Test Match Special
I am hoping to watch the first day of the Test Match series with New Zealand at Lord’s tomorrow and said as much to Tom Erhardt, the distinguished agent — quite unbelievably, he’s just turned eighty — at the first night of The Deep Blue Sea.
“Oh, I don’t know anything about cricket,” he said. Well, he is American. But as most of his clients including David Hare, Howard Brenton, Christopher Hampton et al are all cricket fanatics - as indeed are Tom Stoppard, Tim Rice, Simon Gray and Harold Pinter — you might have thought this sad gap in his knowledge and experience would count as a severe professional disadvantage.
But it doesn’t. Cricket is like music. You can’t explain it, really. It’s either in your bones or it isn’t. I once sat up all night tryig to explain the rules to the American playwright Michael Weller. It was like trying to unravel a giant ball of wool. The task never ceased, nor did it get us anywhere.
But there is something very special about the start of a new Test Match series, just as there is in the theatre at the start of a new season at Chichester, or in Regent’s Park, or at the Globe. The summer is icumen in.
Jogging round Regent’s Park the other day I noticed that while the box office is open, there is no big banner proclaiming the start of the season, or it’s dates. This is a shame as the park is full of people who might make a mental note of the dates and come back for a show.
Not that it’s of any great interest to anyone, but I’ve at last discovered that I have some form of intermittent asthma which has caused me discomfort and kept me from the running routes for much of the past year.
A whole series of scans, examinations and consultations has eliminated all the more serious possibilities in my condition and the latest doctor has assured me that it’s almost 99.9 per cent certain I have developed asthma in my late middle age, a not unusual development, but not all that common, either.
So I’m on steroid inhalants for the rest of my life. This is not too upsetting. The world champion marathon runner, after all, is an asthmatic. And most of my male colleagues in the critics’ circle are heavy breathers of one sort or another.
I love the heat. I love running in the heat. And I love going on holiday in the heat, which is why I’ve booked a fortnight in Spain in July and am already ticking off the days. I’ll be in London for the opening of Disney’s High School Musical and back in time for Zorro the Musical, so I won’t miss anything key, or even off-key.
