Dreams of sporting endeavour enough to give a captain nightmares

Most rational thinkers would agree that the stuff in our dreams is what we really think.

In the mortar and pestle of life, if you really want to see your self-image ground down to dust, check out your REM sleep cycle.

It can be vicious viewing.

I have woken shattered after learning soul-destroying facts in the night. However, soul-destroying facts are neither here nor there.

What concerns me far more in dreams is how I dream about sport. I only dream of three sports: basketball, golf and cricket.

In all of these I am playing at a very high level, and in all of them I experience unrelenting failure.

And as any male born under Cancer will confirm, unrelenting failure is a bedfellow we abhor.

Although only the height of an average racing jockey, I have nevertheless enjoyed shooting a basketball all my life.

At our last house we had a half-court and backboard, where, opponentless, I dribbled and shot with deadly accuracy.

I don't recall ever missing a shot from anywhere. In my basketball dreams, I am the go-to guy.

Give the ball to Colbert, screams the coach from the sideline.

I receive the pass, shoot, and miss by miles. The team set triple screens to leave me open.

I miss by miles again. In desperation, they run a play where the defence parts like the Red Sea.

I stroll in for an uncontested layup, and miss again. I get the uncontested rebound, and miss again.

This tape loop runs on interminably until I am mercifully rescuedby the alarm clock.

Golf, of course, is a bad dream, by definition.

I have one curious golf dream where I press the tee into the ground, place the ball, swing my colossal driver a few times, and then step up to whack the ball into a wide open fairway.

But something is not quite right.

I move the tee. Suddenly, there is a small rock in the way.

I move it again. Now, I cannot swing the club back without hitting a tree.

The fairway has shrunk to a thin alleyway.

Soon, I am like a man wrestling with a snake in a phone box, an uncannily accurate description of my golf swing in real life.

I never get to hit a ball in my golf dreamsIn cricket dreams, I am always batting.

I am swathed in huge pads, carrying a bat the size of a Daikin heat pump and weighing more than Carl Hayman.

I am called through for an impossible run, flail hopelessly on the spot, and am run out by 15 yards. I trudge off as the fieldsmen call me rude names.

But on the night after the third day of the Bangladesh test, when New Zealand were about to set them a formidable target, I found myself in normal cricket clothing, batting with Dan Vettori.

And here was the thing: I was batting well, stroking the ball effortlessly around the park with the timing of Majid Khan.

When I reached 34, I bounded down the wicket and hit their speedster Hossein for consecutive sixes, over long-on and long-off.

I walked down the wicket to a frowning Vettori.

"Do you mind if I really go for it from here, Dan?" I asked.

"I'm actually finding it pretty damn easy."

"We need more runs yet," said Vettori.

We were 596 in front, but Vettori is cautious with fourth innings targets.

The next delivery was a thinly-disguised slower ball which reached me at the very end of my 360-degree lunge.

I plopped the ball softly into the bowler's hands and trudged off as the fieldsmen called me rude names.

But this was not a sporting failure dream. I scored 46, and I scored them well.

A corner has been turned.

I realise my real-world chances of playing international sport have probably gone, but I can't wait for the next dream.

• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.