Life can be utter sh*t at times, with nothing happening, nothing going right, and nothing to reach for.
The easiest and certainly the worst way of dealing with this is to go down with the ship, falling into the deepest and darkest corridors of your mind.
Those of you who read this junk -sorry, blog - are probably familiar with my musings on that king of games (and game of kings), cricket. Cricket is a lovely sport, if only that you can draw so many analogies from it. K, here's my story:
It was a 40-over away game on an unmatted wicket - low bounce, making batting extremely tough. Our side is in, and a slow start begins to take a devastating turn: wickets tumbled left and right, till we end up 80-8 by 25 overs~slim pickins for any side. Miraculously, our 9th wicket stand lasts for the rest of the innings, and our total is 136. Respectable, yet not completely defendable.
A paltry lunch brings us to the field, with the aim of scuttling down the other side as quickly as we could. They too started slowly, but a massive 6 from the massive left-hand opener lands the ball in a canal, irretrievable. Thereafter, the batsmen opened up their shoulders - their total becomes 104-1 in around 24 overs. 33 runs to win, 8 wickets in hand (they were one batsmen short), and 15 overs left. We were surely doomed to a harsh rebuke in the dressing room.
But then, as that same opener told us he was going to go ballistic, he got out. Then another wicket fell. Then another. The next half-a-dozen overs saw maidens and wicket-maidens. On 131-8, with 6 runs and 1 wicket left, our captain took a brilliant catch to complete a remarkable turnaround.
The moral, ladies and gentlemen, was best put by Yogi Berra: it ain't over till it's over. However improbable the task you have at hand, as long as it can happen, there's no saying that it won't.
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