Duncan Hamilton - A Clear Blue Sky - A remarkable memoir about family, loss and the will to overcome

Van Zyl has been put on to remind me of Durban. To lull me into relaxing against him and committing another error. The difference between him and Morkel, who is fielding on the boundary, is as stark as the difference between a light breeze and a lashing wind. Van Zyl sends down innocuous-looking deliveries, the odd one drifting away or cutting back. I’m wary of him purely because of my score. To get from 95 to 99, I filched one single off Morkel and three off Van Zyl. I’m still waiting for the unexpected from him. The Wonder Ball. Something he’s hidden so far. Something that seems nothing in the air but is everything off the pitch – either dipping low, towards my bootstraps, or darting up, forcing me to fend it off.

Like Donald Bradman before him, Brian Lara said he didn’t focus so much on the fielders as on the gaps between them. I’m checking and rechecking the set of the field, looking for the spaces too, so that I’ll know with a nailed-on certainty where to send anything loose. South Africa are tinkering with the field. It’s dragged in before minor adjustments are made – a yard here, a few paces there. It’s an attempt to deprive me of a single and persuade me to hit over the top. This drawn-out process is also an attempt to niggle and make me feel nervous. It won’t. I’m telling myself three things:

Patience … Patience … Patience.

The crowd is pent-up. There’s cheering and hollering and chanting until just before the ball is bowled, when a silence engulfs the ground. It’s as though everyone is holding their breath for me.

It’s the fourth ball of the 118th over. It’s the 161st ball of my innings.

Possibly the heat has wearied Van Zyl. Or possibly he is just a tad too eager to get at me, and the strenuous effort he puts into the delivery throws his stride out, leaving him fractionally off-balance. Whatever the reason, his arm gets dragged down just a sliver as he heaves his body into it. As a batsman, you’re constantly dealing with the infinitesimal. Judgements are made in millimetres and in microseconds. Get any calculation wrong, and you’re likely to perish. Everything happens so quickly, the ball on top of you after a blur and a kerfuffle of movement. In the time it takes to blink you’re working out speed, trajectory and direction. Even someone of Van Zyl’s relatively sedate pace demands that. But I see this ball early. And, almost as soon as it leaves his hand, I know its length and line. I also know which stroke I’ll play – a cut past backward point, a shot I’ve executed in games innumerable times and practised innumerable times more. My dad loved the cut. ‘If they bowl short outside the off stump, it’s bingo,’ he used to say. This is bingo for me too. I go back and across my stumps, ever so slightly crouching. I’m in position, waiting for it before it arrives. This is my moment and I’ve come to meet it.

You know when you’ve hit a good shot. I use a bat that weighs 2 pounds and 9 ounces, and it makes a reassuringly solid sound when I connect properly. The ball pings off the middle. I start to run, but there’s no need. It’s going for four.

The ‘YES’ I scream in response is half roar, half rebel yell. It’s loud enough for someone to hear it in Leeds. I’m still shouting it, and still wearing my helmet, when I lean back, arms outstretched. Then I yank my helmet off, kiss the badge on the front of it and hold my bat aloft. I tilt my head upwards. All I see is the unblemished arch of the sky, clearer and bluer than ever. All I hear is the crowd – the clapping, the cheers, the thunder of voices. What I feel is absolute relief and the profoundest joy. I am experiencing what I can only describe as the sense of complete fulfilment, which is overwhelming me.

I’m so grateful to Ben Stokes. It’s second nature to dash to your partner when he reaches a hundred, sharing the stage with him. Stokesy doesn’t. He stands back, a spectator like everyone else, allowing me a minute alone. He knows . Finally, he throws one of those big, tattooed arms around me and says: ‘Soak it up. Take it all in, mate.’

I do.

And what comes back, of course, crowding into my mind, is the past, which puts everything into context. My dad. My grandpa. My grandma. My mum. My sister. I could weep now. I could let the tears out, but I fight against them instead, closing my eyes to dam them up.

My dad always liked to know where my mum was sitting before he went in to bat. He drew comfort from the fact that she was there and giving her support – even when he couldn’t see her distinctly. At the beginning of his innings he’d search for her from the crease and settled only when he’d fastened on to the approximate location or, better still, actually spotted her in a row, usually because of something she was wearing. I’m exactly the same. I’ll always look in her direction, searching for her face among a thousand others.

My mum is sometimes unable to look when I bat; she might hide in a corridor when I get near a landmark score. I know she’ll have braved this one out, but everyone is standing and applauding so I can’t see her at first. I point with my bat towards where I know for certain she and Becky are sitting, a gesture for them alone.

Eventually the noise of the crowd dies away, and I think of starting my innings again. But first I take one last look at the sky. If heaven has a pub, I hope my dad is in it now. I hope he’s ordering a pint to celebrate.

Then I hope he orders another.

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