The missing leather sphere

I can't believe I don't own a cricket balll; one I could keep on a shelf, and occasionally pick up just to sense that old familiar weight, to run my fingers over its seam, to toss it up a bit, twirl it around just a little to evoke those old fantasies of being able to bowl a leg-break (I never learned how to; instead I bowled googly after googly, effortlessly bowling offspinners with a legbreak action). But mainly, the cricket ball would be a good technology demonstrator, useful in so many different ways. I could show my New York friends just how hard the ball was, so they could understand why it was such a fearsome thing in the hands of West Indians in years gone by, and in Pakistanis' in the 1990s, why bowling spin was such a black art, why taking catches in the slip region and at point was such a skill (maybe I could walk them down to Prospect Park and make them go through a little catching practice, and just to be a little mischevious, would throw the odd ball a little harder just so that it could smack their palms with that satisfying 'splat'). Maybe I could do the same with my wife (except the bit about catching practice in Prospect Park). But mostly, I'd like to have a cricket ball at home because it would make daydreaming a little easier; it would be so much easier to go the whole hog - when it comes to conjuring up those memories - with a cricket ball in hand. I couldn't mark out a run-up in this small living-room of mine, but just the act of tossing the ball up would tickle that part of my cranium that acts as repository for those flickering memories, some real, some imagined.