If, as Isaac D'Israeli observed, the defects of great men are the consolation of the dunces, then the dumbbells among us should give hearty thanks this week to Monty Panesar. Certainly the slow left-armer's carrot‑fingered efforts in Galle were balm to the psychological wounds of many of us.
When I was a young man there were two things in sport I did my best to avoid. The first was getting under a hoofed clearance from a goalkeeper. Back then a football was still made from cattle hide, to which, judging from the weight of it, much of the bull was still attached. Anyone who made the mistake of heading an upfield punt spent the next five minutes staggering groggily about like a week-old calf that had just butted a tree stump. Just the thought of the laces makes my forehead smart. The second thing I did my best to get out of was the unpleasant position Monty found himself in rather too often in Sri Lanka: standing under a skier in the deep. At least in football you could pretend the challenging defender had nudged you at the last minute, miss the concussive casie by several feet, then turn around arms outstretched, whining, "Away, man, ref". There is no such escape in cricket.
As the delivery strikes the bat with that ominous hollow sound and the bowler emits the helpful cry of "Catch it!" time itself seems to move more slowly. The ball creeps up and up into a sky as blue and innocent as a baby's eyes. You watch hopefully as onward towards the heavens it creeps, praying that the fact it appears to be heading in your direction is merely an optical illusion. Then, bitterly aware that this is not the case, you briefly entertain the thought that the malicious pill may be diverted by some sympathetic gust of wind, or bounce back towards the square off the downy breast of a low-flying goose.
You strain your ears, desperate to hear a cry of "Mine!" from square-leg, the wicketkeeper, mid-on, a man out walking his alsatian, a mother with twins in a pushchair, an urchin queueing for an ice-cream van in a nearby lane. Alas, neither kindly gust, passing waterfowl, fellow fieldsmen nor eccentric stranger answers your silent appeal for help. You are on your own. There is just you and the fiery red orb, which now has reached the apex of its bumbling flight – roughly 3,000 metres above sea level – and, after pausing momentarily to locate the exact position of the gap between your eyes, and dodge a passing satellite, has begun its ominous descent.
"The sun!" you think, hope briefly flickering in your fevered mind. "It will come out of the sun. I will be blinded! My retinas scorched to cinders. I will be plunged for ever into darkness. I will never again see the faces of those I love, or the capricious colours of lilting butterflies, or the wondrous glow that radiates from the hair of Steve Rider. On the other hand, I won't get blamed for dropping this catch, which is the main thing." Unhappily however, the sun is nowhere to be seen, off hiding behind a fluffy cloud, no doubt, stifling its giggles at your approaching humiliation.
Briefly you consider determinedly running off to some other spot on the field as if you keenly imagine that is where the ball is headed, so that when it lands exactly where you are standing, you will be 25 yards away, waving your arms around in mock frustration and mouthing the words "Swirling. Misjudged flight. Curse this blasted breeze" towards the bowler. But then you remember that this course of action did not seem to convince anyone the last three times you tried it.
The determinedly running idea strikes you as an option, though. Just run and keep on running. Off the field, over the fence. Move house, change jobs, leave town. The French Foreign Legion is probably full of men who have donned the képi blanc and set off across the scorching Sahara to fight the Tuareg just to forget a steepling hoik to the long-on boundary that bumped off their chest and went for six, and the look on the bowler's face that followed it – first anger, then disappointment, then a slow, torturing fade to resignation when he realises who has put it down. It is an expression that recalls the words of the irascible Yorkshire spinner Johnny Wardle, who would deflect the blathering obeisance of youngsters who had spilled catches off his bowling with a withering: "Don't apologise. It's my own fucking fault for putting you there."
As once time ran slow as treacle now suddenly it speeds up. The ball is no longer dropping towards you, it is hurtling as if fired from a supergun. It whirrs and hisses, possessed by demons. It is too late to scarper. There is no time for suicide. You remember all you have learned about how to catch a ball. You extend your arms, press your elbows together and hold your hands wide apart. Unfortunately what you have remembered is not how to field, but how to make shadow shapes of a crocodile on the living room wall to entertain toddlers. The ball flies nearer. The hissing is now a malevolent whisper. "You're going to drop me. You're going to drop me," the ball sneers, and the ball is right. It dodges past your flapping Jerry Lewis hands and lands gently on the turf at your feet. You look down and read the golden lettering of the maker's name: "Cursed & Sons". At some point you are going to have to look up again and face your team-mates. Some time soon. But not yet.