In case you hadn’t all noticed, the football starts again this weekend and though it seems earlier every year, this year it is actually later, but it still pisses me off that I have had to make a decision, something I am notoriously bad at. I have a season ticket once again but as Reading embark on their return to the Premier League against Stoke City on Saturday, I have decided that I will be out on a cricket field in the village of Amport aiming to eclipse my miraculous 19 runs against Sparsholt last week, something which is about as likely as the Reading players spending an evening next May parading the Premier League trophy on an open topped bus.

Shocker: Bob Lethaby plays a good shot

I will be doing this with some regret as I love watching football and so does my eldest son, but when you make a commitment to do something  for a season, you have to see it through and this Saturday approaching looks like it will be a dry and warm one and as a consequence, it is has failed to save a decision having to be made. George is even more annoyed than me as a dip in form on the cricket field (coinciding with a lot of time spent with a 16 year old blonde) has decided that the choice of watching football is a preferable one to him right now. However, I hold the season tickets and I hold car keys, so in reality, he is fucked.

The underlying problem with cricket when you are as useless as me,  is the fact that I am not good enough to bowl in Saturday cricket, so I will probably bat, meaning there is every chance I will be out on the first delivery which will take roughly a second  between exiting the bowlers hand and clattering in to my stumps. With just one second of entertainment a distinct possibly as opposed to an afternoon watching football with my mates, it is easy to understand why so many professional batsmen suffer from depressive disorders, the pressure to stay out there as long as possible is intense. Anyone who has ever batted in a proper game will get my drift, walking out to crease in first team cricket is on regular basis, is the closest I get to shitting myself since a hideously misjudged fart at the Fox & Hounds in Tadley on Christmas Eve 1991. Wearing white trousers only worsens the situation in cricket and if the unthinkable happens, there is absolutely no hiding place.

So, as Reading kick off the new season, our seats will be empty and the people around us will presume we are on foreign shores enjoying an exotic holiday rather playing one of the most frustrating games that was ever invented. It is not so bad for George, because at least he will be bowling for the best part of an hour as I try to keep my renown lack concentration in anticipation of the catch that will eventually come fizzing towards my head, shins or testicles, with my failing eyesight only adding to the excitement and further enhancing an evening getting stitched together in Basingstoke Hospital or having complex emergency testicular treatment carried out by a trainee surgeon undertaking his first assignment.

So if you are going to a football match on Saturday, pause to reflect on what might be happening to me as the first whistle blows at three o’clock, because there is every chance I will at the crease wondering whether my bails or bowels will collapse first, or lying in a field somewhere in deepest Hampshire with throbbing testicles or blood seeping from the bridge of my nose as my team mates hilariously congratulate me for saving a certain four. It all about decisions this life and the one I have chosen needn’t have been one I had to take if there was one golden rule that should be set in stone.

The cricket and football season should not cross paths!