School Sports - Cricket

As we followed the UK public school model cricket was a major sport for us. We had a beautiful, very well-maintained, "oval" and pavilion, and a couple of other "flat" fields (notably part of the athletics field) that were also suitable for cricket matches.
The game was taken very seriously and our First Eleven competed against other Rhodesian schools (I make no apology for continually referring to "Rhodesia" as that is what the country was called, now Zimbabwe, back when I was at school), and was very successful, as were some of our junior teams. I was not that good, though I did enjoy playing, and we "duffers" used to play in what was referred to as "the leagues" - those of us who didn't make the main teams played a variety of sports, including cricket twice a week, like basketball, tennis, football, on a more casual basis. We played for our "house" (there were 5 residential boarding houses) against other houses with a schoolmaster sometimes in attendance as the "umpire", but it was very informal.
My final year I was appointed house "leagues" captain - I think I was the most senior, semi-sporty person available! In "leagues" I was one of the better batsmen, but more than likely because the bowling was of dubious quality (all the better players being snapped up by the main teams), but elected to play wicket-keeper as captain, as it was a central position where I could keep an eye on things.
The "kit" was supplied by the school and we used to have to go and collect it before the games, so between us we had probably 4 sets of pads, 4 bats, 4 batting gloves (of very poor quality!), 2 sets of stumps, 1 ball and 1 pair of wicket-keeping pads and gloves!
In that company I was pretty good at keeping wicket - the "fast" bowlers were slow-to-medium so I stood up just behind the stumps for all of them and not much got past me. The gloves were old and oft-repaired, though, and didn't have much padding in them,and one day I noticed the school cricket coach had paused on his way home and was watching us play. Sandy Singleton was also a Latin Teacher, but had played cricket for Worcestershire in the UK, and as we finished for the day he called me over and asked to look at the gloves. He said he had been impressed by my keeping, but the gloved left a lot to be desired, so he took them away to repair them (I told him these were the best pair we had in "leagues" so he agreed to look at the rest of the kit - as we got the main team cast-offs!). The following game day he was there with the repaired gloves, now sporting red dimpled covering over the palms, and much more effective! 
A couple of weeks later was the start of the inter-house cricket tournament, and our house cricket captain, one of the First XI opening batsmen, sought me out to ask if I would keep wicket for the house team!! Mr Singleton had sung my praise, and as we had no one else who kept wicket too, I was co-opted into the side. My first problem was that I had no cricket kit of my own! So I had to borrow school equipment from the "leagues" locker, including the repaired gloves.
The team training sessions went much better than I anticipated, my catching was well up to standard, though these guys hit and threw the ball ten times harder than my "league" team-mates! However it was when I got behind the stumps to face the first over that I realised the true gulf between the different forms of the game. Even their medium-quick bowlers ran in twice as fast as anything I had faced before, and the quick bowlers ... well, suffice it to say that I no longer "stood up" behind the stumps! I also soon found out I was missed a vital piece of cricketing "attire" - the box! For the non-cricketers out there the "box" is a cup, usually made of plastic, that protects your genitals from being crushed by a very hard ball being propelled towards you at a high rate of speed. After being hit twice in one game - and manfully continuing on after the first hit with barely a tweet of pain - one of my teammates took pity on me and loaned me his "spare". Now the thought of "sharing" an article that is used against the skin to protect a part of the lower anatomy may not appeal to some, but I assure you that it is preferable to the agony of a hard ball hitting the testes!
I kept wicket with a modicum of success throughout the tournament, and even managed to hit 13 runs (3 boundaries and a single) in one game before being caught attempting the 4th boundary ... in the same place! After that I was instructed to block and let the "real" batsmen score the runs - which peeved me a little as I was third highest scorer in the previous game (though we did lose!).