Lost overs

I am out; and down. I eye my cricket bag. Facing homelessness, the bag seems as promising a shelter as any. I have speculated away my life: family, job and very soon, home.

Months ago, I was sitting at Lord’s, watching the Test with my son. After tea, he asked, “What happens to the overs that won’t be bowled today?”

“Nothing, they’re just lost.”

I was wrong. I was the one that lost.

A few days later, an email arrived, with a most curious offer: to buy surplus international cricket overs. Intrigued, I followed the link. There, on the dark web, was a market. A novel gift for my Father’s birthday I reasoned, making my first purchase. Instead, a week later, I bought him a Cardus – first edition – with the proceeds of my initial trades.

The market was picking up. The supply-side, with players failing to complete 90 overs per day, was burgeoning, but never quite able to keep up with demand, as new Twenty 20 leagues proliferated. I found the options market particularly lucrative: anticipating which days would leave spectators sold short and me buying long. I even dabbled in the world of fixers, offering players incentives to go slow. Nothing matches the exhilaration of seeing a Test match opening bowler crouch at my bidding to tie his shoelaces. But that was a vanity investment: Test cricketers needed no bungs to create a daily diet of orphaned overs.

I had a strategy. Prices spiked whenever the ICC met to discuss a World Test Championship. I was stock-piling overs, ready to soak up the demand of a five-day extravaganza. More and more of my income was invested. My family, neglected, moved out. Work was a charade that I played out to fund my habit. The closer I felt to owning cricket, the further away from it I drifted. I stopped playing, reading match reports and paying my SkySports subscription. But I held a Test match-worth of lost over assets. ‘Be patient, wait for the opportunity,’ I said, although I had nobody left close to me to listen.

The first shock came when the ICC announced its meagre plan for a Test Championship of mostly two-Test series. The market, like an erroneous umpiring decision, suffered a correction. Then another stinger as South Africa’s Global League evaporated. I clung on, determined to ride out the rough patch. Finally, the announcement that shattered my defences: the Hundred. The ECB shaved three and a bit overs and with it any margin. Prices no longer fell. The market just seized up.

With no trading to distract me, I can take stock: I’m left rich in overs, but impoverished, contemplating sleeping in a cricket bag. I’ve paid the price for trying to own the game that belongs to no one. Cricket as a moral enterprise has found me wanting.

But there is hope. If my deficiency has been ethical, then I can be rehabilitated. I may be able to sit beside my son again, watching a match.

There is an alternative, more prosaic, harder to stomach, less meriting a son’s forgiveness: gullibility. Was I conned?