Summer Diary: Best in the world at a sport you don’t understand - Richard Osley on cricket and patball

HEAR YE, hear ye. I hereby announce the first world championships of patball. 

All are welcome in to the qualifying heats and seedings are to be announced by the All London Members Wiggy Lords Club of Patball by the end of next week. 

Thank heavens for patball. Remember when women were invited to play for the first time in the mid-1970s? 

 

And when the “obs” for obstruction rule was formally ratified in the late 1980s? What do you mean, no?

Known in some rural playgrounds as “wallball”, patball is the legendary hybrid of tennis, squash, Pong! and throwing things. 

There are no racquets. Who needs racquets when you can use the bare skin of your hands? There is no clear target score to reach, either. You just keep palming a tennis ball onto a wall, any wall, until your opponent can’t palm the tennis ball back ...onto to the wall. Only one bounce is permitted. 

If the ball hits the seam where the wall meets the ground, it is known as “mids” or “funny bounce” and the point is replayed. 

If a player is obstructed by a pillar, a bench, or a girl walking across the playground, that is known as “obs”. The first to reach an agreed target wins and rule 14.3 is enforced ensuring it’s always winner stays on. Sound complicated? A SCHOOLCHILD CAN UNDERSTAND IT. WHY CAN'T YOU? YOU THICKO.
 

I bring up the playground nostalgia of patball because I’m puzzled as to why it never developed into an international sport. After all, cricket did – and that's a game with just as many debatable rules and matches seemingly decided by good fortune rather than anything else. People hardly know whether  a player should be “in” or “out”.  Ask Ian Bell. He doesn’t know. 

England are the best at cricket right now but what does that really mean? That they are good at a sport which only a handful of countries have ever treated seriously and baffles the passing viewer like a girl watching two sweaty boys make up the rules to patball. What kind of sport is influenced by how shiny you can make a ball and the number of cracks in a pitch? A silly one. It can even be cancelled if it rains too much. 
 

It’s the outdoor version of Monopoly: starts off quite fun, begins to drag, there’s a bit of confusion about the rules and then a winner is declared. And what of the fans? Those who think they have worked out the rules of cricket suddenly discover an amazing reserve of self-importance and drone on about what it all apparently means like pompous barristers banjaxed on cider. 

Of all the things England could be the world’s best at, the last thing I would choose is cricket. 

The current England players seem like nice lads, lots of fun in the camp, good guys to have a pint with. But it’s cricket, just cricket. They should take up patball.