Among Michael Caine’s contributions to the English phrasebook is ‘Obsession is a young man’s game.’ So, famously, is mathematics. And until recently one might have said too that games are a young man’s game.
There were, of course, always exceptions to that rule. Stanley Matthews last donned his England shirt aged 42 and played in England’s top football division when he was 50. W G Grace, a most eminent Victorian, was a Test-match cricketer at 50 and