There are many things I am not good at.
I am a terrible guitarist. I cannot draw. I am barely numerate.
But of all the things I do badly, the one at which I suck the most is undoubtedly cricket.
Now, I grew up watching my Dad play cricket and I longed to be good at the game. Dad was good, and my brother Bill inherited his hand-eye coordination.
I did not.
At Hatch End under-15s, my player biography might have read, “Can’t bat, can’t bowl, can’t catch”.
Despite this, my friends Michael and Andy, who have been running a team every summer since we were students, have never ceased to be generous in offering a chance to play. So this year I finally plucked up the courage and joined the International Rescue Cricket Club.
And what have I discovered?
Have the years of hibernation produced a fluent attacking batsman and a penetrating medium-pace bowler? Not even close.
On the other hand, I have had the infinite pleasure of being in a team again.
Now, like most of us, I’m in lots of teams – at work, at home, at church – but in each of them, I play to my strengths: I do what I’m good at, whether that’s teaching or laundry. I know my place in the batting order.
On the cricket pitch, though, I have no strengths – but, unlike most teams where only the most able are welcome, I am included anyway.
It’s an approach to team-building that was familiar to Jesus. With his disciples, he put together an extremely unlikely squad: fishermen, a tax collector, a political activist. They bickered and failed, but out of a bunch of misfits Jesus forged something that changed their world.
Which is, really, the potential of a team: not necessarily to change the whole world, but to change the world of every member, whether the team is successful or not.
My friend Michael wrote after a recent reverse that our team is about “the love of the game, of turning up and playing it with a bunch of friends – a mixture of camaraderie and competition which make defeat bearable”.
I reckon that being accepted in a team lifts us beyond our individual limitations and makes almost anything bearable.
Even the complete and tragic absence of actual, cricketing talent.
The game in the picture, at Barn Elms against Riverside Ramblers, looked like it was running away from us but produced a wonderfully tight finish. We still lost. I took two wickets. Michael, who invited me to join IRCC, is umpiring at square leg.