Yarrow applauded as the batsman drove an uppish ball to the mid-off boundary.
He was sitting in a deckchair beside the small pavilion at the West Garside Cricket Club. Marie-Hélène sat next to him reading an Agatha Christie novel. She’d given up trying to comprehend what the men in white shirts and trousers were doing out in the middle of the field for hours on end. Christopher had explained the game to her several times, but he might as well have been explaining quantum nuclear astrophysics.
‘Why don’t the men in those long white coats run?’ she had asked.
‘They’re the umpires, sort of like referees in football.’
‘But in football, the referees, they run around with the players.’
And
‘He hit the ball, but he is not running, you said when the batter hits the ball he has to run?’
‘Co
