Sport and retirement, retirement and sport. A dangerous combination. Never more so than today and I’m starting writing this blog 35 minutes before an important day in English sport. I won’t bore you with the details, after all you might not give a toss about sport. Well that’s fine, unfortunately that doesn’t apply to me. Now I’m retired I do wonder whether the effect of sport on my well-being has changed. Have I become, in a strange way, even more dependent on vicarious success in the sporting arena to sustain my well-being? Yes, I wonder.
By the end of today I might have a better understanding of this question. I wouldn’t say my life is emptier now I’m retired. I wouldn’t say I need sport to provide my life with meaning. That would be sad but, that said, today it’s close.
I know I’ve written in these blogs before that it’s foolish to put your well-being, retired or not, in the hands of others. Control what you can and don’t give any more importance than necessary to what you can’t. And this is still my thinking around well-being, self-esteem, call it what you will. But this is the World Cup and we’ve never won it, haven’t even been in a final since 1992 I think it was.
So it’s important. In a way I deserve success today. I’ve followed English cricket for over 50 years and pretty lean years they have often been. Also I’ve made my contribution to success so far. Bizarrely maybe but I support England by not watching. I didn’t see a ball of the Australia game and this was the big one. We thrashed Australia (the givers of so much pain over the years) and I didn’t see one ball. I have since watched the highlights of course but that’s a whole different kettle of fish.
A friend, who knows my strategy for success of not watching the game, has suggested, ‘on Sunday you should go to France or perhaps spend the day at the bottom of a coal mine. Your country needs it.’ France seems a bit far and all the coal mines around us have closed so that’s not going to work. And, whisper it, I’ve decided to break the habits of a life-time and watch the game. It’s just starting as I write this.
If we do lose the final I shall console myself by re-watching that semi-final game against OZ. Ok, I will say, we lost the final but at least we beat Australia. Maybe that was my final. But I’m kidding myself, I want to win the World Cup. Like we did in 1966 (football) and 2003 (rugby), women’s cricket (2017). At that’s it, so you can see from those dates, pretty rare for England. Other than the last one in 2017, I’ve never been retired before, so this is a bit different.
And while we’re on the topic, the picture at the top of this blog, is of the annual cricketer’s bible or more properly almanac – Wisden (the one on top of the pile in photo above). Those of you that have been reading these blogs for a while will have seen this particular book in previous versions several times before. At 1535 pages of small print, it’s the kind of book you need to be retired to get full value from. My daughter buys it for my Father’s Day present. She likes to do this because she’s keen to inherit my collection (70 plus volumes to date) when I’ve passed on to that great cricket pavilion in the sky.
But here’s the thing although I’ve had this edition for over a month, I haven’t even opened it. This again on account of the World Cup. I just can’t bear to read anything cricket-related until it’s over and we’ve won it. So if we lose today it may never get read. That would be silly but at least it will be there as an investment or inheritance. But again it’s a further indicator of my weirdness towards sport in general and cricket in particular.
So I started this blog as the game began and now I’m finishing it the next day (Monday). My birthday (the celebration of which has not helped my completion of this blog) in fact and what a nice 71st birthday present. We bloody won. Many words written in the newspapers and on-line and I’ll give you a flavour of it all with just one paragraph from the BBC Sport website.
As the contest swung one way then the other and then, back again, Lords was awash with pacers – men and women walking, hopping, striding purposely to nowhere at all. As Ben Stokes dragged England to the brink, into the abyss and then out again, a country had long forgotten that watching sport is supposed to be fun.
I know there’s a theory going round that retirement is supposed to be fun but the idea that sport, under these circumstances, or expecting this victory to be achieved through fun, well that’s plain ridiculous. Maybe that’s a metaphor for retirement. It may be the case that it’s supposed to be fun but personally I’m finding it far more serious than that. But maybe that’s just me?
I started this blog by writing ‘retirement and sport a dangerous combination’. They haven’t been in the way I might have predicted before I retired when I planned to watch cricket around the world from A to Z. Or involved in the sport as a sports psychologist which nearly happened when I was in the process of retraining to become a sports psychologist and working with Yorkshire cricket. A little jolt of jealousy when I read that this current team had been revitalised mid tournament by their ‘psychiatrist’. Or the plans I had to publish my book on cricket for Americans which remains in my bottom drawer. No, none of the above, but Sunday almost makes up for all those missed opportunities. Well maybe more ideas than opportunities but that’s what reminiscing in retirement does for you, the past becomes rosier.