Sporting comebacks

If it is acceptable for Tiger Woods, Paul Scholes and Thierry Henry to make a sporting comeback then there should be nothing stopping me from taking to the squash court after several year’s break. To be fair, I never actually retired from the sport, work simply intervened in a way that made even the occasional game impossible to schedule.

I managed to play up until my early 40s and had often thought about the possibility of playing again but as time passed I considered that the opportunity had passed me by.  A deep vein thrombosis (DVT) dampened my appetite for a while and several years living and working out of hotels around the UK did little for my waistline. My greatest fear over the years was that my eyesight had deteriorated to the point that I could no longer see the ball. In the intervening years it had become a necessity for me to wear glasses as routine. Previously I had only ever needed them for computer work.

Towards the end of last year my wife and I took a short break at a leisure complex where they happened to be running an open session of squash. Undeterred, I decided to join in and to my horror found that my eyesight had not deteriorated as much as I had feared and I could see the small ball no better or worse than I ever did.

The game has changed significantly since I used to play regularly; the balls are now slower and the shape of the racket has altered. People laugh when I turn up with my old small headed model. As in tennis, technology has provided a more robust and light-weight design with tougher strings and a larger ‘sweet-spot’. I still move around the court like a giant Redwood and waft the racket around like a fly swat though the game still intrigues me and I am pleased to have rediscovered my passion for the sport.

It is one of my regrets that I was never introduced to the game until my late teens. I would like to believe that had I taken up the game sooner then I might have been a better player. The strange thing is that at school I played fives, a game very similar to squash (except there is no racket and you wear padded gloves to hit the ball). Squash was never mentioned during that period and I only learned to play squash when a work colleague invited me to play several years later.

Thinking back, school fives was an enjoyable way of passing an hour and burning off the excess energy that I used to possess.  I can’t recall whether the school had 3, 4 or 5 courts, all I can remember is the constant clacking that would resonate from this austere block tucked away between the science block and the prep school. As sports go fives could definitely have done with a makeover. All the walls were grey, the ceiling was grey (though that may have been the dirt), the ball was grey and the well-worn gloves were grey.  The floor was concrete, there was no heating and there was a wire mesh to the rear of the court to prevent the ball flying out at the top.  On the outside there were a couple of benches from where spectators could observe or jeer as the mood took them. In essence, it had the countenance of the set of Prisoner of Cell Block H, which is what it often became when not in proper use.

My enduring memory of the games I used to play was the necessity to clear the rear of the court of the detritus that usually pock-marked the wall or was littering the floor. One of the unofficial uses of these courts during lunch breaks was as a ‘shooting gallery’, in which boys would stand on court armed with various items of food while volunteers would crouch outside beneath the wire mesh, wander up and down the bench and pop their head up where and when they wanted. Eggs and tomatoes were the weapons of choice, which by coincidence seemed to be the items less favoured by the majority of pupils.  I am not sure what pleasure those who chose to conduct the pelting derived from this activity though I don’t think there was ever a shortage of younger boys willing (or otherwise) prepared to provide the moving target. I can only imagine that a few of them viewed this as a free lunch. Some of the more enterprising would even sell their lunch to the throwers and then try to recoup their investment as targets. It seemed a bizarre game at the time and sounds even less appealing now.  I can only imagine that some of the less adept targets must have been forever branded as incredibly messy eaters by their mothers.  It also seemed that the group of throwers usually consisted of the same group of people which possibly said something about the standard of packed lunch that their parent’s provided them with but more likely was an indication of their propensity for violence.  

Recalling these grim ‘cages’ reminds me that there used to be fire buckets, filled with sand, hanging on the outside walls. Were the school afraid that one of their charges would spontaneously combust mid-game? The science block going up in smoke is always a possibility but I am not sure that 3 buckets of sand would have been of much use should that eventuality arise.

Fives was just one of many sports that pupils were forced to undertake in next to nothing. Charging around the court in only a pair of gym shorts and plimsolls would in this day and age be considered inhumane. There may have been times in the past when it was deemed healthy to take cold showers and exercise in inappropriate garb but these were the 1970’s, we had central heating, hot water and perfectly good shirts and socks (courtesy of the official school tailor). I can only imagine that freezing your knadgers off in just a skimpy pair of shorts aided the teachers in recording the bruises inflicted when an errant fives ball was smacked into the small of your back or a lose plimsoll caught you on the back of the head. Britain had yet to become the litigious minefield that it has since become but the school were very keen to avoid any protest from angry parents suggesting the staff may have been negligent or their offspring maltreated.

Plimsolls must have been one of the most stupid creations ever. Essentially a canvas slipper they offered no support or protection to the foot and would often fly off at the slightest exertion. If there was anything good to be said in their favour it was that they were cheap, which is probably just as well given the speed with which children’s feet grow. Having worn them half a dozen times the elastic would have broken and what little tread there was on the sole of the shoe would have disappeared, yet we were expected to wear these ridiculous shoes for everything except rugby. I don’t think I ever completed a cross-country run because I could never get up the muddy hill in my treadless plimsolls.

Much as I enjoy all ball sports I must admit that at school I longed for the cricket season. Apart from playing in a very good school side it did have certain advantages, namely being able to wear 2 sweaters if it was cold, pleasant surroundings in good weather, being provided with tea during matches against other schools and colluding with homework when not required to bat or field. There were still occasions when as a team we were forced to shelter under a variety of trees during thunder storms  (clearly our teachers knew (or cared) little of the inherent powers of lightning). The chief concern at the onset of heavy rain was to safeguard the precious school cricket kit. This seemed to be a fairly futile gesture that had more to do with the fearsome temper of the school groundsman and less to do with the security or well-being of the kit. You did not have to be the smartest kid on the block to appreciate that if someone was desperate enough to steal a well-used kid’s size 5 cricket bat and pair of mis-matched pads during a thunder storm then it was probably inadvisable to try and stop them.

I very much doubt that I will be making a comeback at any other sport though judging by the performances of some of national teams I am prepared to make my services available should the need arise and am keeping my boots at the ready.