Damn, I do miss playing the old game. I heard this poem on telly, it was read most beautifully and in the spirit of the Ashes I shall post it here. Try reading it out loud…
ON HAVING GIVEN UP CRICKET
I shall play cricket in heaven
in return for the afternoons
gladly given to the other
pleasure of others’ leisure.I shall walk, without haste, to the wicket
and nod to the angels kitted
in their whites waiting to discern
the kind of batspirit I am.And one stroke in heaven, one dream
of a cover drive will redeem
every meeting of bat
and ball I’ve done without.And I’ll bowl too, come on to bowl
leg-breaks with such control
of flight and slight changes of pace
that one over will effacethe faint regret I now feel.
But best of all I shall field:
alert in the heavenly deep,
beyond the boundary of sleep.
– Michael Laskey, from ‘Thinking of Happiness’ (Peterloo, 1991).
The Nazmanian Devil 
Jan
/ 16 July, 2009How funny! I’d been thinking about that poem all day so thought I’d google it and you’d put it on only an hour or so ago. I agree it was read really well on the telly and in the right spirit.
Thasnk you for putting it online.
Mervyn
/ 16 July, 2009Absolutely endorse Jan’s comment. I heard it on the radio a few days ago without catching the details and the BBC couldn’t/wouldn’t give them me. Then it was on tv last night and I got the title – and, thanks to you, the words.
naz
/ 17 July, 2009Thanks for the appreciation.
I copied it from the website http://www.poetrybusiness.co.uk where it is this week’s “Poem of the day” (Don’t ask me how that works!)
Sue Ryan
/ 11 November, 2009Just watched a recording of a “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and this poem came on afterwards advertising Radio 5 Live and the start of the First Test. I agree it sounded beautiful. I have copied it and sent it to my sons who have both given up cricket (playing).