"The Veteran Cricketer" by H. G. Wells is a short essay. H. G. Wells once different, humorous social satire and ironic.

My old cricketer was seized, he says, some score of years ago now, by sciatica, clutched indeed about the loins thereby, and forcibly withdrawn from the practice of the art; since when a certain predisposition to a corpulent habit has lacked its natural check of exercise, and a broadness almost Dutch has won upon him.