Derbyshire – Ian Louis Harris

A New Cricket Season At Lord’s, Middlesex v Derbyshire Day Two, 8 April 2022

As I get older, I realise that certain statements that older people make, such as, “the policemen look younger and younger” express how those older people feel, rather than an objective reality about the average age of policemen.

But when I say, “the county championship seems to start earlier and earlier” I believe that is pretty much true…although not by all that much.

The last time I froze this much, Daisy and I went to see the second day of the 2013 season in Nottingham, 11 April that year, reported on King Cricket at that time…

Nottinghamshire v Middlesex at Trent Bridge match report

…and Ogblogged to describe the round trip i n the Midlands and North here:

Nottingham, Wormleighton and Yorkshire – a Short Break with Multi-media Relics 10 to 19 April 2013

But I digress.

I had arranged to play tennis at 14:00. I got to Lord’s in time to see most of the first session of play. I decided to sit in the relatively sheltered central part of the pavilion forecourt, where I watched, read and chatted a little with one or two other hardy folk. The stewards reckoned I wouldn’t last long out there but actually it wasn’t too bad in the morning and the new soft padding on the pavilion benches…

…standards are falling…

…made the whole experience less painful than expected.

After a very close game of tennis, which my adversary won by dint of the odd point here and there, I took my time over my ablutions and then grabbed a soft drink followed by a light bite and coffee – initially in the pavilion bar but subsequently, as the sun was shining, I took my coffee in the new Compton Stand – a vantage point from which I took the headline picture (also replicated above).

But even in the sunshine, it was bitterly cold by that afternoon period, so I decided to return to the pavilion.

By the time I got to the pavilion, Josh de Caires had taken a wicket. This was to be my burden all afternoon; I didn’t actually get to see a single wicket – I was either changing or on the move every time Middlesex took a wicket. One of the friendly pavilion stewards even asked me to keep moving around, as my moves seemed to coincide with Middlesex’s success so comprensively.

Anyway…

…I decided to focus on 19-year-old Josh de Caires’s bowling.

I watched for a while from one of my favourite vantage points, the writing room. If you ever wondered what it looks like from behind the sight screen, wonder no more – the above picture gives you a pretty good impression of it…indeed much like an impressionistic art work.

I had brought plenty of warm clobber with me and I decided to don the lot of it. After all, as Alfred Wainwright famously said:

“There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.”

Thus I braved the middle tier balcony, as evidenced by the following pictures…

…for about three overs, before I decided that jumper, thick jacket, scarf, hat and gloves were insufficient for me as the sun was going down on a seriously chilly April day.

I congratulated the handful of hardy folk who remained on the balcony, admitting to them that I was a wimp. One agreed. One consoled me by letting me know that I was far from the first to have tried and failed to brave the afternoon chill. One pointed out that I hadn’t lowered the ear-flaps on my hat, which might have made all the difference.

I watched the remainder of the day from the impressionistic comfort of the writing room. Naturally Middlesex took a wicket while I was ambling down one flight of stairs from balcony to room.

I had a very good day. I read, I chatted, I played tennis and best of all I watched some live cricket again.

The Fag End Of The Cricket Season, Lord’s, 23 to 25 September 2019

Monday 23 September 2019

Whose idea was it to play first class cricket in England beyond the autumn equinox this year? I suppose it is inevitable as the authorities try to fit more and more short form cricket into the central chunk of the summer that the first class season will increasingly bookend those tournaments.

Anyway, this round of matches was entirely played after the equinox (which, for astronomical geeks, took place about 40 minutes before play was supposed to start on 23 September). The Lord’s match for this fag end of the season was Middlesex v Derbyshire.

I had work commitments for much of the day but wanted to show the Lord’s pavilion to a couple of Z/Yen’s keen youngsters; Morgan and Sean (the latter being Michael’s nephew).

I got to Lord’s in time to see a little bit of cricket before the fellas arrived, but by the time they got to Lord’s it was raining. Still, I could show them around the pavilion and could also show them some live sport in the form of real tennis, where a couple of my pals were battling out a tournament match.

After my guests departed, I joined the Seaxe Club evening for a quick drink before going home.

Tuesday 24 September 2019

I had pre-arranged to spend the day with DJ at Lord’s, but the weather forecast looked so shocking we expected no play, so we scaled back our arrangement to be lunch only. I agreed to play tennis as a late substitute at 15:00.

The timing worked very well – I was able to get a good chunk of work done before meeting DJ at Lord’s around 12:15 and taking some early lunch and having a good chat with him.

Miraculously, there was a short hiatus in the rain that enabled some 20-25 minutes of play, which we enjoyed in glorious sunshine, before the clouds and rain returned.

I guessed, correctly, that any further breaks in the rain would be too brief to enable play and in any case I think David felt that he had enjoyed the shortened but enjoyable get together and he would return to some work-oriented tasks.

I had a good hour of tennis before learning that stumps had been drawn early which enabled me to shower, change and get to the Middlesex Sponsors party in perfect time.

Very few sponsors turned up as the weather had been so poor, thus, unusually, I chatted with several players, as they outnumbered the sponsors. I spoke with Ethan Bamber for the first time who didn’t seem to realise how impressive he now looks. I hope my pep talk helped; he did go on to take his maiden first class fivefer in this match so i don’t think it hindered.

I also told Ethan that I had seen his dad play Horatio opposite Daniel Day-Lewis’s Hamlet, which seemed to amuse him:

Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Olivier Theatre, 18 March 1989

There was plenty to drink (I was quite moderate) and enormous quantities of cheese (I tried to help out). I also won half a case of wine…again! Half of that half case went in “informal storage charges” to the tennis pros after the party.

Strangely, the rain had completely relented by evening so I decided to partially walk off my wine and cheese.

Wednesday 25 September 2019

I had my prearranged tennis game scheduled for the morning (a couple of hours in the end) and Richard Goatley wanted to see me at noon, so the morning went that way.

I had a good game of tennis and missed little cricket before lunch.

The weather improved (against the forecast) lunchtime, so I grabbed a sandwich and some reading matter, taking up position on the Members’ Bar balcony – a place that is normally hard to get to but which was almost deserted at the fag end of the season.

There I watched, read and chatted for a couple of hours, before deciding that I really should go home and get my work done. What a great idea to have cricket this late in the season when the weather smiles like this:

The match ended, thusly, while I was beavering away in the city the next day – click here.

A Couple Of Late Season Half-Days At Lord’s, Plus Queen’s And The LSE, 18 to 20 September 2018

A slightly strange chain of events and connections led to me being invited to give a video interview at the London School of Economics (LSE) for the LSE100 course, which is an interdisciplinary course for all undergraduates. The theme of the course this year is quite “Price of Fishy”.

Ahead of that 20 September interview, I thought I owed it to myself and to 1,600 new LSE undergraduates, to mug up a bit on The Price Of Fish – not least because it is a good few years since we last promoted it and longer still since we wrote it.

The interviewers also wanted to talk about predictive analytics and data visualisation. I felt on top of the stuff we’ve been doing lately on that topic, but also thought about the pitfalls of analytics and the graphical representation of statistics, which took my mind back to the wonderful little book How To Lie With Statistics, which I also decided to skim by way of revision.

And if you are going to skim-read books on sunny afternoons during the last home Middlesex match of the season, one might as well do that skimming at Lord’s.

Tuesday 18 September 2018

I got my other work bits and pieces out of the way, but at a slightly slower pace than I had intended, while keeping half an eye on the cricket score.

When I left home, Sam Robson was in the eighties. When I arrived at Lord’s he was on 96. I ran into Richard Goatley and Rob Lynch, who were in the Harris (no relation) Garden. They soon came and joined me in the Allen Stand gap to watch Sam clock up his first century for a while.

Feeling a bit sheepish about reading my own book in public, I decided to sit in the sort-of sun trap end of the Grandstand, where that stand meets the Compo, which is always very sparsely populated and does not seem to attract the usual suspects.

I wrote up this surreptitious Price Of Fish experience in a King Cricket stylee, which was eventually published by KC in February 2019 – click here for a link.

Just in case anything ever happens to King Cricket, I have scraped the piece to here.

By the time I had delved through those bits of The Price Of Fish that I needed to recall, it was getting very cold so I took sanctuary in the Pavilion Writing Room, where I chatted with a gentleman who looked mightily familiar to me although not in a Lord’s context. Turns out he lives around my way.

Wednesday 19 September 2018

I played tennis at The Queen’s Club that morning and had been asked to return that evening. The Lord’s tennis court is being refurbished this October so we have very kindly been granted real tennis refugee status at other nearby courts, including Queen’s.

I worked out that, between those real tennis gigs, I could get a few hours of cricket watching and book skimming done.

I felt a similar queasiness about being seen reading How To Lie With Statistics as I did about being seen reading my own book. Of course, I am drawing attention to the pitfalls and the ways that bad people might deliberately lie or mislead…not advocating the use of deceit, but that might take a bit of explaining.

My King Cricket piece on this reading day, published November 2018, can be found here.

If by chance anything ever happens to King Cricket, you can see a scrape of that piece here.

So I returned to the Grandstand/Compo corner and again saw/was seen by hardly anybody – certainly no-one I know.

Horrific traffic the last few hundred yards of the journey back to Queen’s, but I got there just in time…which is a little more than can be said for my opponent.

Thursday 20 September 2018

I did my LSE interview in the morning, which seemed to go well.

In fact I could have gone to Lord’s that afternoon for a while, as my afternoon client meeting had to be postponed. But it was well cold on the Thursday and in any case I could think of a zillion things I ought to get done with the unexpected few hours, so I went home and did those things instead, keeping at least one eye on the cricket score.

The match ended up looking like this – click here for scorecard and other resources.

Nottingham, Wormleighton and Yorkshire – a Short Break with Multi-media Relics 10 to 19 April 2013

A rather unusual round trip, taking a week or so off work, for cricket, walking and stuff. This short break was a substitute for the longer trip we had planned for Malawi, which we ended up deferring to September and was well worth the wait.

But back to our Midlands and the North trip. We started with a couple of nights in Nottingham, in order to enjoy the second day of the county cricket season as guests of Nottinghamshire CCC. I wrote up our Nottinghamshire day, 11 April, for King Cricket – click here for that King Cricket (cricket-free) report.

Just in case anything ever goes awry with King Cricket, here is a scrape of that piece.

Here’s the match card – in case you want to know about the cricket.

Then on the 12th to the village of Wormleighton, in Warwickshire the spiritual home of Janie’s family. No-one knows how the family came to have that name. Probably because someone in the dim and distant past came from there and probably not because Janie is descended from the Spencer family (which pretty-much owned the village), despite the Churchillian and Princess Diana resemblances in Janie’s family.

There is an ancient video of “the Worms” visiting the village of Wormleighton en famille in 1971 – here or below

On this trip, Ged and Daisy made a little video of their own search for the ancient village of Wormleighton – here or below.

For the uninitiated, Ged and Daisy are our pet names for each other and have been so for over 20 years.

We stayed at Wormleighton Hall, which is a rather grand farm house just outside the village – formerly the squires residence I shouldn’t wonder and now the home of the tenant farmers who make the whole thing work commercially by running the place as a small hotel as well as a farm. Lovely family; into all the local countryside stuff. We visited the Mollington point-to-point which they were attending on the 13th and took some excellent pictures of the local tribes at leisure.

Sighting of local tribesfolk at the Mollington point-to-point

All 80 pictures from the whole round trip are contained in this Flickr album – here and below.

On 14th we went to Chipping Norton to visit brother-in-law Tony and his lovely second wife Liz.

Hockney says you cannot properly photograph these Wolds scenes

On 15th, off to North Yorkshire, driving the eastern-side to see and photograph Hockney country before reaching The Star, where we stayed and ate in great style for a few days.

On 16th we went on a Farndale walk in search of daffodils, surprisingly successfully as the cold start to the spring had delayed the daffs, but they were just starting to show well our day – good fortune.

Some more nice pictures in the Flickr link above; also another little Ged and Daisy video – the attack by a savage sheep (mistaken for a ram) and the skipping lambs at the end being delicious highlights – click here or below .

17th we drove South-West to Saltaire and had a look at the town and some art gallery-style Hockney stuff. 18th we spent at leisure and walking around the Star’s vicinity (Harome).

19th we drove home. Middlesex were again in action against Derbyshire (Day 3) and as we drove home we realised that an improbable early result to the match was on the cards. After stopping off at the house, I went on (alone) in the car to catch the end of the match and witness a Middlesex win – here’s the card. Quite a week for us and for Middlesex.

Middlesex v Derbyshire Day One, Uxbridge, 15 September 2009

This was another of those days when I hoped to see some cricket at Uxbridge but the weather was set foul. My track record over the years on days when I want to go to Middlesex out grounds can only be described as terrible…almost as terrible as Middlesex’s 2009 season.

Middlesex were having a shocking season that year, so it was hard to get reporters. Hence Hippity volunteered to go to Uxbridge and then write this one up…at least that’s what the editor was told.

Hippity’s writing career mercifully tailed off after the 2009 season, with just the occasional piece for MTWD or King Cricket subsequently.

Here is the 15 September 2009 report: Soggy Tail From Uxbridge.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex till we die – Soggy Tail From Uxbridge

Here is the scorecard from the inevitable draw.

For the record, rabbit-friendly “Uncail Victor at Uxbridge” is Vic Demain, who has gone on to grander things – at the time of writing he is groundsman at Chester-Le-Street. Not so rabbit-friendly “Uncail Micheál at Lord’s” is Mick Hunt.

I vaguely remember Tim Groenewald being taken poorly towards the end of this match and there being a resulting health scare (unfounded as it turned out) about both squads. The details are lost in the mists of my memory, although linger somewhere on the message boards. I do remember him being a bit of a thorn in Middlesex’s side on subsequent meetings over the years though.

As for the scurrilous suggestion that Middlesex might end that rotten season coming bottom of the second division, that was an outrage. Middlesex in fact came second from bottom, a full two points clear of the county championship wooden spoon – click here to see the table. Middlesex are yet to “win” that particular wooden spoon ever, I believe.

Derbyshire v Middlesex In Spirit But Not In Person For Half A Day – MTWD Match Report, 12 August 2008

Sometimes we found it hard to recruit reporters for every day; especially for away fixtures such as, with all due respect, Derbyshire.

So on this occasion, we “recruited” Hippity and Monkey-Face to report for half a day – click here.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex till we die – Bunny and Monkey Spend a Half Day in Derby

Astute Ogblog followers might read between the lines and conclude that I perhaps did some work that day and/but was able to spend some of the day at home with the internet radio on…

…there was no happy ending to this match for Middlesex supporters a few days later – click here for scorecard.

Hope Springs Eternal – A Long Weekend At Underleigh In Hope, Derbyshire, 26 February To 1 March 1993

Janie had originally intended to visit Phillie, Tony & Charlie in Germany that long weekend, but for reasons long since lost in the mists of time that idea fell through and I suggested, instead, a visit to Hope, in the Dark Peaks of Derbyshire.

Similar place.

The night before we set off reads “Lars Piss Up” in my diary, which I assume was the night of Lars Schiphorst‘s informal leaving do after work.

So I don’t suppose Janie and I set off for Derbyshire at the crack of dawn 26th.

I have/had long loved the Dark Peaks – one of the better kept secrets (amongst many) in the UK as places for stunning countryside, walking and away from the more touristic “usual suspect” places in the North.

In truth, the search for peace away from tourists in the beautiful parts of The North can be satisfied pretty much anywhere in February, but I didn’t know that back then.

Two or three years earlier, I had stumbled across a lovely place to stay, in Hope; Underleigh, when taking a brief sojourn out that way with Wendy Jacobi. We went at a more sensible time of year during 1990.

Lighter looking peaks, plus Wendy Jacobi, no doubt on the way to Hope

Anyway, I suggested Underleigh to Janie and booked it. My diary helped me to identify the place and TripAdvior lets me know that, 26 years later, it is still highly regarded.

The one thing that Janie didn’t like about the place was the communal dining. Dinner, bed and breakfast was the deal in those days (no more, it seems). One big table with an expectation that whoever is staying makes up an informal dinner party for that evening.

We live and learn. Janie has such an aversion to such notions she/we positively avoid such places these days. In the UK they are much rarer now in any case, as the more individualistic culture has swept away the communal, dinner party chic.

The food was good there, albeit a bit rich, I recall. The owner/patrons were very friendly and helpful; a different family now, more than quarter of a century later, I should imagine but rave reviews still.

I remember Janie and I kitting ourselves out for this winter walking trip, with a visit to Millets in Kensington, I think the weekend before when we were at mine.

I also recall the icy walking being really quite difficult and treacherous for us, despite our new clobber. All the gear, but no idea.

Darker peak view from the 1990 trip – no photos from the February 1993 with Janie

Somehow we survived – thrived even – nonetheless, resolving to persevere with hill walking but probably to choose less challenging routes and seasons in future.

The only other specific thing I remember about this trip was a drink in a pub at a suitable stopping point on one of our walks. Janie looked at pictures on the wall of locals from a gurning competition. Janie wondered what they were about so I explained about competitive gurning.

That’s not a very challenging thing to do as a competition…

…said Janie, which motivated one of the locals to chime in to our conversation…

…it’s a lot harder than it looks. You try it…

…so Janie did.

A subsequent gurn some years later, Ethiopia, 2005

The handful of locals were seriously impressed.

I think we might have been bought drinks all afternoon had we hung around in that pub, but we beat our retreat while we were still on top. As much as anything else, we wouldn’t have risked that icy hill walking after any more than one drink.

We have occasionally returned to the Derbyshire Peaks since, although we in the end sort-of made the North York Moors “our place” for that sort of stunning, quite-challenging hill walking.

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