WHEN I was hit smack in the mouth by a cricket ball, I never felt a thing. But it hurt like blazes when I woke up in Leeds General Infirmary. It was 1958 and I was playing in a school match. I received excellent treatment and made a good recovery – minus a couple of teeth.

It didn’t stop me playing cricket at school, at college and later for the village team. Then there came a match when I was about 45 and I began, at what I considered to be a very respectable pace, to run towards the boundary to field the ball.

A younger man’s voice from behind called: “It’s all right vicar – I’ll get it!”

That was when I knew it was time to retire. I came a few croppers at rugby – at school and for the old boys’ side — as well and even broke some bones. But I persisted because I loved my sports. It’s what most boys and men do.

Yes, I know that cricket and rugby are fairly dangerous. Participants have been killed, most recently the young Australian batsman Phillip Hughes.

And then there follow calls for the game to be banned or for it to be tamed or diluted in some ways to make it less dangerous – such as banning the bouncer. Usually the clamour dies down and the game in its original form survives. And so do more than 99 per cent of players.

Now 70 medical professionals and academics have called for a ban on tackling in schools’ rugby and say children should play only “touch” rugger or “tag” rugger instead – because rugby players are susceptible to concussion, fractures, dislocations and other serious injuries. Yes, we know – and especially those of us who have suffered them!

But to ban the bouncer from cricket or tackling from rugby would be like not letting us put salt and vinegar on our fish and chips. And I dare say there are some health and safety busybodies who would like us to do just that – and particularly ban the salt.

True, life is risky. But remove the risk and you remove with it much of the joy of living. You don’t stop going to the pub because you might get knocked down crossing the road. You just take more care – especially on the way home.

I put my foot in a rabbit hole while walking on the Downs, fell and hurt my shoulder and it gave me grief for months. But I’ve been back up there dozens of times since and I’ve no intention of giving up my country walks. We balance risks against benefits and put up with a bit of collateral damage for the sake of what we enjoy.

I suppose those 70 medical experts mean well despite their nannying tone, but I suspect some of them have a political agenda – a suspicion not removed when we notice that more than a few of them specialise in the nebulous world of “gender issues and human sexuality”.

Not to put too fine a point on it, they don’t much like big lads playing their macho games. One of them works in the area of “sexuality in sport”, another in “sport and race” and yet another studies “homophobia, pollution and masculinity”.

One of the main signatories to the report, Professor Eric Anderson of the University of Winchester, is an American sociologist and sexologist “specialising in adolescent men’s gender and sexualities”. I think we’re beginning to get the picture.

Work hard and play hard. That, as they say, is what life is all about.