It’s reached the point of the season when tensions come bubbling to the surface. What can help relieve our club captain’s swelling dissatisfaction?
Death, taxes and selection dilemmas.
Few things in life as a club captain are certain but you can bet that come July you’ll have more than a few evenings scratching your head over how to get a decent XI out/tell someone they’re dropped/give everyone a game (delete as appropriate).
With availability varying wildly from one week to the next, part one of getting the game on – i.e. picking 11 players for a Saturday – can be the most maddening part of the whole damn summer.
One game I’m dropping quality all-rounders to the seconds because there’s just not room for everyone – ‘Sorry mate, hard luck – oh, and not sure I ever got your match fees off you, if you could just…’ – the next I’m begging and borrowing from the thirds because the county are in the cup final, England are playing football and couples continue to get married in summer. Congratulations on your nuptials, lifetime of happiness, blah, blah, blah – you’ve ruined my week.
Did I mention that my last three scores are 0, 4 and 0? That at present I can’t actually imagine how to score runs, much less actually do it?
Perhaps it doesn’t take Freud to work out the real root of my disgruntlement. Just as a simple night of passion can turn a usually cantankerous old curmudgeon into something approaching a Buddhist monk, so one fifty-plus score lightly sprinkled with well-timed drives would see all these seemingly insurmountable captaincy frustrations melt away to blissful irrelevance.
I just hope that when the opportunity comes I can still remember how to do it.
READ: Previous secret diaries
