I have enjoyed a few days of intense sporting action – by which I mean sitting down, drinking and looking at sport. I went to all two and a half days of the first Test match and a pint at Lord’s Pavilion is only £6, so why not? Apart from the lack of money, of course. Then on the Sunday I watched the Wimbledon final, but I didn’t drink during that because later in the day I was going to Ben’s to watch the Euros final and I didn’t want to arrive bladdered.
Tennis is in the blood: my great-uncle played in the Davis Cup for South Africa, not to any great distinction. This was the 1930s, when the selection process and training regime were perhaps a little less rigorous than today. My father won the Hampstead Cricket Club Tennis tournament once, and on the mantelpiece stood his cup: a modest silver thing into whose bowl one could have just about placed the lower half of a tennis ball if you pushed.
When I was young I would go to Cherry Tree Park in north London with my friend Dom and play tennis day after day during the summer holidays. I can’t count how many hours we played. But the interesting thing about that is that I never got any better. In fact, the chances of being picked for the East Finchley Davis Cup squad seemed to recede with every day; not so much a learning curve as a learning slope downhill. The same thing happens with snooker. I used to go to the underground snooker hall in the underpass at Tottenham Court Road station and just got worse and worse. I watched the Chinese restaurant staff coming in after their shifts and performing shot after peerless shot. That was where the future lay, I thought.
Anyway, the football. Ben has actually either been a football hooligan or has hung around people who were, and as well as being fond of a punch-up you also have to display a more than cursory knowledge of the game. I wouldn’t have been a very good football hooligan because I’m a lover, not a fighter, and also the game’s tactics baffle me. While I can understand pretty much everything that’s happening on a cricket pitch – why so-and-so’s bowling, why wossname and whosis are standing where they are or why thingamajig is batting in that particular way – what happens on a football pitch is pretty much a blur. I understand it at a primitive level: I have, after all, been following the game for more than half a century, and was forced to play for two terms a school year between 1969 and 1980, though preparation for matches didn’t involve any master plan drawn on a blackboard explaining how to beat Porridge Court that week. Oh, and guess how good my game got after all these years. Yeah, I was basically Pelé by the time I simply refused to turn up. The only thing I hated more than playing football was playing rugby, but then my hatred of rugby is so off the scale that it’s not even a fair comparison.
Back to the football. I might have hated playing it but I like watching a good game, so the qualifying stages were a bit of a bore. By the time the final came round, however, I was geed up. So were Ben and his wife. He warned me that as an Iberophile, if that is the word, he would not be too unhappy if Spain won. Ben is not one of those yobs who goes to Spain and asks loudly in English for egg and chips. He’s one of those yobs who goes to Spain and asks in perfect Spanish for tapas and a chilled sherry. After a few sherries myself I admitted to him my ignorance of football tactics. Ben tried to explain it to me, as if to a child. But I was too many sherries in by that stage and it all went in one ear and out the other, in a form untouched by comprehension.
And now it’s the second Test, but this time I have to listen to it on the radio. This is not as good as being there in person but what can you do? There are worse ways to spend the day than lying in bed listening to Test Match Special. Sometimes I nod off and dream I am playing, or in the commentary box. And sometimes watching it is disconcerting. At Lord’s I was startled by the realisation that Zak Crawley, the England opening batter, and Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, while in many respects very different people, have the same face. Go on, look it up. You’ll see what I mean. What’s odd is that while I am madly in love with Angela Rayner, I cannot say the same about Zak Crawley. Zak Crawley, especially after his shocking performance in the first innings last Thursday, is not someone I want to curl up on the sofa eating chocs and watching the new series of Slow Horses with. Honestly, my intentions towards the Deputy Prime Minister are pure and honourable.
Now, I happen to know that a member of the cabinet reads – or used to, when they had a bit more time on their hands – this column. And suddenly an idea strikes me: if you’re reading this, could you put in a word for me? Tell her I scrub up nicely. And, as I said above, I’m a lover, not a fighter.
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