Two days after the speech. I can’t stop thinking about the list.
So I went looking for the numbers. Andy Zaltzman at ESPNcricinfo had done a stat dive the week before – he had them all.
676,693 deliveries faced, across 663 international matches. 41,113 minutes at the crease – 28 days and change. 4,062 fours. 264 sixes. 982 international cricketers played with or against, 842 of them on the other side.
I wrote them down in a notebook. I don’t know why. I don’t collect numbers. I don’t track stats. I have never written a scorecard in my life. But I sat down and wrote these down, by hand, as if the act of writing them would hold the thing in place.
It didn’t. It doesn’t work that way. The numbers describe what the moment was. They don’t let you keep it.
But I think I understand now why people build museums.
This is my version of the speech. It’s mostly numbers.