Tag: Surrey

Blooming Heck I Was Out A Lot That Week, 23 to 26 May 2023

Thanks to David Wellbrook for the above picture of me, him & Rohan Candappa

Tuesday 23 May – Brasserie Zédel With Wellbrook & Candappa

I’ve known Rohan Candappa & David Wellbrook for very nearly 50 years now. Rohan is very good at keeping in touch and occasionally just saying, “let’s meet” and/or “there’s something I want to chat through with you fellas”.

We responded to the call. David booked Brasserie Zédel, a favourite place of his. As it happens, I had wanted to try the place for some time, ever since I discovered that my grandfather, Lew Marcus, worked there for decades as a barber in the Regent Palace Hotel, rising to the giddy heights of manager I am told:

Turn It Up To Max & Spit: The Baltic Origins Of My Mother’s (Marcus) Family Revealed

Lew’s older brother Max no doubt played music there on occasions, although David de Groot’s Piccadilly Hotel Orchestra was his main gig.

The interior is like an Art Deco fantasy. Here’s a link to someone else’s photo of the glitz.

Anyway, we were there to chew the fat, catch up and the like. I think I have persuaded Rohan and David to provide some “Fifty Years Ago” reflections on the opening overs of our Alleyn’s School career, as I remember so little about the very early days and didn’t start my diary until January 1974.

Rohan wanted to discuss his thoughts on positive proposals following his extensive fundraising around mental health, not least reframing the language used around that subject.

It became a little difficult to have profound conversation once the jazz trio got started. With two of them sporting flat caps, I thought they might name themselves “Jazz & Dave”.

Always good to catch up with those two. Good food & drink at that place too.

Wednesday 24 May – Kapara With John White

My turn to choose, John’s turn to pay. I Googled for new restaurants that are getting rave reviews and soon landed on Kapara, ironically located just across the way from the slightly crazy Manette Street Shule where my father’s family hung out in the 1920s.

The Only Known Relic Of Grandpa Harris Reaches Its Hundredth Birthday, October 2022

The service was sweet and attentive (apart from one lad who kept approaching our table with other table’s dishes) and the food excellent.

They are big on small plates there, which made the tasting menu a sensible way to try the place out.

This is a link to a similar set menu to the one we ate. Ours had bream rather than snapper and didn’t have the soup.

Always great to catch up with John – it had been a while so we had a bit of catching up to do. But we shall be seeing each other again within the month, along with “the girls” and Pady. Part of our catching up comprised planning that gathering.

Thursday 25 May – Lord’s For Sunrisers v South East Stars & Middlesex v Surrey, With Janie

Cullen Bowls To The Curran Brothers

Our plan, which more or less worked, was to get to Lord’s around 15:00 and watch as much of the double-header as took our fancy. The weather smiled on us, for sure, so we took root in Janie’s favourite place, the pavilion sun deck.

In truth, the afternoon women’s game, between the Sunrisers and South East Stars, was somewhat of a damp squib, both in terms of the cricket and also the atmosphere…or lack thereof. Midweek afternoon games work great when youngsters are off school. In term time, the timing virtually guaranteed a tiny crowd before the evening.

A reasonable number of member stalwarts (MCC and MCCC) turned up for both matches, but there was almost no atmosphere for the women’s match, which is a shame.

There was a decent (but not full) crowd for the Middlesex v Surrey fixture.

Anyway, we were enjoying ourselves. But the Surrey score batting first seemed high and the chill of the evening was starting to tell, so we decided to go home and watch the almost inevitable ending of the match on TV.

You probably don’t want to see the scorecards but here they are anyway:

Sunrisers v South East Stars

Middlesex v Surrey

Friday 26 May – Dedanists v Jesters At The Queen’s Club

I was delighted to be selected again to represent The Dedanists in this absolutely crucial real tennis fixture with The Jesters.

If anyone from Alleyn’s School is still reading at this juncture, you might be interested to know that the very first Jesters fixture was in late 1928 – a Rugby Fives match between the nascent Jesters and Alleyn Old Boys.

Actually, in truth, this is one of those fixtures where half the people playing are members of both clubs and half the time it’s hard to work out who is representing which club. Indeed on this occasion I found myself (together with Simon Cripps) playing for the Dedanists but playing against our team captain, Martin Village, who paired up with Anton Eisdell.

I’m glad to say I managed to maintain a winning streak in the matter of match play in Dedanists fixtures at Queen’s, having recently lost my Lowenthal Trophy crown there to, amongst others, Mr Eisdell. The piece linked here and below also describes this Jesters fixture from last year.

Finally…Unprecedented Success At Tennis, The Queen’s Club, 11 May & 27 May 2022

It was a thoroughly delightful afternoon and evening – my first (but hopefully not last) opportunity to partner Simon Cripps – who kept getting me out of trouble and who in truth was the key to our success as a pair. Also an opportunity to meet and chat with lots of delightful and interesting people.

It also gave me the opportunity to check up on the progress of the seats I have booked for me and Janie to enjoy the Wednesday of Queen’s this year.

Ah yes, coming on nicely.

Four Seasons & Four Rainbows For Our London Cricket Trust Launch At Birchmere Park, 6 July 2021

Not just one rainbow but four: a very special event

Still emerging from lockdown, I have not spent a great deal of time face-to-face with people for some while.

Indeed, apart from the regular volunteering Janie & I do with FoodCycle, it has only been my Trustee activities with the London Cricket Trust (LCT) – putting cricket back into London’s parks – that has got me out and about since the partial re-opening.

On 18 May, for example, I visited my friend Rohan Candappa in Crouch End…

Crouch End’s equivalent of the bread line emerges daily outside the Sourdough Shop

… and then went on to meet Sophie Kent, one of the LCT Trustees, to take a look at Hornsey Cricket Club to discuss a prospective indoor cricket facility project (not an LCT one).

Half-close your eyes, wish and imagine…

On 9 June we had a face-to-face LCT meeting at The Oval. Dumbo, my car, was very excited at the opportunity to park within the hallowed grounds of The Oval, adding to his bucket-list collection of “cricket grounds within which I have parked”:

Why shouldn’t Dumbo have a bucket list like everyone else?

But I digress.

Birchmere Park via New Zealand, Hendon & The Woolwich Ferry

I started the day in New Zealand. Not physically of course, but I did Zoom over to Wellington for a short meeting on Z/Yen business.

Then I set off for Hendon, to Middlesex University for a game of real tennis, in which a sixteen-year-old utterly took me to pieces. I had pretty much been able to keep up with him a couple of weeks ago, but his regular play post GCSEs and the rapid improvement available only to people 40 or more years younger than me means that he is at least 10 handicap points better than me now and shall soon sail off into the stratosphere of only wanting to play with serious sporty folk and pros.

It doesn’t get much better than this

Having allowed bags of time to get to Birchmere Park in Thamesmead, I trusted Waze to sat nav me there and was led to expect to arrive more than an hour before the event, via the Woolwich Ferry. Time for a wander around when I get there, I thought.

I had never attempted the Woolwich Ferry before. My only real knowledge of it, from my youth until this day, was traffic announcements on Capital Radio & Radio London saying that only one ferry was operating and that there were hour-long queues as a result.

I didn’t listen to the radio on my journey from North-West to South-East London. Why should I? The sat nav does that traffic guidance job these days…

…except that the sat nav clearly didn’t know that today, as in my radio-listening days of yore, the ferry was operating with just one boat and the queues were some 40 minutes long.

The Woolwich Ferry from a Dumbo perspective

Still, it was another tick on my bucket-list and Dumbo was very excited to travel by boat again, for the first time since his trip to Ireland with us six years ago.

Fortunately I had allowed so much extra time for this journey, even with the long wait for the ferry, I still arrived at Birchmere Park about half-an-hour before the event.

New Zealanders have an expression for their weather – all four seasons in one day – which can apply to English weather too and certainly did apply on this day. In fact, I think I can safely say that I experienced all four seasons in one two-hour journey from Hendon to Thamesmead.

By the time I arrived at Birchmere Park it was unquestionably the rainy season. It was bucketing down.

My trusty weather app suggested that the rain would ease off after about 15 minutes and even suggested that it should stop completely to allow us a 45 minute event in dry weather.

And so it was. The weather smiled on us for our launch. Only the multiple rainbows in my picture present clues to the changeable weather on that afternoon.

As the Trustee of a cricket charity that is putting dozens of non-turf pitches into parks around London, I am glad to point out that only a non-turf pitch would be playable just a few minutes after the sort of deluge we experienced that afternoon.

Can you see the join?

These cricket pitch projects tend to need several organisations to come together. In this case, not only the LCT, the ECB and the local (Greenwich) council, but also Peabody and in particular its Thamesmead Regeneration arm. It was very interesting to meet the various dignitaries and activists from the area. I also sensed genuine interest in progressing more projects of this kind in that corner of Greater London.

I took my stroll around after the main event. Birchmere Park is a charming place with a lake and plenty of bird life on the far side of the park.

Birchmere Park lake – a lovely, peaceful spot

A Day Of Random Access Memories And Flash Drives, My Flat And Then Lord’s, 8 August 2019

Of late, I have been immersing myself in writing up the journal and some impression pieces about my visit to Mauritius, which was 40 years ago exactly. Devotees of Ogblog (i.e.subscribers) might well be aware of this; others not so.

Ahead of his latest visit, John Random e-mailed to say several things, including this about one of those journal pieces:

A Jew Hunt in Port Louis reminds me of something not very interesting I must tell you about next Thursday.

A Jew Hunt In Port Louis, Mauritius, 9 August 1979

I had felt quite frustrated about the above piece since I realised that my mother had not only thrown away my article about the resulting great story I discovered once I hunted down the mystery man in Port Louis, but that she had also thrown away my journal notes for 10 and 11 August 1979, as part of the same inadvertently vandalistic act, in the name of “clearing out rubbish”.

Putting that to one side, John and I had a pleasant lunch and did some more fiddling around with his archive of writings. Less progress this session than the previous session, but the previous session had yielded plenty of unexpectedly retrievable data from his old collection. Actually even this day’s session seems to have yielded more than I thought it would.

Then I raised the matter of John’s “Jew Hunt anecdote”.

Oh, it’s nothing really. It’s just that, 20 or so years ago, Jenny and I went to a Mauritian community event in South-East London. There was a bookstall at that event, where I looked at a book called The Mauritian Shekel. It looked really interesting but in the end I didn’t buy it. Your headline, “A Jew Hunt In Port Louis” reminded me of that book.

I nearly left it at that, but my curiosity had been sparked, so I asked John if he remembered what the book was about.

It was a fascinating true story from the time of the Second World War, about a large ship full of Jewish refugees from Central Europe, who had been turned away in Palestine and who were eventually given refuge on Mauritius…

“Hold on!”, I yelled. “THAT’s the story the mystery Jewish man told me in Port Louis. THAT’s the very story I’m desperately trying to recall. The Mauritian Shekel, did you say?”…

…it might not have been cheap, but it was available as a rare second hand book on Amazon:

So the book is on its way and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to reconstruct my missing article/story from it.

At about 17:00, John went off in the direction of the Proms while I went off in the direction of Lord’s. I bagsyed some seats for me and Jez Horne in the Warner Stand, then went for a quick meeting with Katie Berry for a briefing on participation cricket in Middlesex.

Jez messaged me to say he thought he was a little delayed but should only miss an over or so. In the end, he arrived just in time for the start of the match.

It was good to catch up with Jez again. I hope we can catch up again when Janie and I are in Hove and he also intends to join the Z/Yen party at the Hampshire game in a couple of week’s time.

This Middlesex v Surrey match always has some real frisson to it, though, being a local derby. More often than not we Middlesex fans end up disappointed at this fixture, but of late Middlesex have been doing better and tonight demonstrated that improvement.

AB deVilliers and Eoin Morgan were scintillating with the bat; Steve Finn magnificent with the ball.

You can read all about it through this link.

An interesting, productive and enjoyable day.

An Enjoyable Excursion Into Domestic Cricket Neutrality, Surrey v Essex, T20, Oval, 19 July 2017

The Oval At Nightfall

In early May I received an e-mail from John White, out of the blue:

I have been invited to the Oval on 19th July and have been asked if I would like to bring a friend!  It could only be you Ian.  Are you free?  We will be the guest of WE Communications and we get to go in the members area.

My first thought was that this must be the test match, but when I looked up the date I discovered that it was an evening domestic T20 match between Surrey and Essex.

It occurred to me that I haven’t been to a domestic cricket match as a neutral (i.e. without my county, Middlesex, playing), since I was a kid. Those experiences, as a kid, were all at The Oval, as it happens. This scorecard – click here – might be an example of one of those – I need to check the old diaries but for sure I saw once saw Barry Richards dominate the bowling there, while all others made it look like hard work.

Indeed all my early experience of seeing professional cricket was at the Oval – here is one especially odd set of experiences at the Oval from 40 years ago, including an encounter with Bob Willis on the tube after play, which I have already Ogblogged.

John’s e-mail was not terribly informative and (after accepting the invitation with relish) I didn’t give the event a great deal of thought again until it was imminent.

As it happens, on the day, I was working from home, interrupted only by a marathon session of tennis mid morning at Lord’s.

On reflection, I should have pipped John an e-mail about the extent to which this might be formal entertaining, mode of dress, etc., but instead I picked up Marcus’s e-mail, Googled WE Communications and decided for myself that this must be corporate entertaining of some scale and that I’d better turn up suited and booted. I even put my little case of business cards in my jacket pocket.

As it turned out, the evening was in fact a very informal set up with Marcus (who is a Surrey member), his colleague Josh (who is in fact a fellow MCC yellow-carder), me and John. All the others were in “dress-down, evening out” attire.

It was a very enjoyable evening. Really good company; people who know and enjoy their cricket while at the same time keeping the conversation suitably varied and interesting on many topics.

I really liked that feeling of neutrality at the match. I was watching cricket, simply hoping to see a good match, without any emotional equity in the result. It was strangely refreshing. In particular I think the neutrality worked for me because I was in good company.

After the game, although John was demob happy, he was keen to start his long journey home and I was keen to get home quite early as I had a long working day ahead the next day.

The evening was great fun; I’m sure we’ll do something like that again next season – perhaps at Lord’s, so that Marcus can experience that slightly oblivious feeling of cricket watching neutrality.

A Works Outing To The Middlesex v Surrey T20 Match At Lord’s, 21 July 2016

A Pokémon Displaying A Worrying Level Of Indifference To Cricket (with thanks to Xueyi for capturing the little fella)
A Pokémon Displaying A Worrying Level Of Indifference To Cricket At Lord’s (with thanks to Xueyi for capturing the little fella)

For several years now, it has been a Z/Yen tradition for a dozen or so of us to visit the Middlesex v Surrey T20 match at Lord’s. For several years, the tradition was also to witness Surrey thrashing Middlesex and for the assembled throng to try consoling me and Jez with “maybe next year” platitudes.

But last year, for the first time in yonks, Middlesex won the match. Better yet, this year Middlesex were sitting a bit higher in the table than Surrey ahead of the fixture, with both sides desperate for the points to help achieve knockout-stage qualification. A big game.

However, I had some difficulty persuading Xueyi to attempt watching cricket again. Her previous visit (two years ago) had left her cold in several respects; not least the chilly weather but also finding the cricket hard to fathom and finding the “M&S picnic nibbles” not quite to her taste. I suggested that I might take a trip to Chinatown and stock up with Cantonese bakery delicacies as the centrepiece of the picnic if that might persuade Xueyi to join us. She said it would.

I was working from home that day, so I chose to make my Chinatown hike reasonably early to be sure of a good stock of the day’s bakery delights. I googled to see if my old stomping ground was still top notch for this purpose and discovered that, indeed, Kowloon in Gerard Street is still highly regarded, especially for its massive cha siu baos and gai mei baos. I was introduced to that place in the late 1970’s/early 1980s when doing holiday jobs for Newman Harris in Cavendish Square; the Chinese Malaysian trainees and I used to make a lunch of those big tasty buns. It must be a good 25 years since I last went there, though.

Picture by Anthony Baby from (optional) This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
Cha Siu Baos – Picture by Anthony Baby from (optional) – This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

On the way, I recalled that the place used to be cash only and made sure I had drawn enough money just in case. Indeed, the place was utterly unchanged including the hand-scribbled order ticket and the cash only payment desk. I went a bit mad buying lots of baos, plus some cha siu pastry ones and some sweet melon pastries too.

I called Xueyi to let her know that I had bought loads of food and also to ask her to let Linda know that we wouldn’t need much else for the hoards, but Xueyi clearly had other ideas, not least a fiendish plan to get some smaller delicacies from her favourite dim sum joint; Orient London. Like me, Xueyi went a bit mad getting loads of cha siu pastries (smaller than the Kowloon ones, but, frankly, much finer) and also some very juicy and delicious prawn spring rolls, which were surprisingly good cold. Also some Cantonese brisket beef slices.

Cha Sou Pastries - by Terence Ong - licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
Cha Siu Pastries – by Terence Ong – licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

In her fervour, Xueyi neglected to pass on my message to Linda, who went down to M&S and bought a fair selection of nibbles just in case my Chinese food idea didn’t go down well with everyone.

Anyway, to cut a long story short the Chinese delicacies went down very well with our team and there were plenty left to feed other spectators sitting near us and Linda had lots of M&S food to take home with her for the weekend.

Why were we there? Oh yes, a cricket match.

Barmy Kev came and sat near us but for some reason chose not to join us when invited. Perhaps he thought we might have designs on his bottle of wine (as if we didn’t have plenty of that too). But soon Kev realised that he had no corkscrew, so (not for the first time in my life and surely not for the last) begged the loan of a corkscrew from me and then demonstrated for about 5 minutes how very bad his screwing technique is for one so experienced as he – Kev’s MTWD write up, here, does not do his demonstrable incompetence justice. There was a big crowd cheer when he eventually withdrew the cork.

Meanwhile, Xueyi (from Nanjing, China) and Ashley (born in Jamaica but raised in the USA and therefore strangely aware of but not well versed in cricket) asked quite a lot of sensible questions about the game and then settled down to finding pokémons in the crowd, which they seemed to be able to do with little difficulty and much delight (see photo).

Marc (sitting next to me) tried to argue a social justice case for Surrey to win the match because Middlesex won last year; this was about as convincing to me as his “Brexit leave” arguments.

Linda was especially interested in the progress of our sponsored player, Ryan Higgins, as for once our sponsored player was actually playing in the fixture we attended. He took an early catch, bowled well restricting the scoring/taking a late wicket and eventually scored the winning runs in that tough run chase. Not bad. Here’s the scorecard. Even better, Ryan Higgins took five wickets the next day as Middlesex recorded back to back wins; a real breakthrough period for the promising 21 year-old. Our boy.

Regardless of whether they focus on the eating, drinking, pokémons and/or cricket, the Z/Yen team always seems to enjoy this outing. There was a record crowd for a domestic T20 cricket match in England that night 27,000+, so it seems that we’re far from the only bunch that finds these T20 evenings a fun and enticing proposition.

Z/Yen Outing To See Middlesex v Surrey T20 at Lord’s, 23 July 2015

Our now traditional Z/Yen outing to see the Middlesex v Surrey T20 fixture at Lord’s.

We had a few late dropouts this year which allowed us the opportunity to treat some other people; Mark Duff, Sebastian Yeandle, Clive Hyman and Niclas Ljungberg to name a few.

We did the usual “everyone chip in to a picnic” thing; I was in the office that afternoon, so went round the supermarket with Linda to ensure we had good food coverage.

I recall that Sebastian was keen to see round the pavilion, so came suited and booted for that purpose – I took him round during the break between innings and showed him some cricket from the Long Room at the start of Surrey’s reply. We saw several wickets fall but, because of our Long Room location, we didn’t see Nick Gubbins ignominious tumble, failing to celebrate a catch – click here.

Niclas Ljungberg is but one of a long line of people from non-cricket playing countries whom we have tried and mostly failed to get into cricket.

Niclas, with typical Swedish politeness yet directness, wrote the following in his thank you note:

Many thanks for hosting the picnic at Lord’s yesterday, and for the enjoyable combination of plenty good food and introductory sports education.

Mark for some reason still seems to think this is a superior form of athletic activity to cross country skiing, I guess he just hasn’t quite seen the Northern light yet.

For those, like me, of the Middlesex persuasion, the important bit was that the ground was heaving with people and they saw Middlesex play really well on this occasion – click here for the scorecard.

 

Middlesex v Surrey At Lord’s Twenty20 Match, King Cricket Report, 7 July 2011

At some point in the future I might…just might…be able to provide a multi-faceted piece on this particular evening at Lord’s.

At the time of writing (January 2018), only my King Cricket piece, published October 2011, survives to tell the tale.

Yet tell the tale it does, I think – certainly from my perspective. Internationalism, scandal and some improbable, impromptu games…not bad.

Middlesex v Surrey Twenty20 match report

Just in case anything ever happens to the King Cricket site, I have also scraped that report to here.

For those who have the stomach to look (i.e. most often neutrals and Surrey fans for these occasions), actually it looks as thought his was a pretty good match, despite the fact that I must have missed quite a fair chunk of it – click here for the scorecard and reports.

One extra bit of evidence on who, from “Ged Ladd & Co”, attended that time, in addition to “The Tiberellis”, comes from Jez’s e-mail to me a few week’s before the match:

Mark

Monique

Steph

Ben

Rich

David

 

Simon Strez would also like to come as it’s his last chance to see a cricket game in England before returning home to New Zealand. I also have 3 friends that will be coming to the game.

Middlesex v Surrey T20 At Lord’s With Z/Yen Team, 17 June 2010

I almost missed out on reporting this one – in my diary with question-marks and the like, but it seems we organised a mini-outing for the very keen to this match.

Looks as though Jez did most of the organising:

I’m just dropping you all a quick line with the arrangements for tomorrow night. Firstly, I may be slightly late as I have to go and get my wedding registered in North London, but as long as they run on time (famous last words), I should be at the gates with plenty of time to spare. As a precaution, I have given all of your tickets to Simon S…

I chimed in with some of the more vital logistical details:

I suspect it might be quite busy on the Tavern Stand side again tonight, so I suggest that all those who arrive in decent time come straight in and help me to hold sufficient good seats…I’ll probably aim for a little closer to Father Time in the Lower Tavern Stand, Jez, for the “Turkey Corner” effect.  It’s the least we can do for brother Ben.

“Brother Ben” is Jez’s younger brother who, perhaps for contrarian reasons, supports Surrey almost as fervently as Jez supports Middlesex. Other guests that night were the two Kiwi Simons (Strez and McMullen), Ben Morris, Heinrich Groenewald and Louwrens Verwey.

The scorecard – click here – suggests that this was not one of Middlesex’s better matches nor one of the better matches from a neutral spectator’s point of view.

I’ll guess that Simon McMullen’s (first left in the picture) favourite memory of visiting Lord’s was the previous year – click here or picture below.

2009 at Lord’s. Simon M, Me, Linda, Jez, Garry Sobers and Nick

Z/Yen Awayday At Lord’s, Cricket Academy & Then Middlesex v Surrey, 30 June 2009

The first part of this story is unquestionably the most interesting part: The Day Garfield Sobers Watched Me & Z/Yen Play Cricket – click here.

Which is a shame in a way, because really the whole day was spectacularly good and enjoyable for the Z/Yen team.

After our morning session in the Lord’s Cricket Academy, during which Garry Sobers watched us play cricket…have I mentioned that point before?…

…perhaps the rest of the day’s story is best told by way of a photo diary, with thanks to Monique Gore for the photographs…

…luncheon in the Sir Pelham Warner Restaurant…

…then we retired to our box in the Tavern Stand, courtesy of Middlesex CCC…

…a very relaxing afternoon…

…Jez and I provided informal tours of the Lord’s pavilion for those who were keen to see it…

…the field of play as seen from the pavilion sun deck…

…Monique on that sun deck…

…even the Middlesex score was smiling upon us…

All of the photos from the day can be found here.

The scorecard from the match can be found here.

I have only one abiding memory from the afternoon, other than those captured in the photos above and me sinking into a glorious oblivious haze of relaxation arising from exercise, food and wine. Owais Shah’s agent, John E Barnett, for some reason “joined” us in our box for quite time, waxing lyrical about his boy Owais, enjoying our afternoon tea hospitality and watching Owais Shah himself score a top notch century.

The Day Garfield Sobers Watched Me & Z/Yen Play Cricket, Lord’s, 30 June 2009

It hardly seems possible, but there is Garry Sobers and there are we Z/Yen folk too, this photograph and all those that follow in this piece with thanks to Monique Gore

Sadly, I never got to see Sir Garfield (“Garry”) Sobers play live, in person. I saw one or two performances at the very end of his career on the TV – I remember avidly following the first test of the 1973 series between England and the West Indies – but never live, in person. In his pomp, he was surely one of the very greatest all-round cricketers ever.

Even more sadly/ironically/inappropriately, I am here to report that Sir Garfield Sobers has suffered the indignity of watching me and the Z/Yen team playing live, in person, at Lord’s.

It happened like this.

Middlesex County Cricket Club had very kindly offered me a Lord’s box for a day of County Championship cricket, as a thank you for some pro bono work I was doing with the club at that time. I decided to organise a Z/Yen awayday to take advantage of the box, including booking out half of the Lord’s Cricket Academy for a couple of hours. Of course Z/Yen had to pay for everything other than the box, so it was quite an expensive freebie in the end, but well worth it.

Linda’s e-mail to the team sets out the itinerary for the day:

As the day is approaching, I thought you should have an itinerary of the Z/Yen Away Day to Lord Cricket Ground (Home of Cricket) on Tuesday, 30 June 2009.

9.30-9.45 Arrive at Marylebone Cricket Club, Lord’s Cricket Ground, London NW8 8QN.  Map:  https://www.lords.org/

10.00       Lesson and game with James Fielding

13.00       Lunch at the Sir Pelham Warner Restaurant retiring to Tavern’s Stand, Box E to watch Middlesex V Surrey

16.30       Afternoon Tea

In the end our lesson and game was mostly organised by Jamie Thorpe, not James Fielding.

Jamie Thorpe helping Becky to sort out her protective gear, which seemed to take longer than her actual cricket session…
…then Jamie tried to work on Becky’s batting technique. At no point did any of us hear Jamie say, “stick to the flute, Becky.”

I had told Richard Goatley (then Deputy Chief Executive of Middlesex) about our plans. He told me he had a meeting that morning but it should be finished in time for him to pop round and have a look at us in the Academy.

What Richard didn’t say in advance was that his morning meeting was with Garfield Sobers and that Richard had resolved to try and bring Sobers along with him.

What Richard didn’t know in advance was that he and Sobers would bump into the legendary former Middlesex player and coach, Don Bennett, while on the way to the Academy to see us.

Richard picks up his side of the story from there:

I can remember…
…you were bowling in a bandana.
When Don Bennett saw your first ball Don said, “oh Jesus, I’m done” and started to walk away.
Sobers said, “cmon Don, watch a little”, but Don left pretty quickly afterwards.

The photographic evidence suggests that I was indeed bowling in a bandana…
…quite possibly at Jez…looks straight enough…

I’d have had Don Bennett know that I once took a hat trick with my slow right arm “filthy but straight” bowling at school.

Anyway, Sobers was a far more discerning observer of Z/Yen cricket than “The Don”…or at least far more polite, as he did stick around for a good twenty minutes or so; longer in fact than Richard Goatley.

Then Sobers watched the youngsters who were playing in the other half of the Academy for a while, then at the end of it all stuck around for the youngsters and then us to have photos taken with him. What a delightful gentleman he is.

All the Z/Yen folk who played that day…
…then a few of us also photographed with Garry Sobers. Magic.

All of the photographs from the day can be found by clicking here.

Richard Goatley still likes to milk this story and frankly so do I. Having Garry Sobers watch us play is one of those very special cricketing memories that I shall never forget.

The rest of the day was very special too, as reported in this – click here – separate Ogblog piece.