I spent most of last week in bed, much of it with a temperature over 40, and while I'm on the mend now, for a couple of days I was very ill indeed. So ill that I could barely sit up, while my head was throbbing so much, my capacity to think so impaired, that I could do nothing much more than lie and whimper and stare at the ceiling.

Consciousness becomes a slippery beast in such circumstances: life becomes one long, disturbing nightmare. There was somebody called Bernard who kept trying to arrange things, and had a big blue circle with red and yellow markings to demonstrate what he wanted. Every time I had a flash of lucidity, I told myself Bernard didn't exist and that I was imagining him, and every time I drifted off, there he was again. What made it worse was that I was sure he was wrong.

 

For some reason Bernard disturbed me, so I began to try to focus on happier things, to force my brain along certain safe channels. The problem was that I couldn't really concentrate, so I'd be thinking about the outline of chapter five of my book on Argentinian football, or about the scene in Neighbours when Joe mistakenly thought Harold had made a move on Mrs Mangel, or about some ham I ate in Lisbon once, and there would be Bernard with his blue circle getting in the way. What I needed was something with a number of staging posts, so I could navigate from one to the next, pause, and start again. Which is probably why I ended up obsessing about the over.

In any realistic consideration, the six balls I bowled at the Brabourne Stadium in a game between the Authors XI and the Cricket Club of India last month were an irrelevance. We'd made 162 of 8 (of which I contributed an ungainly 26 not out) from our 25 overs, and they had blazed away to 154 for 1 after about a dozen when our captain, having nothing left to lose, threw me the ball.

I don't really bowl (I don't really bat for that matter, but that's easier to hide). Last season I think I got through a total of 14 overs, most of them to help the opposition set a score, but during the Cup of Nations in Equatorial Guinea, I practised a lot, bowling at a goalpost on the AstroTurf pitch outside the hotel. By the end, it was coming out okay, looping nicely and sometimes turning.

The situation at the Brabourne was perfect for me. A Test ground, the game already lost: even if I bowled two full tosses it would only hasten the end. There was no pressure. My first ball was short - probably because my overriding thought had been, "Make sure it pitches" - and was pulled for four.

My second, though, was probably the best ball I've ever bowled. It dipped, turned just enough, beat the inside edge and, to my mind, was fizzing into middle stump when the front pad intervened. Happily the whole over was recorded in a series of photographs taken from the end of the pavilion, so I can see my appeal, which was perhaps over-vociferous in the circumstances, half-crouching, left arm raised.

Not out. The photographs show an unhealthy level of disbelief and fury. They ran a leg-bye.

The next ball was a dot, and the one after worked into the off side for a single, so I had the same batsman back on strike. The fifth ball was much like the second. It dipped, turned a little more and was perhaps hitting leg when it struck the back pad. My appeal was even more vehement, ending with me down on my left knee, left arm fully extended. In all honesty, I think the ball may have been sliding down, but this time the finger went up, and I celebrated without dignity.

Me? A wicket on a Test ground? It was farcical, an aberration. And there are photographs. Memories, especially of sporting events, are often fleeting. You remember the feeling but not the aesthetic, but here it is, preserved for ever (or until the great digital meltdown when the oil runs out, at least). And the great thing is how professional it looks: the stands, the neatly cut strip, the vivid green of a well-maintained square, the umpire in white shirt and black trousers…

Did it matter? Of course not. It turned a nine-wicket defeat into an eight-wicket defeat. Perhaps it'll encourage me to take my bowling more seriously next season, but that's of dubious benefit. But what it did do was generate an anecdote and, as I've said before, that really is what amateur sport is all about. And last week, most importantly of all, it helped keep Bernard at bay