It might have been the Parks as the men in white played in the shade of ancient trees; in the distance there may well have been revellers punting down the nearby river Avon, a wonderful bucolic scene that fits well with Test cricket in New Zealand, far better than playing in those cavernous rugby grounds.
They played in different positions and their physical statures couldn't have been more contrasting – Dino was a tall, robust midfielder with short, cropped hair while Roberto was a small, timid, tortured-genius that sported a ponytail with beads at the tip – but Dino would spend a career playing in the shade of the trequartista, purely because they shared a surname.
I was a dazzled foreigner, the American fiancée, and this was one of those gilded October scenes with which Italy tempts the sojourner: a garden filled with handsome inbred men and women drinking wine with a tang of oak; children in lace collars and muddy boots playing in the shade of a grand Juvarran façade, smudged with age.
Most of us, of course, ignorant of such subtleties, know it as plain French boules, a game played in the shade of plane trees on the scuffed gravel of countless squares across France by elderly men in flat caps and string vests, Gitanes clamped to their lower lips and shots of pastis never far from hand.
Other children play nearby in the shade of some trees.
A day later, Dladla set off through the hills and valleys of rural Zululand to a village near his childhood home, where a group of men played cards in the shade of a tree.
But by mid-afternoon, the kids are still playing marbles in the shade of the schoolhouse, joking around and talking about doing homework.
We played football or sat in the shade of the eucalyptus trees.
He sat at one of the granite tables where older men also play dominos or checkers, in the shade of chestnut trees.
