Square Leg
Built by Richard Marsden in June 2025 for the Squares Secretary’s Challenge
The Man in the Moon has been ‘un-banished’ and appears to have taken up Sunday-league cricket. Let’s hope he doesn’t get banished again. He has been placed at SQUARE LEG. He stands a few metres out from the wicket, roughly level with the crease, and to the batsman’s left (for a right-handed batsman).
I had to look that up. I hated cricket at school with a passion. Why anyone would stand in the path of a rock-hard ball travelling at motorway speeds is beyond me. The alternative was no better, standing at the edge of a field getting bored and sunburnt. If the ball came towards you, you were supposed to snap out of your daydream and react in an instant. If the ball had been hit high, you looked up to see exactly where it was and got blinded by the sun. You were then supposed to catch it without dropping it and having it hit you on the head; if it had bounced first, you had to stop it without breaking a finger and hurl it back whence it came with arm-wrenching force. No wonder I was never allowed to bowl, and my best ever batting score was nought not out.
But I digress. We join the action as our hero, anticipating a leg-side drive, is starting to dive to his left to intercept. Will he pull off a match-saving catch, or will the ball sail gracefully over the boundary? We will never know.