Grief and the Gift of the Game: Scotland-Nepal at Forfarshire CC

I expected it to be quiet. For the gulls and the occasional oystercatcher floating on the breeze overhead to outnumber the spectators. I only made the journey here because this is the ground where my maternal grandfather got his all-time best bowling figures (8-2 or 8-3, depending on which day you ask my uncle). I expected to write some elegiac piece about how my grief for his loss would somehow be reflected in a small, silver-haired crowd watching a dying game under ash-grey skies. About how I miss him terribly, but I will be eternally grateful for the love he gave me for this game, even if its perennially uncertain future means I may not be able to pass the same love, at least not for a sport that exists in the same formats I grew up with, to my own grandchildren.

It seemed like a foregone conclusion. It had already written itself. It felt entirely reasonable to expect that nobody else would show up for a second-tier ODI against Nepal on the outskirts of Broughty Ferry. After all, this is Scotland, where football is king to such an extent that Glasgow Warriors can’t even sell out Scotstoun, with its tiny capacity of 7,500, for a knock-out URC game featuring half the national side and a host of Springboks. To be fair, there aren’t a lot of Scots in today.

What I have singularly failed to predict is the size and feverish enthusiasm of the Nepalese contingent, many of whom have travelled from far and wide to be here. Some from Aberdeen, many from London, and one who has apparently journeyed all the way from Calgary for today’s match.

Over the course of the first hour, a full Nepalese marching band assembles behind me. It starts with one set of small hand cymbals, then a drum, then three drums and bigger cymbals. To cap it all, a man with a horn arrives and rapidly demonstrates that owning a horn and knowing how to play one are distinctly separate things. Soon, every bowler’s run-up, every dot ball, every delivery that flirts with the edge of a bat, every, well, everything is greeted with a crescendo. This cacophony is accompanied by a chorus of coaching, advice, encouragement, and abuse in a colourful mixture of English and Nepali. Before long, the marching band is indeed marching, playing constantly and loosely improvising chants and tunes like some kind of cricketing jazz ensemble.

There is a clear divide in the crowd, with the majority of Nepalese fans on one side of the sight screen and the few Scottish supporters on the other. One side is raucous, the other a bit fusty. When the marching band ventures into the Scottish section they come across like Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters trying to freak out the squares on the streets of suburban America. Except, that is, for one older gentleman who adds to the surreal scenes by following stoically behind the band, carrying his giant Nepalese flag with the solemn grace of a Napoleonic-era standard bearer.

Quite a few of the Nepalese supporters are older men. Many of them seem obsessed with filming the entire match on their phones. In so doing, they remind me of my paternal grandfather, also sadly departed. Like these greying old geezers, he was the documentarian of our family, albeit that his equally shaky oeuvre was filmed on a VHS camcorder and not a smartphone. It’s comforting to see that, across cultures and continents, the shared imperative of the older male to needlessly film quotidian events for the sake of posterity is still going strong.

Thanks to the vagaries of ScotRail’s timetable, I have to leave with a few overs of Nepal’s run chase left to go. For much of their innings, they have been in the doldrums. After some promising early partnerships, they score mainly in occasional singles and look well off target when I am forced to head to the station. It seems I won’t be missing anything other than slow, sad conclusion. Once again, my assumptions are proven entirely incorrect by Nepalese exuberance, and I miss a thrilling denouement that sees Nepal emerge victorious off the final ball. I watch the ICC live stream from the platform at Broughty Ferry, dark green with envy as it all ends with a jubilant pitch invasion by the hundreds of Nepal fans who have enjoyed a brilliant day. Perhaps cricket need not go gentle into that good night. Like life, it can go on, with all its moments of kinship and community, elation and maddening frustration. My grandpa’s story – the part that cricket, this ground, and the summer days we shared watching Essex – is over. It will always be a major part of mine. After all, it brought me here – and to every other cricket match I’ve ever attended. There are new stories to be told now. I got to tell this one because of him.