Life is a game. We live like a brief flames and then we are gone. It is how you play the game that is important.
Roy is Britain’s foremost songwriter and poet. This is one of his most beautiful efforts. It is an evocative elegy to a life well spent, a game well played and the importance of playing it seriously, with all your heart, all your spirit and with great enjoyment and pleasure.
Roy has always put in one hundred per cent. You cannot deny his passion or his skill. This delicately crafted song will live forever.
It is a love song about death and the memories that linger, the ripples that go on to turn the tides.
It is one of the great songs of the English culture. What could be more fitting than to use the metaphor of cricket – the epitome of culture, the master of games.
When an old cricketer leaves the crease
When the day is done and the ball has spun in the umpires pocket away
And all remains in the groundsman’s pains for the rest of time and a day
There’ll be one mad dog and his master, pushing for four with the spin
On a dusty pitch with two pounds six of willow wood in the sun.
When an old cricketer leaves the crease, you never know whether he’s gone
If sometimes you’re catching a fleeting glimpse of a twelfth man at silly Mid-on
And it could be Geoff and it could be John with a new ball sting in his tail
And it could be me and it could be thee and it could be the sting in the ale, sting in the ale.
When an old cricketer leaves the crease, well you never know whether he’s gone
If sometimes you’re catching a fleeting glimpse of a twelfth man at silly Mid-on
And it could be Geoff and it could be John with a new ball sting in his tail
And it could be me and it could be thee and it could be the sting in the ale, sting in the ale.
When the moment comes and the gathering stands and the clock turns back to reflect
On the years of grace as those footsteps trace for the last time out of the act
Well this way of life’s recollection, the hallowed strip in the haze
The fabled men and the noonday sun are much more than just yarns of their days.
When an old cricketer leaves the crease, well you never know whether he’s gone
If sometimes you’re catching a fleeting glimpse of a twelfth man at silly Mid-on
And it could be Geoff and it could be John with a new ball sting in his tail
And it could be me and it could be thee and it could be the sting in the ale, the sting in the ale.
When an old cricketer leaves the crease, well you never know whether he’s gone
If sometimes you’re catching a fleeting glimpse of a twelfth man at silly Mid-on
And it could be Geoff and it could be John with a new ball sting in his tail
And it could be me and it could be thee.