting time in woodwork wouldn't want to create that marvel of bat technology utilised by the choir boy cricketer - the Gray Nicholas GN100 single scoop - as modelled here by David in the picture.

A bit of white paint and then draw the lines in on the front (the cheap ones had some sort of material cover where they drew crappy "willow" lines on - I bet David had the oiled version) and paint the scoop red and we're good to go.

Choice of ball could be problematic. Table tennis balls broke too easily and the spin was too difficult to control. Marbles dented the bat. Squash balls were perfect but were difficult to see in the corridor (not the corridor of uncertainty, we had to play in the corridor - doors off left and right opened for square cuts and slap shots) and there was room for abuse by bowlers (if your brother just happens to have his knees in front of the shoebox wicket a swiftly delivered yellow spot can do real damage).

Most games went on for hours. Each bat had ten wickets obviously and scores were kept meticulously. As with garden cricket, often famous guitarists would line up against dead poets. There was something about a Byron century in boundaries that was, well, poetic. If someone got their eye in it was fiendishly difficult to get them out. Pace was severely restricted and you could only be out bowled or on a return catch so largely it was down to lapses in concentration or massive spin to do damage. Wickbro of course never realised that a hot squash ball delivers more friction and therefore more turn. Silly boy never payed attention in physics.

Mostly play would be called by the return home of Wickman Snr or Wickman's mum who would become enraged by the squash ball marks on the hall walls. Paint never quite covered them up, Wickman snr always knew when we'd been at the tippex and its amazing how hard you had to work with bleach and a cloth...