This is a picture of me dressed for a game of cricket in borrowed kit, which is why the pads are several sizes too big. I'm in the front garden of the last house we occupied in Mombasa, so this was probably the summer holiday of 1959. The game was a one-off, a group of local schoolboys versus a Sports Club XI, and I recall my father being very keen that I should take part.
A couple of days ago I wrote about my father's cricketing prowess. By comparison, I was pretty useless at the game, hating batting and only enjoying the wicket-keeping, which I how I managed to get in to my prep school's first eleven. Unfortunately, the schoolboy side already had a good wicket-keeper, so I was sent off to field at a distant point on the boundary where I could safely do little damage, and batted last in the order. I scored a duck.
It must have been very galling for my father that, both his children having been boys - he always wanted a daughter - neither my brother nor I were much good at cricket. To watch his eldest son make an idiot of himself on the Sports Club playing field in front of an assembled crowd must have been painful for him.
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