"Oh captain, my captain"

So at last, after four months, my team won a game. And what a game. A 136 partnership for the 9th wicket, and the final wicket falling with almost certainly 3 balls of the match left. If you don't believe me, here's the scorecard. However, there's one name you won't see on that scorecard - MINE.

On Friday night we came back from the annual cricket tour and I had a little mishap. Slightly less than sober I tripped up and fell face-first onto solid tarmac. Cue a lot of blood, an 8am visit to A&E to have a gash in my lip stitched up and a visit to the dentist to get emergency repairs to one chipped front tooth and another front tooth that had snapped in half. Well after that I really wasn't in any fit state to play, so I got Joe to captain, left the scorebook with him and went home for some rest and recuperation. What a game to miss.

There's a poem by Walt Whitman that you may have heard of lately in connection with Robin Williams's character in Dead Poet's Society. For me on Saturday, lying in bed feeling terrible and hearing that the team I've spent four months working my arse off to organise had finally won, I couldn't help but be reminded of it. Here's the first verse:

O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

     But O heart! heart! heart!
          O the bleeding drops of red,
               Where on the deck my Captain lies,
                    Fallen cold and dead.

Fate can be a right cruel bastard at times.