Enforced view from the boundary as deluge makes it only fit for ducks

See, apparently I have a bit of a reputation (according to people who follow me on Twitter) of being an angry little man. And right now, I am very angry. I also, having just checked in the mirror, remain little.

So I’m going to work out some of that anger on the page, then leave it and return in a couple of days when, you never know, I might have calmed down a bit. I might not, mind.

For now, allow me to explain my anger.

It’s Saturday.

My cricket season starts in a couple of hours, at 2pm, when we, the mighty warriors of Airedale Seconds, take to the field and take on Sandy Lane.

I’m going to toss up soon and, I imagine, will lose (last year out of 22 coin tosses, I won twice. Which is, statistically speaking, at least a little odd).

I am writing this looking out at my cricket ground.

I say cricket ground, it looks more like a duck pond out there.

Hang on, in fact, at third man, there are three... no, wait, four, actual ducks (insert your own joke about those not being the only ducks on my ground this season, here).

There will be no cricket here today.

Whoever decided to build a cricket pitch at the bottom of Keighley – itself in a valley – next to a river, deserves a pat on the back.

And a punch in the face.

Oh, there’s the massive heron that regularly flies above the ground and always crosses over towards Marley... nope, today it’s landed at square leg.

Wikipedia says that herons are often found near shallow water. As our American cousins might say, figures.

With every drop of rain that falls – and there’s a lot of it, it is all increasing: my anger, frustration and hatred of weather forecasters. If I believed in a god, I’d be in the rain shaking my fist at him/her.

You might think this unreasonable.

Getting angry at the weather is as futile as trying to fathom why, in June, 2009, our umpire Jim – our umpire – gave me out LBW to a ball that was clearly missing leg of a second set of stumps.

That there is little to be done about the rain, I know, but it doesn’t matter to me at this point.

You see, in September, I put my cricket pads in my cricket bag. They were covered in mud, my boots caked in the wet soil of Airdale Cricket Club’s ground, because we planned an inter-club friendly game on the weekend after the last weekend of the season. Unsurprisingly, it rained that day.

But this was the very last time for several months we were going to take to the field, bat or ball in hand, and we weren’t going to miss this chance. The groundsman has been hunting those of us who played on that wet day, all winter. We wrecked the wicket with our friendly game, but we didn’t care. Last throw of the dice, last bit of cricket all year. The rain wasn’t going to stop us.

I got home that day, wet through, happy, ready to look back with fondness and a beer at the season past. I took my massive cricket bag and put it in the cellar.

And did I then forget about it? Of course I didn’t.

The soundless cricket bag called to me from the cellar like a siren to a sailor. Over the winter I’ve taken out my pads (never actually cleaned the mud off them, though), my gloves, my boots. Arranged them and re-arranged them.

I’ve oiled my bat, and placed it back in its protective cover, back in the bag and back in the cellar. A few weeks later, I’ve repeated the process.

Like an alcoholic trying to resist an unopened bottle of whisky, I have tried to ignore the bag in the cellar.

It’s all been to no avail. I’m an addict, cricket is my drug and I am beyond any help.

The one, single thing that has got me through each dark winter day is knowing that soon it would be Christmas. And Christmas means nets are not too far away – and nets lead as naturally to the first game of the season as ‘just the one beer’ after a game leads to a second.

When it got sunny, warm even, last month, I can’t tell you how excited I got.

Down at Airedale (bottom of the valley, next to the Aire) our square is normally hard and dry – a batsman’s pitch – by about the end of August. When we had that warm spell in March, I was like a kid on Christmas Eve at the prospect that I might be gifted with a batsman’s paradise come the start of the season.

Then, a couple of days before battle commenced it started raining. And it didn’t stop.

So now I’m sitting here, looking at what should be the start of a glorious cricket season and what I’m actually seeing is something resembling a lake.

This is too depressing for words. I’m going to stop now...

So, here’s the second bit of the column, which I’m writing on Wednesday afternoon.

In YP Towers we have a glass ceiling (that’s not a metaphor – the ceiling is made of glass).

The sound of the rain on the glass roof is deafening.

It will be a miracle if we play this weekend.

Or if I ever stop being angry.