Save rounders! It's the only sport for people who hate sport

Well, consider me well and truly bowled over.

The Department of Education has decided to scrap rounders from the GCSE curriculum.

This, despite the game - currently played by seven million boys and girls in 80 per cent of Britain’s secondary schools – being one of the most popular options among the 100,000 teenagers who choose the PE qualification each year.

Critics have called the move ‘sexist’, arguing that it will discourage girls from exercising.

More than that, they say, it flies in the face of the new Sport England ‘This Girl Can’ campaign, which aims to get more women into grassroots sport.

And I can’t help but agree. Ditching rounders is a massive miss-hit by the Government.

Why? Because it’s nothing short of the perfect game as generations of fans, including the Duchess of Cambridge, know.

Rounders is a sport in which even the non-sporty can excel. It’s a sport for people who hate sport.

And frankly, without it, my physical education would have been one long session spent wheezing at the side of the running track.

There’s the nostalgia, of course. The satisfying ‘thwack’ as heavy ball meets wooden bat; the lush green field dotted with coloured cones, shining under the British summer sun; the grass-stained knees as you slide valiantly past fourth base.

But there’s much more to rounders than that.

Firstly, in my experience, this was the one school sport where ‘picking teams’ just wasn’t necessary. Everyone pretty much gets to have a go at everything, so the teachers just split the class in half and had done with it.

Then, there’s the level of flexibility that rounders affords you. Because this is a game that – to some extent – permits you to dictate your own level of involvement.

Not feeling energetic? Stand in the ‘deep field’, chatting to your friends, with one eye out for any incoming balls.

Running not your strong suit? Bat once, get called ‘out’ somewhere between first and second post and spend the rest of the game keeping score.

Here, then, is a team game that allows you to ‘blend in’. It affords you the space to grow more confident, slowly, and without the ritual humiliation that’s part of so many school sporting events.

And it’s precisely this lack of pressure that many girls – myself include – have found so motivating over the years.

That I eventually became class bowler – and not too bad at it – left my family bemused. I showed little aptitude at any other physical activity. Let’s face it; even walking in a straight line was often a struggle. And you can forget riding a bike.

But this sliver of genuinely enjoyable sport, gave me a physical outlet that my school days would otherwise have lacked. It didn’t make me feel bad about myself like throwing the javelin (terrible); long jump (abysmal); or hockey (laughable).

Simply, it was fun.

We Brits have played rounders for generations. Photo: Getty

Rounders was my very own field of dreams (if you bowl it, they will come).

And it improved my confidence in other areas. Without rounders, I doubt I’d have put myself forward to be a ball girl at the Queen’s Club tennis tournament – undertaking a gruelling seven months of training.

It saddens me to think that generations of school girls and boys might miss out on the opportunity to play this most special of sports.

Not least because it also signals the end of another very English, slightly eccentric, institution. These are the disciplines we so often excel at (curling, anyone?) Such activities, played for generations on scuffed school fields, are our national stepping stones to more mainstream sports.

So my message to the Department of Education? No ball!