Joe Bennett: Squashing the wish to win

The squash ball is a hollow sphere of rubber that refuses to bounce until it’s been whacked a few dozen times to heat it up. Photo / 123rf

Opinion

The sunset was like an old-style gas fire, the sort you could toast toast in front of. And the reflections on the estuary - the yellows, reds, pinks and blacks were so beguiling, my front wheel struck a kerb and I had to concentrate on driving. I was driving to squash.

I didn’t play squash ‘til I was 19 and I haven’t stopped playing it since. Of the thousands of games I have played, I remember the result of only one, which is the game I played yesterday. I lost.

We play at a small run-down club. When I unlocked the door, I was greeted by cold air and the unmistakable smell of long-brewed gym shoes. It sings to me. I turned on lights, but not heaters. There are no heaters. You heat yourself by playing.

I had arrived on time. I always, sunsets permitting, arrive on time. G.K. Chesterton said the only way he knew to catch a train was to miss the one before. I am not G.K. Chesterton. Nor am I whoever it was that said that punctuality is the virtue of the bored. I like to think it is the virtue of the courteous, but it is partly also timorousness. I don’t like to keep people waiting for fear of upsetting them. And though lateness irks me, a part of me admires late people. Not giving a damn can be sexy.

Tom was only a few minutes late. He seemed to be about to apologise, but then his phone rang and took priority. One of my many beefs with cellphones is that they take priority. While Tom conducted business, I went to warm up the ball.

The squash ball is a hollow sphere of rubber that refuses to bounce until it’s been whacked a few dozen times to heat it up. Don’t ask me to explain the physics of it. Don’t ask me to explain any physics. We had a physics teacher who described electricity as a series of barrels known as amps being pushed around a circuit by a man called Mr Volt who lived in a battery. Soon afterwards, I gave up physics forever.

You can learn a lot from the way people warm up on the squash court. Tom likes to hit the bejeebers out of the ball.

A man I played with years ago didn’t warm up at all. ‘Let’s start,’ he would say, and we would, with a stone-cold ball and muscles to match. He was the loveliest man. He wore unmatching fluorescent socks and his greatest pleasure on the squash court was to deceive. He loved to feign a drop shot and then at the last minute flick up a lob. It made him laugh. Not out of malice, but out of a sense of comic delight.

Cancer seized him in his 40s, ate him to a husk. Several of us went ‘round to see him shortly before he died. He insisted we had a beer each, though he was too weak to flick the tops off.

Two hundred years ago, inmates at a debtors’ prison in London invented a game involving a hard ball and hard bats, played in a cell. Squash is its direct descendant. It retains that cell-like crampedness. It’s tennis on an eighth of the court with both players on the same side of the net. Beginners run into each other, hit the ball into each other, hit each other with their racquets. But once you’ve got beyond the beginner stage, it’s the fastest way on earth to work up a thirst.

At our level, the game is self-policing. This means I cheat. Just a little. I don’t mean to cheat. I don’t want to cheat. And neither do I need to cheat, because I don’t mind losing. Or at least I tell myself I don’t mind losing. But in the throes of a rally, when I am stretching for a ball I can’t quite reach, what causes me to appeal for a let when no let is deserved is a greedy instinct to win. I am ashamed of it, but not ashamed enough to retract the call. And Tom is dubious of the call, but not dubious enough to cause unpleasantness.

Yesterday’s game took 45 minutes. When Tom won, I was momentarily bitter. As we shook hands, I said ‘well played’ without meaning it. Thirty seconds later, I meant it. In the shower, Tom described a recipe for braising brisket.

Dressed again and still residually sweating, I drove back along the estuary. The sun had long gone. The water shimmered black. The day was done. And we went to the pub, as you should.