Cricket

 A cricketers lament  

We put our lives on hold

We did what we were told

We didn’t hold a party

We didn’t play it smarty. 

No sir, with a straight bat we

Stood bravely in the crease 

And faced the balls that COVID threw

How lonely it could be!

On Englands cricket fields

As our companions fell

With no one there to tell

Their silent tales of mortal loss. 

He kept calm, kept moving on

Past the lines of hearses

Stiff upper lip with no surrender

Another bloody Dunkirk blunder

For as we died and spilled our blood

The leader partied in the club house

It’s not the pain it’s not the anguish

It’s the cold feeling of desertion. 

A cricketer will face the foe

Will assume he’s on the same team

But no one can describe his anger

When he finds he’s lied to. 

Hell hath no fury like the batsman 

Toiling through the long day

Finding that his Captain

Has been rolling in the hay

With a winsome local lass

He’s wined and dined

While others died and had to take it,

No sir, that’s not cricket.