A cricketing journey
Why I’m going to Australia at 2am this winter for lunch and why cricket memories never fail to make me smile.
Why I’m going to Australia at 2am this winter for lunch and why cricket memories never fail to make me smile.
Caveat Emptor: The answer to the question(s) posed are at the bottom of this scorecard, but the runs and wickets, dropped catches and the human characters I called friends are in the heart of the order of the story.
Caveat Emptor Part 2: The following is a long ramble from a mere club cricketer who clearly spent far too much time at long leg, seething and muttering to himself because his Skipper at 1st slip dropped the easiest of chances to snaffle the opening batsman off his bowling. I was an opening bowler who progressively got worse and worse with the willow until I used to make a point of grabbing the scorebook as soon as I could to scribble my name at Number 11 and set up two chairs, one for my aching bare feet and the other for me to stretch out and mark the runs and wickets that appeared before my eyes. I could of course have offered to play my part and do a stint as an Umpire but that always looked like a ball ache and far, far too much responsibility for this daydreamer at long leg, talking to himself, and still angry at that dropped catch. So the tales I shall be weaving here and in faithful answer to the questions posed in the blog title, will be utterly and openly truthful. A good club cricketer, good enough for a trial for his county, who played 3 games a week most Spring/Summer weeks, etc. All incidents of cricketing excellence reported here will have been viewed, at the time, by a handful of people, friends and family and possibly a disinterested stray dog. Though we did used to have a fixture at a “Stately Home” and they had peacocks walking around the edge of the boundary, so I guess we could, if you wish, include them in the attendance figures?
Just a club cricketer, but the more I’ve thought on this, and the theme that will run through this blog, the more I’m certain everything is inextricably linked by the crack of leather on willow. If I allow myself, if, this could be a very personal as well as a cricketing journey. Or, I might just flail a quick 50, raise my bat in a small gesture of defiance with the realisation I’m not going to get a century.
I don’t know. I haven’t written this yet.
When I left my hometown in the May of 1999 it was for the best of intentions and said intentions are covered briefly in many of my blogs. I was desperate to leave my hometown of Portsmouth and make a go of something, anything, and see where it led. A perfect work opportunity arose that I really wanted, luckily I got the job and three days after a really emotional send off to the human beings who really mattered the most to me in the world, even Manchester United fans, I was in my new nirvana. A new house in a strange town which was a “new town” apparently, but there’s nothing really new around here. In fact, my favourite destination in this part of the world is on my doorstep and from a different century to our perceived notions of time altogether. Without a television connection until a week ago last Thursday and boxes littering my new home, I had indeed moved. Finally. Completely. I’m in my new home in this strange, strange town and about to start this new job with what were affectionately known as “The Gang” or as I call those rogues and rapscallions these days, “The Magnificent Seven” and I’m missing lifelong friends and particularly my dear old Mum, but I’m moved and indeed moved in, with a brilliant new job that also gave this particular bird the freedom he craved and, dear reader, perhaps even more importantly, I’m now only 90 minutes or so away from Anfield and the home to my beloved footballing team of Liverpool. I have already written to the local supporters club for a membership as, well, if we’re being truly honest, moving to this strange town and being so close now to Liverpool was a rather large reason for wanting that particular job in the first place! Under 2 hours away from Liverpool and now, for the first time in a while, disposable income on which to spend watching my team all over the country? Where do I sign?! And then three days into moving into my new home with my new job and new access to even more Liverpool tickets than ever before, I’m sat listening to Radio 5 and their commentary of the European Cup Final from Barcelona. Bayern Munich were well in control of a one sided final (apparently) and had just 60 seconds on which to hold on to win “Old Big Ears”.
My new mobile telephone. My first mobile telephone did not stop ringing for the best part of the next hour as first Sanjay rang to scream his heart pumping delight. I’d like to think Matthew called me that evening too and I’d be disappointed if he didn’t (was he on holiday? Ed) and particularly my dear old Mum who was very overcome by the whole thing, cried a lot, and couldn’t believe what she’d just witnessed. Her team, her team, of Red dressed Devils had won the biggest European Club Competition. Her team of Bryan Robson, Gary Bailey, Roy Keane and Cristiano Ronaldo, the Manchester United she never stopped talking about, had won the European Cup. It was a tradition of sorts to call the other person when their team had triumphed and lifted a trophy but my Mum called me “to test out the phone” she said, and to sound about as happy as I ever heard her.
Until the recent insertion of those goals into football adverts I had managed to avoid seeing those goals that I hadn’t seen live as I sat on a box in an empty house with no television signal and listening to the radio or indeed the goals that Sanjay was screaming (literally) about from his drunken mouth and into my disbelieving ears. I’ve always imagined the goals as abstract, not really of existence even, or the fault of a batsman playing down the wrong line to a “straight one”. I hoped they bounced and spun like a Shane Warne “leg break” or just clipped the bail off the top of off stump. Perhaps Jonny Wilkinson’s drop goal to win the Rugby World Cup 4 years later? That would be better, yes? Even Charlie George and his ridiculous flouncing fall to the floor after he scored the winner for Arsenal in the 1971 FA Cup Final was acceptable. On a loop. Forever. Please? Staple my eyes open like Alex in “A Clockwork Orange” and start pumping that image of the beautiful George and his wonderfully long hair lying on the Wembley turf. Please? But no. It had happened. Those goals really do exist in the space time continuum and I still recall the sheer exhilaration in my Mum’s voice as she talked me through what she was watching, with disbelieving eyes, on her gogglebox.
What does this have to do with cricket you may ask and the answer, at the moment, would be nothing, but in the very same May of 1999 and with the cricket season still a relative new born for the year, I should have immediately joined a team in my new town, Telford, or the surrounding area, and I didn’t. Looking back I don’t think I actually gave it a second thought and when you read just the bare bones of what’s to follow here I’m sure you’ll be as confused as I am. I had all the newness I needed, job, house, car and freedom. Lots of freedom. But despite the hopefully entertaining words here I’m actually a rather shy and quiet type. I’m not the greatest in trying or starting something new (despite the life changing decision to move 200 miles away permanently from home) and so even the most polite of enquiries to a local cricket club would’ve been beyond me and so I didn’t give it or the game a second thought. The Summer of 1999 was full of visits from old friends, getting used to where I lived and indeed why, joining a Liverpool supporters club and living my new life. 2000 was a continuation but with the added obsession called “golf” and in the summer of 2001 I fell deeply in love and was as happy as I could remember with still zero thoughts of playing cricket.
Jumping ahead: I’ve played 3 games of cricket in the 22 years since leaving my hometown. One was a disaster in the Birmingham Local League and the other two were friendlies playing for a Liverpool based team called “Shrewsbury” against Shrewsbury School (of whom they are historically named) and in the majestic surrounds of the very same school. Shrewsbury versus Shrewsbury at Shrewsbury School? Look, I used to play for the Spotted Cow Ladies Pool team so I’m used to such word playing confusion, nonsense and tomfoolery, but that’s a trophy winning tale for another day. This is about cricket, least you forget, and playing cricket three times a week. Captaining the works team. Opening bowler for both the Saturday and Sunday teams. Collecting fines. End of Season extravaganzas! A West Indian great. Peacocks on the outfield. Dropped catches. Trials for the county. Running to the “shed” for the first allocation of the tuna and cucumber sandwiches at tea time. This is a cricketing tale all right, and we seam (sic) to be getting somewhere.
I honestly do not know why the 27 year old me did not make a simple phone call or two to a couple of local cricket clubs but I didn’t, and the following is perhaps the perfect summation of the ardent amateur cricketer I was, avid fan that I still am and me as a bag of bones human being. I do know that when I played my last game for the “Zombies” (a highly regarded Sunday cricket team I’ll get to later) was that I was simply as good as I was going to get. I was a decent fast bowler at 26 who loved to hit the seam and see it veer away from a batsman or preferably get the edge to the wicket-keeper. But I wasn’t going to get better. Also, I’ve long lied to myself that I’m not competitive and laughed off the mere suggestion of being so when challenged at darts, snooker, golf or scrabble. Beat me at scrabble and I want a recount of every ballot this side of Florida! But I was and still am (to a degree) competitive. I just say I’m not as a forward defensive shot to the fast bowling lefty of life and to keep things nice and simple. I was competitive at “Zombies” level (high) and very good at work/Saturday League level. The game I played in the Birmingham League was a year into my new life but I was slow, out of shape and bowling absolute rubbish. I dropped a “dolly” and caught a “worldie” but I was tired and not playing with my mates and that probably sealed it. I wasn’t competitive, at all, missing the familiarity of three sets of team mates and was now looking for lost golf balls in the deepest of tree lined woods rather than pacing up and down my run up and shining a red ball on my white trousers.
Since 1999 I have been lucky to raise a beautiful son, have some wonderful experiences and have a life that I wouldn’t have if I had not left my home town, the leaving of which will forever pain me as that’s the way I’m wired. I had to leave but missed the majority of my Mum’s final years and lifelong friends whose friendship I take for granted/never take for granted (delete as per that day’s mindset) who were and are, missed, but life finds a way, and 22 years on, here I am writing about it. And trying to write about the 27 year old leaving his old hometown, and the 49 year old I have become along the way. I’ve always suffered with “low moods” as they are known today. Depression. Black Dog. The dark hole. The long dark nights of the soul. Call it what you will and I’m not diminishing the condition in any way by doing so, merely as a way of pointing out that since my mid teens I’ve always struggled and I’ve never known exactly what to term it as or give a label or a name. I’m also keenly aware that bouts of depression (to use a familiar, single phrase) vary wildly across the spectrum. As with any emotion you wish to name. It’s a human emotion after all and mindset just like any other and I haven’t shied away from being open with those closest to me and making the very most of professional counselling. Fear not, I shall not be continuing in this vein but to merely make a longer point shortly but suffice to say throughout all of the above I’ve functioned as a responsible human being, had a career, a family, some unbelievable times watching the Mighty Reds of Liverpool all over Europe but I’ve always been dealing with the black dog and sometimes it’s bitten me and sometimes I’ve struggled.
All of my blogs contain rambling stories that are kind of shot through the prism of me. I’m a Hunter S Thompson fan for goodness sake! So this is my own Gonzo. This is me in my own story surrounded by memories and experiences and trying to keep a steady mental well being. I started these blogs as a way of freeing some demons as well as entertaining myself, putting down some memories on virtual paper and seeing if I could twist some together to make a vaguely interesting long form piece of writing to read. And so this blog is no different to any other. I’ve become ever more insular since 2012 but even before that I was retreating into my own space all the time. I was no longer playing cricket but atrocious golf and watching as many Liverpool games as I could muster. But not being part of a team, any team really, and working from home long before it became fashionable this year, with no work parties or legendary end of season cricket pub crawls to organise leaves a hole you fill with something else, but it’s the friends and team mates “hole” that you can’t fill. The offshoot friendships gained. The unexpected experiences that seemingly appear from nowhere. So I’ve led a life here in Telford for 22 years, covered up the mental cracks along the way and been gifted the love of a beautiful son as well as the back up, from a distance, of a dear old Test Match cricket loving, Manchester United supporting Mum.
So these blogs are a gift to myself as the more I write and the more I keep engaging with the grey matter the happier I am. So I’ve made a deal with myself to stay up for 4/5 nights in a row over a 2 month period crossing Christmas and New Year to bring you, yes you dear reader, the cricketing Ashes battle between England and Australia this year! I know, the sacrifices I make for you. Long cold nights watching the oldest contest in Test Match history and all for that almost mythical little urn of ashes. Why is this so momentous you may well be asking yourself? Because I’m giving myself the latitude to enjoy myself. To stop, albeit briefly, hopefully longer, boxing myself off from a life time’s love and just grumbling about it. There is a pattern here that is far too long even for this blog to describe in the “boxing off” technique I crazily use but suffice to say it’s an “all or nothing” thing. If you equate that to the simple pleasure of experiencing joy, there can often be a chasm between the “all” of joy and the nothing of that same pleasure. So I’m going to allow myself to enjoy myself, be it at 3am watching the cricket or a few hours later writing about the day’s play and trying to weave a tangential story or three. Again, it’s hardly momentous is it? But then again, I haven’t even begun to tell my amateur tale of my cricketing journey and as I’m having some fun here, please let’s take off our collective bowling boots, stretch our toes in the lovely lush grass and enjoy a tuna and cucumber sandwich as we rewind to the end in 1999, before the beginning in the late 1970’s.
The end before the beginning? As my mate Hunter S Thompson would often refrain “and why not?”.
Why not indeed.
I don’t recall how much cricket I played in 1999 but considering I left Portsmouth in the first week of May it can’t have been much at all. Possibly a game for the “Zombies” and more probably a game for the Insurance Company I worked for, but the picture painted hence far of a summer full of cricket 3 times a week would definitely have been your humble narrator in the Summer of 1998 and before. I played for a “Marconi” works team in a fairly low level Portsmouth League on a Saturday for a season and a half and had a blast. I was good friends with the captain Keith whom I met playing for another team in another league and who in turn played against our Insurance works cricket team. I took wickets, had a real blast and didn’t have to concern myself with the captaincy of the works team I was lucky enough to hold. And quite the momentous day that was, I can tell you. There we were, huddled over a pint in a nearby Wetherspoons planning that season’s work cricket fixtures when someone we’ll call “Tim” broadly announced that I should now be captain and much to my own surprise as I had zero idea he was going to suggest such a preposterous thing. I had only been at the Company for 2 and a half years but more importantly, two cricket seasons, and I was announced and agreed as Captain as the lunch time curries arrived. Now again, I’m not making this out to be a grand gesture and I am not going to describe myself as the next coming of Mike Brearley, but Captain’s have a responsibility, and I wasn’t going to let work get in the way of matters of this importance! So I planned the fixtures, made the telephone calls, arranged finance and secured players “authorised absence” for the “Big Dance” every year. Scorebooks were pristine. The cricket “coffin”, that quaint old tradition of keeping such a rag tag bunch of office workers combined club gear crammed into a bulging canvas bag? Well that was spotless I can tell you! And so were the elongated emails to “Team Leaders” and probably the Pope to really convey the importance that Tim or Dave or Iain or Steveo had on the Head Office team and just had to be allowed to spend an entire day away from the office playing cricket with a view of the nearby seafront and without him we should surely lose and bring disgrace upon the United States of the Head Office. I was busy, I can tell you. In between having not one, but two of the worst office love affair relationships this side of the Sydney Cricket Ground, I also ran a football competition that kept the baying hordes of something resembling work from crossing my desk, and of course I had to collect and keep the weekly fines from the cricket team, arrange the end of season drinking spectacular that ran off the rails by about the second pub of a long planned pub crawl every season and generally do anything and everything I possibly could to avoid work.
Other avoiders of work contained the likes of the aforementioned Tim who whilst a stylish batsman I remember rather more fondly as the bloke screaming “BLACKFORD! WHERE ARE YOU?” whilst he alone tried to anchor the midfield in the works football team and I marauded upfield like a lunatic. Keith was a gregarious host as well as a good cricketer and the same attributes I can firmly bestow on one of my best friends and a character we’ll call “Steveo”. Steveo will be appearing as our story progresses. Steveo is the best of us as a human being and just loved, loved crossing the wicket every over to field at deep cover for me. Loved it. He couldn’t have been happier doing so, as we all huddled against the cold of a May night next to the motorway at Farlington. We had two Matt’s, one of which was a “ringer” and my deep friend Matthew. Matthew too will be appearing later in this ramble but at this juncture, suffice to say, we’re tight friends even in spite of the fact that I never bowled him for the works team, after asking and inviting him, least you forget, and he’s still my mate. Should have bowled more for the “Zombies” too, but we’ll get to that, via Jon or JR, who harangued me into playing for those beautiful travelling misfits, and via us playing for the works team for whom Jon was a virtual ever present and could do everything. A top man was Jon, whom I would spend umpteen Summer Sunday’s with via the “Zombies”. A Manchester United fan we’ll call “Iain” was a spin bowler who I delighted in seeing getting angry for not getting a wicket! Iain was placid and horizontal away from the field who loved to laugh and had the driest of senses of humour which almost matched my own, but he was a delight to see when robbed of a wicket on a cricket field. As well as being Vice Captain, he provided a bed and a roof over my head for a few nights when I yet again felt the tongue lashing from my beautiful older girlfriend. This time was longer than usual, and Iain helped me out for several nights. The mark of the man in those words right there.
I’m not going to remember everyone who played but Justin was a fine footballer and cricketer with whom I shared many an argument as well as many “representative” works games at both football and cricket and Chris who donated his bat to me when he left for the Good Ole US of A before inviting me and having a disastrous and love sick house guest when I was pining for the lady I’d pissed off in order to stay in Iain’s spare bedroom.
Adam played when called upon and when there was a day off work in the offing and we’ve been life long friends and as well as Justin above, we played several times together in the works football annual “Big Dance” at a local non league football ground. We also had a fox called Danny in the outfield and this particular fox was as keen to play cricket as he was in enforcing the fines at the Pizza Hut after the match. We also had two “Daves”, one an elegant batsman who also loved to bowl off spin, the other could often be found either behind the stumps, in a plot with Steveo to make me look foolish or persuading me to play a year for a ladies pub pool team. And we had two fast bowlers in the shape of “Kevin” and “Stuart”. Kevin bowled very upright and straight and accurate and very nice indeed. I seem to recall any chats with Kevin in the after match Pizza Hut as always deep, yet very amusing. Stuart was a very fast bowler who frankly I wouldn’t have fancied facing at 7.30pm on a cold May night from the “Motorway End” at Farlington, with the mist slowly rolling from the marshes on the other side of the motorway, and especially if it’s 48–2 and we desperately needed a wicket, and the Captain simply refused to lose. I loved Stu’s company off the field and at work he would pass me top secret communique’s from something called “The Internet”, from which “Internet” he could miraculously find up to date Test Match scores. I wasn’t allowed on such futuristic technology at work in 1998 and I’m not even sure if it’s a good idea now.
The work games were played in a friendly league on a Wednesday night and today they are no doubt being labelled by every office cricket team organiser all over this far land of ours as a 20/20 match. We won a lot and lost just a few in the 4 and a half years I played with the characters noted above, but this was down to the friendly standard of the league rather than this overly competitive captain who also wanted to take wickets. Or indeed his Captaincy. That was a doddle. Toss the coin. Make your best mate on the field run from deep cover to deep cover every over just to annoy him and then fine him for his unruly language in the Pizza Hut after the game. I wanted to win but the results were secondary. The exciting part was killing the last hour at work and hoping it wasn’t going to rain before bolting for the cricket ground and arriving at 6 or 7 minutes before the 6pm start. Rarely a changing room so change in the car, have a last smoke while you fish around for a coin and before you know it it’s 43–4, those dark clouds are getting more and more ominous overhead and if the game succumbs to the English weather, well, we’ll be in the Pizza Hut even earlier. And the fines will be doubled as the players didn’t complete a contractually obliged full game. Happy days (or evenings) indeed.
But the Head Office versus Regions game was the one to be at as with the above there was a lot to administer and arrange for the big game, and a big game it indeed was. 22 players. 2 umpires. Couple of helpers and a whole host of colleagues taking the day off in advance to sit in the sun, enjoy the seafront view and take the Royal piss out of their playing mates! The only Regions game I missed was my first as I had just joined the Insurance Company and in a matter of weeks it was the “Regions” game. I was a temporary employee at the time, couldn’t get the time off but was invited to the game after work which I duly did. I lived nearby the ground at the time so changed into my best bib and tucker for the end of the game and the evening’s, work paid for, shenanigans. I arrived for the last knockings of a game I have no recollection as to who won or lost but I was grabbed by the Captain of the Head Office team at the time (boisterous bloke, long quiffed hairstyle reminiscent of early 80’s pop bands, serious player, can’t remember his name) and marched around a corner to meet a player from the Regions team and have a beer when he grabbed me so tightly around the corner I collided with a cricket rotavator type machine that creates small holes for drainage and it tore a huge chunk from the lower half of my pristine, “going out” jeans! I do so enjoy making an entrance.
After a “Corporate Structural Change” and the first of many us devoted slaves to the corporation would endure in the coming years, the “big dance” became re-branded, and it was now simply Portsmouth Head Office versus Farnborough (and any Regions players who defied the cull, sorry, “corporate restructuring”) and we played three games, one I draw a complete blank on, a game I’m presuming was in Farnborough (or nearby) and was held in a stately home setting (no peacocks — they come later in the story) as I remember a grand ballroom leading onto a terrace and a level below which was a beautiful cricket field. All mod cons. A scorebox! Scattered seating. I remember that game particularly as firstly it was sodden and we were lucky it was playable, I scored a six (my only one) to the shortest of short boundaries and then got immediately out, but the final wicket of the match was mine, and justice had prevailed. You see, my friend Steveo is a man I could and probably will dedicate a chapter too but suffice to say for now, Steveo was a champion, a damned good egg, always played when I needed him, a gentleman of a friend of the highest calibre and my somewhat drinking chum of choice. But then he left me. Deserted me for the “other side” and whether by choice or by corporate design, Steveo, my mate Steveo, Casino King, Karaoke singing supremo, cool box full of the coldest of beers on the hottest of days sitting in the “Rugby Ground” watching Hampshire play, Steveo? Yes, dear readers. That Steveo. He’d deserted me and instead we faced each other as cricketing foes on that sodden turf and, when justice needed to be served, it was my by my clean bowling of him, stumps and bails flying everywhere as the last wicket of the match heralded yet another triumph for the Portsmouth Head Office team.
I jest of course about the rejection and desertion. That had nothing to do with my leap for joy as I took his wicket. It wasn’t even close, you see, Steveo dropped a catch off my bowling. We all do such things. We all move on. But it was a dropped catch for a hat-trick and I’d never got a cricket hat-trick before (2 wickets in 2 consecutive balls a number of times) but here was that juicy red cherry dropping from a clear early evening sky at Southsea Cricket Club (a scene of so much works cricketing drama) and of course, there was the little matter of this game being the first, and one and only game, my dear old Mum ever saw me play a game she adored to Test Level status. Despite the dropped catch my Mum liked Steveo but my dear old Mum liked all my friends she met and she was a damn fine judge of character. I’ve often chided my friend over his faux pas but he has a lot of dirt to dish on me so we’ll call a détente on such trivial matters and as we seem to have veered into French waters we’ll not even mention the time he kissed me very emotionally (only on the cheek!) and said that his favourite picture of his wedding day was of the two of us and his best man and usher! All in full hearing range of his enraged wife as we sailed into Cherbourg dock at some ridiculous hour of a Saturday morning after yet another quick dash across the English Channel to France. Steveo’s tale epitomises the friends I made throughout playing simple games of cricket, and that was never more evident than when playing on a Sunday for a team of actual, real characters, real talented cricket players too, and in a team called the “Zombies”.
I was harangued into playing for this strange sounding team by the blooming nice bloke noted above under the name of Jon. But still, the “Zombies”? The Zombies, as they turned out, were the most loveliest of fellows and for however many seasons it was, I loved having the knowledge on a Monday that on Sunday I was travelling to some tucked away little cricket ground and often in places you simply wouldn’t know was there until you’d played cricket, and had the most splendid of “cricket teas” with some of the warmest and kindest human beings you could imagine. That’s the human story right there and I can’t embellish it enough: there was a core of 8/9 regulars every week (with the addition of odd rogues to fill out the gallery) and I truly loved playing for them. It was nearly on a par with playing for the Civil Service Mens team when I was just but a mere lad, and we’re coming to that tale shortly, but “Zombies” Sunday games were all afternoon affairs (much to the annoyance of the “Older Lady” — see previous blogs) but instead they were spent in the company of cricketers from late teenagers through to mid to late sixties and, if the rumours from “Matt and Joe” were true, we were playing with someone who’d played for the Hampshire Second XI, three or four had either played for, still did or trialled for the county, and we used to play at this stately home with peacocks squawking and barking their way around the edge of the boundaries, and the host team had an opening batsman who, without fail, would check his guard every over to the growing annoyance of me (hot and sweaty and bloody annoyed they just dropped this guy in the slips during the over) and to “Stan” and “JR” and “Bill” and his son “Richard” and “Jeremy”. My friend Matthew played a lot for the “Zombies” too (they should have bowled him more!) and together with the rumour mongers of Matt and Joe we made up a quartet of loud mouthed oiks who loved, loved a good game of Sunday afternoon cricket in the sun. It always seemed to me that Matt and Joe came as a pair as they were always together and played the better for it. Matt was a great batsman, and despite the bluster, modest too. Joe was a big hitting batsman who bowled too, and it’s difficult to recall what he was better at, which is a compliment rather than a failing memory. I took Joe to the hospital when some bruising Neanderthal thought it a great idea to “bounce him” in a darkening late evening match and we sat for hours in a hospital corridor admiring his two front teeth! Coincidentally, the last time I saw Matt and Joe was actually as a pair as I bumped into them both in some grotty takeaway bar at Maine Road as Portsmouth were getting hammered by Manchester City. I only went there to cross Maine Road off my list of football grounds I’d visited and I had the great fortune to bump into the cricketing twins into the bargain.
Two other members of the younger generation were Richard, a stunning batsman who I’d be amazed if he didn’t play at a much higher standard as he something else when wielding the willow. Damn good bowler, great slip catcher. Richard was some player. As was Jeremy, the foghorn wicket keeper of irascible wit and one liners and scorer of big runs. Jeremy is the current Chairman of “Zombies” and in the year of our Lord 2021, the “Zombies”, that travelling cricket team of such local renown, have a website! The current “Honorary Secretary” is Jon as noted above and virtual ever present whenever I played or can remember. The “President” position was bestowed upon Bill who in his mid sixties was still a fantastic hitter of a cricket ball, agile in the field and caller of everyone “Lad”. Bill fielded every game that I can remember at mid-off and he loved chiding me for hitting the seam again and again, collecting stray grass or earth from the pitch in it’s woven seam. “Look at that lad” he’d say, picking at the loose bits of earth in the seam, “You’re making me work hard here lad!”. Bill was a beautiful man. As was Stan, our West Indian and apocryphal player for the Hampshire Second XI. Stan could slug a straight six over both the bowler’s head and the sightscreen but his bowling fascinated me. He was metronomic, 13/14 paces, straight as an arrow and just continually putting the cherry in the “Glenn McGrath area” and fooling batsmen every Sunday. Stan loved that and his laughter was loud and it was very instructional to the batsman too. Stan had his measure, and he’d get him out soon enough. And he did.
It wasn’t always peacocks on the outfield but the “Zombies” are a travelling cricket team without a home base. Apocryphal again, but I believe they were an offshoot from Havant Cricket Club (a well recognised local club in Portsmouth) decades ago. With no home base every game was an away game and I can’t embellish enough the wonder of tucked away little gems we used to play at. They were far and wide throughout Hampshire and beyond and I can’t remember a single name of any of the teams we played. Certain players would only play at certain grounds because they knew what a bountiful “cricket tea” would be served up by the hosts. I just loved spending my Sundays with a bunch of bloody brilliant cricketing zombies, and before that, it was Portsmouth Civil Service, man to boy.
I started playing for the “Mens” team at 14/15 and with Matthew again at my cricketing side we played the daunting game of Mens cricket still as a teenager and still whilst playing “colt” and junior cricket. Working back from playing for Portsmouth Civil Service (PCS) as an adult to a teenager I only really recall the other colt players playing occasionally for the Mens team and just two adult players that I knew throughout my time at PCS, “JT” and “Dave”. The main reason I barely remember any of the other adult Mens players is two fold (1) I was a shy teenager who turned up for the games in his “whites” as I had no desire to be in a changing room with a load of much older men. And (2) By the time I was older and before I played for the “Zombies”, I was damn good and they should know my name! (sorry). JT and Dave would both be christened by our Australian cousins as being “Mr Cricket” these days. JT and Dave were there at PCS for the first colt training session through to my last game for them as an adult. Dave smoked too much but boy was he dashing with the bat as well as a sneaky left arm spinner. JT bowled not particularly well but batted supremely and it was he who made two telephone calls to me that made my 16 year old cricketing heart melt. First was to tell me I’d won the “Young Player of the Year” award (and boy did my dear old Mum love polishing that huge shield). Pride of place on the mantelpiece! And secondly to tell me I’d been invited to a trial for the Hampshire Under 18’s.
Suffice to say dear reader that this mere humble narrator, and perpetual 16 year old kid who flatly refuses to grow up, didn’t sleep a great deal on the Saturday night before the Sunday morning trial at the County Ground in Southampton. I was going to play at the County Ground in Southampton! Well, a couple of “Nets” on the outfield, but let’s not ruin a good story with cold hearted realism here. So I donned my non-matching black and white checked trousers with my black and white checked jacket (trying to appear as a rudimental matching “suit”) and got an early train to Southampton and walked to the ground. I got changed nervously as I didn’t know any of the other young men but I did know their “names”. This is not stated in mitigation at my failure at the trial just a simple fact, a cricketing “name” and great talent gets you trials, or at least it used to. Must still continue. Who knows? The trial went by in a flash but I distinctly remember volunteering to show how to bowl a leg stump “yorker” and it was fairly good. That’s my only playing memory. But I dressed again and returned on the train home knowing I was good but nowhere near the quality needed to play county standard cricket. Could I have been a contender? Nope. My best off cutter deliveries would have continually found their way into the waterfront, and somehow I’ve ended with some cold hearted realism after all.
All of this cricketing dashing of dreams was cast against barely playing for my school team, the City of Portsmouth Boys School, or probably more likely, not fondly remembering anything other than my mate Matthew skippering the side and every game seemingly played on those plastic/turf hybrid wickets that deadened the bounce of a cricket ball to a slab of concrete and no fun to play on at all. I remember three stories of note, first a selection for East Hampshire and a perilous journey to Bournemouth in the back of transit van as I held on for grim death to the leaver keeping the two back doors locked tight. As they weren’t, you know, locked tight. And I was an awkward kid with long hair and didn’t know anyone so I stayed silent for the entire 90 minute journey. I was LBW first ball batting at 7 (SEVEN!) and was carted around the park for just a couple of overs. I just made sure I sat in the middle of the bus for the return journey and kept my head down. The second is quite the tale, and the third is absolutely true also. Matthew and I lived them. We are Gentlemen, and we tell no tales.
We somehow made it to the Portsmouth Schools Cup Final but I have no idea who we played en route to our sparkling final on the outer pitch at Farlington, the ground of “Motorway End” fame and a date with both destiny and a footballing future. We, the upstarts from the largest school in the City were to face St John’s College, the city’s premier fee paying establishment and holder of one of the greatest Quiz Night’s I ever attended on behalf of Portsmouth College, my destination after City of Portsmouth Boys School. I fell in love with Anne that night, she of the dashing smile and the “lucky cigarette” and whom I would meet twice more, completely randomly, after falling in love that first time and, to this day, she’s still unaware at what a close call she came to meeting with a doomed love affair with a fast bowler supreme. But that’s a heart breaking story of unrequited love we really must leave for another day. We have a Cup Final to attend to.
Upstarts versus the Fancy Boys. Could the Crazy Gang beat the Culture Club? St John’s batted first and to our collective astonishment and no doubt some wicked cricketing excellence, we dismissed them for just 30 All Out. 30! I have a vague memory of either a tiny clubhouse at this particular pitch or a row of chairs as I remember sitting down and laughing as well as being utterly bemused that we were going to win a Cup Final and against St John’s too. Matthew has jogged my memory recently by stating he scored 4 runs in our reply and I countered this with my 2 runs and we agree, kind of, that we both took two wickets each in the dismantling of St John’s for their pitiful total of just 30. Matthew and I combined for a total of 6 runs in our team’s chase for just 31 runs. And Matthew and I scored exactly half of our team’s runs as we were dismissed for just 12 (TWELVE!) in our reply. You see, dear reader, our school team hadn’t factored into the account that a certain “Daryl” of Portsmouth and Derby County footballing fame was a rather fine exponent in the delivery of a fast cricket ball. In he came from that infamous “Motorway End”, on a Michael Holding length run up, but rather than in the dew and mist of a late night run in with my mate Stuart, he came pounding in in the afternoon sunshine and blew us away! 12 All Out. Numbers vary as to how many scalps he took but I’ve always thought 8. The game was over in a flash and we’d fallen 19 runs short in our chase to score just 31.
The final true tale is encompassed above really. Matthew and I loved the TV series and it’s playful televisual “tone” but we also pored over the statistics in Wisden, the book referenced above and the guide book for all self respecting wavers of a piece of willow. The “Bodyline” series fascinated me as a kid and still does as I write this now. It also fascinates me because the central hub of this short tale is of a gang of bored kids in a drafty and cold art class who would do anything, anything other than art or school, even argue over a Test Series from 50 years ago, than actually be in that dreadful school room. As above, the questions always started the same and with the same patter and delivery and everyone apart from Matthew and I found this all rather bloody exasperating. Day after boring school day would be interrupted by someone (Kevin? Rob? Chris?) broadly proclaiming “In the 1932–33 Ashes Test Series…..” It’s cricket again but the hub of the story is categorically human, school friends, cricket team mates and for some, mates for life. In the written form this short segment probably appears a little dry and a “You had to be there” feel to it and perhaps I’m shooting this through a “Dead Poets Society” prism. It was just the school friends I was playing with for the Portsmouth Civil Service Colts making their own entertainment and daydreaming of anything but being in school. It was a kind gift from a kind friend and a mutual love for a cheesy TV series at exactly the moment we were daydreaming of being Harold Larwood, or “Sir” Don Bradman or that dastardly rogue and England Captain, Douglas Jardine. It’s the human existence tale that fascinates me, friends and experiences and memories. Watching an episode from the TV series was one of the final things I ever “experienced” with my dear old Dad, he of the punch of the air in delight when he heard Imran Khan had scored big runs for his beloved Sussex team. You can read into the “experience” above in a multitude of ways but it’s an abiding memory of one of the last times we spent “together” before we had to say goodbye and “Blackie”, as he was affectionately known, was cheered to the rafters of a new universe by scores of Southampton fans with whom he worked and despite his connections to Portsmouth, adored him. Southampton fans in Portsmouth, singing and cheering? That was truly the mark of the man I was lucky enough to call my Dad, and of human friendships again but we don’t have time to talk about this, not now anyway, we have some schoolboy colt cricket to discuss.
The Portsmouth Civil Service Colts (PCSC) were pretty dreadful in all honesty! Or rather the age opposition in the surrounding suburbs were much better than us, ahead of us in the age group, better equipped, a “name” family here and there, and some damn fine cricketers too. We were a ragtag motley crew of friends since the first day of school or we’d been chosen to go to PCSC by our schools. Matthew skippered the side and when we played at home it was invariably the furthest pitch away, thus the nearest to the train tracks and which was great fun on a bitterly cold Sunday morning as the trains flew past and we were getting tanked. By “we” I mean Lee (only occasionally as he was a fantastic footballer), Danny of a large family of Ferrets and he of the hilarious “LB” appeal, fingers pointing skyward as “Mr Cricket” Dave from earlier, umpired and fell about laughing at his non “Owzat” appeal. There was yet another Joe and like the Joe named above, in truth, Joe wasn’t either of their real names they were birthed with (long story), but the schoolboy Joe was a good batsman who didn’t take too kindly when you took his brand new Duncan Fearnley bat for a spin in the batting nets! Anthony behind the stumps was an associate schoolboy goalkeeper for Portsmouth and thus both an excellent wicket-keeper and brilliant mimic and taker of piss out of my bowling action as I came thundering into bowl! Chris often opened the batting and I remember very fondly beating him at “A Question of Sport” as we watched it on TV together at his house. Chris was an excellent cricketer but even better footballer (who beat me for his school team in a Portsmouth Cup Semi Final that still hurts today!) and signed early in his career for Portsmouth and Stoke I believe. Going back nearly 40 years suffice to say it taxes the memory but the last name falls to a Kevin who I also played a lot of football with, two seasons at county youth standard, and it’s to his Dad I owe both my 1986 FA Cup Final ticket and for the death defying spectacle of him driving us to a Sunday League football game as first the internal mirror in the car just fell into my lap, his Dad’s driver side outside mirror dropped clean away onto the motorway and we had to limp to the ground with smoke billowing from under the bonnet. Kevin’s Dad in particular but the whole family too were another who kind of “took me in” when my Dad passed away and without delving into the maudlin, that’s a perfect way to introduce the penultimate part of this cricketing journey as there’s always been a someone or a family or some new team mates that’s “taken me in” as a friend or team mate and the whole thrust of this rambling nonsense is not my minor cricketing stories but the humans, friends, team mates, mates, partners who’ve brightened my life along the way.
Before and during early schoolboy cricket I used to play on my own with just a tennis ball in a small concrete “square” at the bottom of the flats where we lived. One side was a row of garages with a flat top roof and easy to climb to retrieve an errant tennis ball. Two walls enclosed the “area” and on one I would use white chalk and draw stumps with the other wall kind of a crease to bowl from, or just in front, marked of course with some white chalk. I’d occasionally wet the tennis ball so if and when I hit the stumps I erased the part of the stumps I hit. Now if that wasn’t exciting enough, I played two extra games with myself to keep the excitement at boiling point: (1) I used to imitate bowling actions, Graham Dilley’s long delivery stride, the squatness of Malcolm Marshall’s delivery, the hop and skip of Ian Botham, the windmill of Bob Willis and (2) I devised my own game of “curby” (curbie/curbsy?) whereby when I bowled that tennis ball of doom toward the wall if it hit the curb stone at the root of the wall (kind of a yorker) it would come back in full at unpredictable angles. So, if it came back at catchable height, great, a caught and bowled. However, should it come at a much lower height then I tried to either volley or half volley the returning ball into the far right garage door. Right? With me? I know, Don Bradman hitting a golf ball with a cricket stump it ain’t, but if I miss kicked the returning ball then the neighbour’s kitchen windows were in severe danger. Which of course so was I. With my Dad. Especially when he was holding a round tub of foul smelling putty and a piece of glass. Can’t think why.
I played alone a lot as a kid, repeating the exact same game noted above for hours and hours and probably a few hours more too. Not quite the 10,000 hours needed for perfection. Probably somewhere nearer 666 but I have no idea. I stopped counting. Then I started counting real friends, from Marc and Danny through to Matthew and Steveo and all of those Sunday teams and work teams I hope I’ve done a little justice to above. Too much of a cliché to say it’s their story and not mine but the whole impetus behind this ramble is a human one, be it my winning my own personal internal battles by writing a blog, being creative etc or to disrespect the men I’ve listed above by just saying they were my team mates and not the real human beings they were and hopefully still are now, all these daunting years later. The other thing I did a lot alone as a kid and still connected to cricket was bunking into the games Hampshire used to hold at the Rugby Ground/Rugby Camp in Portsmouth. There was usually one, sometimes two “Portsmouth cricket weeks” held every season whereby they’d play regular season championship games and a Sunday League game. Here I watched two of the giants of West Indian cricket, Gordon Greenidge and my first local cricketing hero, the late, great Malcolm Marshall. Now, if you travelled from my Mum and Dad’s flat through the city centre, a left passed the train station and through Guildhall Square before taking a right at the Guildhall itself and then crossed the railway bridge and crossed the adjacent road you’d find yourself at the back of the only stand the “Rugby Ground” had. And if you looked hard enough you’d see that some enterprising young scamps had widened a few of the bars and with a huge inhale you could sneak in and be sat in the bleachers on the far side and adjacent to mid wicket in a quick breathless sprint. It was worth it as the only time I recall watching Malcolm Marshall it was poetry in motion. Short run up as he hunched over, gathering speed before a whippy arm action and a sublime follow through. I paid my dues in later years as I rarely missed the Sunday League game at Portsmouth and it was nearly always with Steveo, and it sometimes ended with his wife screaming a Suzuki Jeep around impossible corners as I had led her husband astray yet again. Sometimes the day ended with a sprint into a strippers bar. That wasn’t a strippers bar. Anything but a strippers bar. But let’s not swim in such dangerous water as we are so very near the finish line.
I said I’d end at the beginning and the beginning is Uckfield in Sussex and the birthplace of my Dad. We were there presumably for a family shindig and I was but a wee lad in this strange and idyllic little countryside village and so far removed from Portsmouth it was laughable. Uncle Ben (of piped tobacco and living in sin with my Auntie Phylis for 50 years and never telling anyone, fame) carved me three very tall and very thin “stumps” and I remember playing on the small patch of garden they had before being whisked to the “Chequers” Pub and the grown up world of predominantly at that time (mid 1970s) drunken men. And bar billiards! And a game with another Uncle of mine, John, the Rogers to my Dad’s Hammerstein. Playing with my uncle Ben and his smelly pipe to playing alone and my own crazy games to playing for the Civil Service Colts (in grey zipper trousers that rattled with my bus fare home until I had to give the coins to “Mr Cricket” standing at Umpire before he throttled me!) to a teenager in a man’s cricketing world to some Zombies, losing by 19 runs chasing 31 for victory and skiving off of work as much as I could humanly get away with so I could dedicate my costly time to the noble art of cricket. I did tell you this wasn’t going to be a thrill ride of Ben Stokes at Headingley proportions didn’t I? I just really hope that the smile(s) on my face as I’ve written about the human beings in this story somehow translates to you and I hope it’s entertained you.
So I’m going to Australia for lunch this Winter at 2am and I’m really excited about doing so. I’m going the whole hog, in darkness, tea and biscuits, few notes so I can write some alternative daily blogs on the day’s play and hopefully some late night/early morning entertainment akin to Darren Gough in 1999 with his Sydney hat-trick that I watched all night to 7am for. And what a delight that was. And indeed memory. Of Ian Botham in 1987 when Gatting’s “Can’t Bowl. Can’t Bat. Can’t Field” England side toppled the Aussies in their back yard and I’d present my Mum a self created scorecard of the night’s runs and invariably Botham had cracked a quick 50. Shall we skip over the torrid nights under Warne and McGrath or Ponting and McGill? And of Glenn McGrath’s constant taunts of “5–0” before a ball is bowled but is crushingly accurate about 8 weeks into the tour? Shall we forget about Steve Harmison bowling to first slip on his opening delivery or of Steve Smith piling up the runs at 4am on a cold Friday morning and you’ve just grabbed the duvet and made a cup of freshly brewed tea and the next thing you know it’s 6.30am and England are batting again?! I could list statistics and double centuries and 5 wicket hauls and Stuart Broad’s Dad notching up three consecutive centuries in the 1987 series but this isn’t about statistics, it’s the human story again, of compiling the scorecards for my Mum in 1987 or every Christmas and Boxing Day spent with my sister Vivienne, her husband Steve, and the real wood fire I used to adore sitting by every Christmas Day evening after I’d shooed everyone to bed. I’m watching the opening day of the Melbourne Test Match. Christmas is over! 70,000/100,000 in attendance? Who cares. I’m there, or I was, sat by that roaring fire. To watching that Gough hat-trick in the last house I owned in Portsmouth before watching nearly every series in my new home, in my new home town, and away from so many of my family and friends that I missed dearly, and yes, even the ones who support Manchester United.
So I’m going to Australia this winter and I’m going to give myself a break from myself. I’m going to enjoy the jetlag and discombobulation that comes with the territory and especially so as I’m going to spend as much daytime quality time with that son of mine because he shines and he takes me along for the ride. I’m going to compile alternative match reports, twist them with some memories and see where I stand at the end of play on day one. 280–3 is what I’m aiming for. We’ll see. The Ashes Series certainly has an air of the unpredictable about it and when you’re watching just after the “tea” interval around 5am, unpredictable works for me.
I’ll end as I’ve meant to go all along and throughout, with the personal. I could easily contact a number of the names listed above, school friends to old work colleagues but I haven’t. I’ve recently souled (sic) my soul to Facebook even though I detest it, as I do most things connected to The Matrix. Imagine standing in the outfield as that grumpy opening bowler after the Captain dropped a catch on a scorching hot day in 1996 and thinking one day I’ll write about a day such as that within The Matrix before posting it to Facebook, Twitter and sending desperate smoke signals to the Man in the Moon. The fact I don’t perhaps sums me up, as I’m still (despite appearances to the contrary) that 14 year old kid desperate to play cricket but as shy as a new born lamb.
I guess some messages in a bottle are best not sent.
I only recently found out during the writing of this that Iain passed away just a few years ago at presumably a cruel early 40’s in age and that broke my heart. Just as it did when I found out that Bill had also ventured to pastures new in our universe and too our old West Indian rogue Stan Rudder. Iain of the Manchester United clan and Bill and Stan from a bunch of wondering “Zombies”. Thanks for all the memories.
For Bill, Iain and Stan.
