I sat idly in the sunshine on the bench outside the Drayton Manor School pavilion in Greenford with a can of beer in my hand as my gaze wandered slowly over the white clad figures scattered in attentive poses around the field.
It was the perfect warm English Sunday. A cricket match, the sound of leather on willow and dark clouds on the near horizon boding a sudden rainfall and a break in the game.
In fact, this was no ordinary game.It was the Tories' Ealing Eleven headed by Council Leader Jason Stacey against the local Labour team headed by MP Steve Pound.
Despite their inevitable hostile rivalry across the Council chamber and in newspaper columns, here they had the chance to channel their enmity from the ritualistic bombast and sound bite of political debate to the equally ritualistic rulebook of the county cricket manual. The prize was the Mayor's Cup brought during a fleeting visit by the Mayor of Ealing.Who said that politics and sport do not mix?
Yet as I watched the play, followed by an unexpected victory for the Comrades ("Gordon Brown will be proud of us," beamed Steve Pound accepting the cup from be-hatted umpire Anthony Young, "a Labour victory at last!"), I noticed one unique element to this game.Each side had a Polish player. On the Conservative side,ever open to equal opportunities, there was cheery Ealing Common Councillor Joanna Dabrowska, sporting a pair of shin pads, and on the other - my own long-haired son, Sandro, who was one of the opening batsmen. And this was odd. Because Poles do not normally play cricket.
I have often tried to explain the rules of cricket to bewildered Poles. I point out that along with the Queen and the English language, cricket is the third mysterious force that binds the Commonwealth.
It is the great mystical ceremony played religiously every Sunday during summer which gives the agnostic Englishman the only opportunity to experience a sense of eternity.
I say all this and the Poles still shake their heads in disbelief.
So it's like "palant"? they ask politely. Well, not really. The Polish game of "palant" is the equivalent of the children's game rounders.
Polish and German settlers first introduced "palant" to America in the XIXth century and it evolved into American baseball. Today "palant" can still be played in dusty playgrounds at Polish summer camps.
It is certainly not so hidebound by tradition and the scholarship of "Wisden". In fact, it is held in such little regard that in Polish the term "palant" is also the word for an "idiot". By contrast in England there can be no worse words of criticism than the understated phrase "it's just not cricket".
Brits have to understand that for Poles cricket is simply a boring enigma.
Poles have to understand that in England cricket is simply the equivalent of civilisation.
