Let me paint a picture for you...
The bowler bowls outside the offstump. The batsman has a swipe, can't really reach it and the umpire straightens his arms to either side to indicate what he thought of the ball. But then what? The batsman tucks his bat under his arm and walks towards the scoring table whilst taking off his gloves.

A moment of confusion for nigh everybody but the batsman. No appeal, no decision, but with a certain look on his face the batsman is walking off. Now it is this certain look on this face I would like to focus on. For what is going on inside that head at that precise moment? A mixture of emotions surely. For in this wild crossbatted swipe at the wide ball the batsman (who also happens to be the ACC4 skipper) has feathered the ball in the lightest of possible ways. So light that perhaps no-one has noticed. Maybe not even the wicketkeeper who routinely caught the ball. So what mixture of emotions is it as he walks the walk of death we all have to transverse from time to time, from crease to chair next to the scorer. There must be emotions to do with playing a crap shot. But there is also something else. A sense of self-determination, righteousness and pride even. And it is the stronger of the emotions. How to understand this...
Now the japanese samurai in ages long gone were at time allowed to commit seppuku. Basically they had already lost but were given the opportunity to take their own lives by sticking a  tantō in their belly and thus gaining and retaining respect and honour.
We all know about winning and how good that feels. And we all know we play games to win. So losing feels crap. And we should do everything to win. But honour seems to transcend that relatively basic principle. When you step above the old win-lose paradigm and fall on your own sword, you float above the old animal kingdom we have come from and are truly into man-made territory. Man as in a being that came from the kill or be killed survival strategy and slowly ascended towards a being that can selfdetermine his guiding principles, that is no longer bound by the mud and the blood so to speak.

So bloody what I hear you say. Sounds like you lost the game.

Fair cop. But let me paint another picture for you. Second innings of the same match. Caught behind not given. About as blatant as they come. The ump wants to leave it up to the batsman and he ain't walking. With the Zeist game still in most people's minds it could have meant a bit of a spoil on what was a very goodnatured match. The squareleg umpire however starts talking to the batsman. Reminds him of the honourable choice the acc skipper made before lunch. Now this decision is a harder one for the batsman because he has already stayed at the crease. At least a minute and a half have gone by, by now. It gets harder and harder to walk after all that. And yet, he does. He reaches that point where losing and honour balance out and honour in fact tips the scale. He walks. Two minutes after the catch.

ACC found their betters in Quick Nijmegen in cricketterms. They beat us fair and square by 8 wickets. But honourwise we were evenly matched and therefore in that sense it was a day where everybody won. And good fun too. And then there was the Big Lad party!