Cricket: The story of my inevitable third

Winter is nearly upon us – the temperature is plummeting towards freezing and the nights are drawing increasingly thin. For most ordinary beings, this time of year is associated with the run up to the holidays – the main stresses being awkward family gatherings and Christmas present choices.

But for those of us foolish enough to maintain faith in England’s abject spin bowling and risk-averse batting, our concerns are dry, excessively turning pitches, 4am alarm calls, and most pressing of all, how on earth can we maintain our studies alongside all this drama!

Waking up at 4am on Wednesday 9 November, fortunately in the heart of reading week, I began to mull over the impending nightmare that lay ahead for tutors expecting insightful seminar contributions and well-researched formative essays. Yet all this was forgotten as England began their test match with India wonderfully; ending the first day 311-4 thanks to a century for Joe Root and an unbeaten contribution just one shy of the ton for Moeen Ali.

Sunday morning came and still the essay was incomplete. Now well over the deadline, panic set in.

Indeed, the first Test ebbed and flowed with my academic progress in reading week. Wednesday and Thursday went brilliantly, with excellent progress on my essay and England scoring an ominous 537 in the first innings. But as Friday morning progressed and my cricket-drained weary mind started to feel the effects of an acute level of self-enforced sleep deprivation, England’s fielders began to feel the effects of Rajkot’s heat. Murali Vijay and Cheteshwar Pujara drained England’s fielders, giving them no hope of a wicket for hours on end.

With India finishing on an impressive 488 all out on Saturday morning, cold, grey skies greeted me in Leamington for a similarly unsuccessful grind as the English attack had endured for 162 overs. It seemed as if my obsessive interest in the constant, subtle changes in fortune which ensue over five days, often with no result at all, had gone too far.

Though this confusing, fastidious, simply dull game to many, had zombified me for five days, I couldn’t live without it.

Sunday morning came and still the essay was incomplete. Now well over the deadline, panic set in. To English cricket I looked again for inspiration and out of nowhere it came. With the game heading towards a draw on Saturday evening, England batted wonderfully to make 260-3 quickly enough to put India under pressure. Despite the fact that India survived, finishing on 172-6 with a late flurry from Ravindra Jadeja, England had done themselves proud. They had pushed India to the brink of defeat, in a series they were supposed to lose 5-0.

With this inspiration locked away at the back of my mind, I was able to bring the vagaries of 1960s German politics to the front and finish my godforsaken essay at last. I was then able to reflect that though this confusing, fastidious, simply dull game to many, had zombified me for five days, I couldn’t live without it.

Its timeless nature and wonderful combination of skill, elegance and concentration had provided me with a place to go to forget that at some point in the future I won’t have a reading week at all.