PAUL EDWARDS: Ask a man who has given up cricket if he will bat again and he will answer, "No". But catch him when the is watching the final hour of a tense league match at his local club and he will be wondering what contribution he might offer
"And that wicket really puts England in the cart. 25 for 3 on the first morning of the Ashes Test at Lord's, the ball seaming about all over the shop and Pat Cummins with his tail up and scenting blood. It would be the tallest of orders for any batsman, but I can't imagine what a debutant must be feeling. Anyway, there's no escape in these situations, so striding out to join Joe Root, we have Paul Edwards, who's about to play his first Test innings. How do you think he's feeling, Tuffers?"
That sort of barely understandable delusion happens roughly twice a year and I doubt I'm alone. There are moments in everyone's life when reality is no match for imagination. But the disjunction between the two was brought home to me this week by a traumatic event from which it will take time to recover. You see, I did something pretty radical on Tuesday. I threw away all my cricket kit.
You can argue it was about time. I retired from playing the game almost 21 years ago. That decision was taken in the spring and was prompted by domestic priorities. There was, therefore, no poignant farewell, no awareness of finality, no teary walk off the field. One September I played cricket; the next April I didn't.
You can also argue the decision was overdue. I was done and I knew it. Towards the end of my "career" I got the yips and nobody noticed. Why, therefore, did I hang on to my kit for over two decades? Why was it only on Tuesday afternoon, when engaged in a minor clear-out, that I took the whole lot, bar the sweaters, and stuffed it in the dustbin?
The answer, part of it anyway, is that I couldn't quite believe I'd never play again and it's at that point that I hope this column might acquire more general resonance.
Ask a man who has given up cricket if he will bat again and he will answer, "No". But catch him when the is watching the final hour of a tense first-team league match at his local club and he will be wondering what contribution he might offer, how quickly he could get fit and how long his inevitable progress from fourth-team stand-by to first-team regular might take.
Not everyone leaves the field to the same adulation... (Michael Dodge/Getty Images)
So much, so barmy. But I have been that delusional fool. And even now, whenever my club signs a slow left-armer, I wonder why they've done that when they've got me… who last played in 2001.
It's not only cricket, of course. There are amateur snooker players who dream of the Crucible, park footballers who see themselves in World Cup finals and armchair thespians who fancy they are in with a sniff of an Oscar. Maybe it's easier with cricket, though. Watch Stuart Broad bowling on television and it's easy to fool yourself he isn't that fast. Only when you've watched him side on do you realise your mistake and begin to understand what level of skill is required to hit bowlers of that pace to the boundary. And realise that you do not nearly possess it.
But still I kid myself that I might manage what is plainly impossible and maybe I should be proud of my confusion. "The test of a first-rate intelligence," said F Scott Fitzgerald, "is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." The truth in my case, I suspect, is more prosaic: I'm off my chump.
But I don't think that we who daydream of impossible glories have anything for which we need to apologise. On the contrary, I think there's something usefully childlike about it and that is sometimes to be welcomed. Something a little similar was noted by Mike Brearley and is mentioned in his book The Return of the Ashes, an account of the 1977 series against Australia. Brearley recalls that when he was young, he so wanted to bat like the Middlesex opener Jack Robertson that…
"I was Robertson. Robertson recently told me that in his boyhood fantasies he was Wally Hammond. A friend’s son is Rodney Marsh. This idea of absorption into fantasy fascinates me."
Later, Brearley expands upon the point: "I was reminded of Richard Scholar, the three-year-old son of friends in South London. Richard modelled himself on the Australian [Rod Marsh]: aggressive, his brother's green Cub cap tugged down, slamming away under the chestnut trees in Greenwich Park. 'I'm Rommarsh. Square-cut,' he'll say and he'll swing it away to square leg."
Once you throw your kit away, is there ever a way back? (Carl Court/Getty Images)
Now there is a great difference between imagining you are your hero when a child and deluding yourself that you can play at his or her high level when such things are impossible. But I am still intrigued by the way in which they expose the bounds of the self and reveal the creative power of the imagination.
And finally, I have some good news to report. A few weeks ago I reported that one could only get into matches in The Hundred if you had a relatively modern phone that could download the tournament's App, because one's ticket was printed thereon and nowhere else.
However, I now understand that having bought a ticket online you can now print it off from your account and that will get you into games. I rather think this is a good example of the ECB being flexible in response to an obvious problem. On the other hand, to judge from some of the reaction to last week's column, the news that it will be easier to get into say, a Northern Phonechargers' game will not be met with widespread rejoicing. Nonetheless, I would, as ever, like to thank those who read last week's column and that of course includes whose who totally disagreed with some of the ideas in it.
But maybe you'll think a little better of me when I get a hundred in the next Test. You never know when Brendon might find himself one short on the morning of a game.