When I am 7 years old, my father takes me to a cricket match between England and Australia, at the Oval. (A little light internet research confirms that this is Friday 14 August 1964, the second day of the fifth Test, which will end in a draw, leaving the Aussies 1-0 winners of the Ashes.)

It is fabulously boring. The craggy Australian opener Bill Lawry bats interminably, nudging the occasional single into the covers. These are the days when Test cricket is as attritional as trench warfare, and only slightly more enjoyable to watch.

Why are we there? My father has less interest in cricket (and sport generally) than in basket-weaving or Noh theatre, so I’m certain he hasn’t bought the tickets himself. Which means, I suppose, that it must be corporate hospitality, in some shape or form. My father works, at this time, in the publicity department at British Gas, where the agencies employed by him might seek to ingratiate themselves by treating a valued client to a day at the Test. And perhaps my father has felt it would be discourteous not to use the tickets he’s been given, and brought me along as his plus-one.

In any case, my introduction to international sport is not a happy experience. I am too young to savour the turgid intricacies of 1960s Test cricket. And my father makes no secret of wishing he were anywhere else on earth. Grateful rain cuts the day short not long after tea.

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A few years later, when I am 11 or maybe 12, my father takes me – and also my brother – to another cricket match. And this time it’s a lot easier to see what’s in it for him. Because this match is the one held annually between the staunchly socialist Tribune magazine and the parliamentary Labour Party.

Anyone who is anyone in left politics will be there, either playing or spectating. For my father – who has contributed pieces to Tribune and longs to be part of the Parliamentary Labour Party – it is an almost unparalleled networking opportunity.

The match takes place – where else? – in north London, on the playing fields of a private school of unusually progressive outlook. It’s raining, of course, though not hard enough to cause the match to be abandoned. And when we arrive everyone is taking shelter – as well as refreshment – in the impressively large beer tent that has been set up on the boundary.

Who is in that tent? It might be quicker and easier to list notable absentees from among the ranks of the Socialist aristocracy. True, the PM himself is missing, but at least half of his Cabinet is in attendance, including the Health Secretary – a tiny flame-haired figure, almost invisible within a circle of much bulkier admirers – and the Postmaster General, solitary, drinking from a Thermos and puffing an egalitarian pipe. Rubbing shoulders with the politicians, there are enough union leaders to give a Daily Mail reader (or the leadership of today’s Labour Party) a heart attack. Left-leaning journalists aplenty, too. And as for the bien-pensant North London intelligentsia (look, Tom Stoppard deep in writerly discussion with Alan Bennett), Gloucester Crescent and other such enclaves must be deserted this Sunday lunchtime.

My father is in heaven. He acquires soft drinks for my brother and me, then is subsumed by the throng.

As for the match itself, memory fails me almost, but not quite, entirely. I remember, despite my age, being invited to bowl an over, and, I’m almost sure, having the union leader Clive Jenkins caught behind. And I remember my brother, despite his age, being pressed into service as an umpire, and, unforgivably, giving Michael Foot out LBW, off the second ball he faced.

The fact it was plumb in front made no difference; for my father, no greater mortification than being identified as the parent of the teenager who sent the future leader of the Party packing.

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