“You are,” he said to me in his well-modulated upper middle class London accent, “a near dibbly dobbly if ever”. It was hard enough sorting out the mysteries of cricket without being called something or other that was even more perplexing. Clearly Philip Caramen, among the most prominent of English Jesuit historians of his generation, didn’t quite know what to make of my thick-head inability to follow his explanations of cricket, a game he passionately loved.

I had been spending the summer at Southwell House, a Jesuit residence in a lovely area of north-west London. Philip lived there, and we had become good friends. One afternoon he was watching a particular important cricket match in the common room. Noticing my arrival to read a newspaper, and ever friendly, he called out, “Do you watch cricket?” Little did he know! I was a total ignoramus, I explained. “No matter,” he cheerily replied, “I’ll teach you.” What a hopeless undertaking that would be.

Never especially good at most sports or interested in them for that matter, I sat to watch and listen as he set out to explain very patiently the various plays and whatever else seemed to make up cricket. It soon became evident his task was doomed. My questions were infantile and irrelevant.

Just getting one’s mind around the terms used for the game seemed a life-time’s work. There are at least some 550 of them with any number of variations throughout the world of cricket. The strange words and phrases either by the announcer–always speaking in a hushed voice–or by Philip, baffled. I was lost at once.

He quickly realized he had a right good dullard beside him. After a couple more attempts to enlighten me, he looked at me, and referring to me as a “near dibbly dobbly,” he exclaimed, “In fact, you are the worst pupil I have ever had!” No doubt he was right. Excusing myself, I wisely left him in peace.

Fortunately my tedious failure to follow the master’s explanations did not despoil a lovely friendship, one which would continue many years afterwards. Three months before he died in early May 1998, he was staying at the Jesuit residence in central London. Without knowing Philip was there, while on my way to teach at the Gregorian University in Rome I stopped for a couple days. We had not met for some time.

There he was, in the common room looking frail and very ill, yet still with his enigmatic smile. We fell to chatting and reminiscing. Soon I reminded him of his futile attempt to teach me cricket, his worst pupil ever. “Well, you were”, he quickly shot back, with a grin. Undoubtedly!

Oh, by the way, “dibbly dobbly”, as he explained it, is a “bowler” of limited skills!