On 27 June I scored my first century, 126 off 142 balls opening the batting for Exwick 2s. The week before was not ideal preparation. I was in London for a conference and only got home on Friday evening.
It was one of those hot summer weeks where every day blurs into the next. Long sessions, crowded trains, not much sleep.
The next day I was padding up to open the batting in a 40-over match.
My only thought out in the middle was simple. Stay in. Don’t worry about the score. Play the next ball.
We put on a good opening partnership. Later, a fourth-wicket stand went past a hundred as well. Partners came and went, and I just kept batting.
I did not notice my fifty. My teammates told me, so I raised the bat. The same thing happened at a hundred.
I always imagined you would know. You would count down the nervous nineties, feel every single. I felt none of it.
People call it being in the zone. I have no better explanation.
I can recite the numbers: 126 runs, 142 balls, 14 fours, 2 sixes, out in the last over. What I cannot recite is the mindset. It was there, and then it was gone.
There is a familiar idea here. Some of my best work has come when I stopped watching the clock and just stayed with the problem. Cricket made that feel very literal.
I would love to do it again. I would love to say I have found a method.
I have not.
You cannot easily recreate a state of mind you never noticed you were in. The moment you start trying to bottle it, you are thinking about the score again, which is exactly what I wasn’t doing.
Maybe the best I can do is turn up, take guard, and try not to care about the scoreboard.
Oddly, the century felt bigger as the days passed. At the time it was just a long, hot afternoon at the crease. My teammates kept reminding me that it was an achievement worth cherishing, and slowly I started to believe them.
I still can’t tell you how I got there.
I just know I was there.
It will always be special 🙂
