Long To Rain Over Us, England v West Indies, Edgbaston, Days One and Two, 7 & 8 June 2012

Photo, thanks to Charles Bartlett, probably unconnected…unless Chas was building an ark and starting to populate it during this trip

It rained.

There shouldn’t be much else to say.

It rained for the entirety of our visit.

When I started typing the headline of this piece, I typed “Wet Indies” rather than “West Indies” by mistake. Or was it a mistake? Spooky.

To add to the disappointment of this visit, Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett had, as usual, organised a blinder of a visit, including our front row seats in the Raglan Stand and nets early in the evening on the day before the test, at Harborne CC, just up the road from our residence at Harborne Hall.

We had a roadworks/lane closure filled journey up to Birmingham. Chas had kindly offered to give me a lift from the outer reaches of the Central Line (Redbridge? Gants Hill?), so the three of us (including Nick) had plenty of time to bicker about music choices in the car.

If I recall correctly, Chas and I were both on a bit of an electric blues odyssey at that time, so (two to one) we mostly settled on Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters for that journey. In any case, I’m listening to my playlist of those artistes to tweak my memory as I write.

We crawled through Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire in glorious sunshine, secure in the knowledge that we had allowed plenty of time to get to our net; we thought that we were merely losing “decompress” time between the journey and the net. Not quite Kim’s levels of ludicrously OCD “plenty of time” – see this write up in recent memory at the time of writing – but still plenty of time.

However, once we were on the M6 scooting through the West Midlands getting close to Birmingham, we saw some dark sky ahead. rather a lot of it. Rain clouds. Wet rain. Very wet rain. We arrived at Harborne Hall in what could only be described as a tropical-style storm. That storm passed pretty soon after we arrived, but we more or less knew that the soaking was bound to have put our nets at risk. We went down to Harborne CC in hope more than expectation, only to have our fears confirmed. Pools on the outfield and around the nets. No chance of a net.

We’d seen the gloomy weather forecast for the first two days of the test, of course, but still we hoped for a further 36 hours.

I remember little about our two evenings in Harborne that year. I think we went to Harborne’s very satisfactory Chinese restaurant, Henry Wong, one of the evenings, I think that first night. Perhaps the others can remember where else we went.

I remember a lot of sitting around at Harborne Hall. I remember the other three deciding to go down to the ground, despite the pouring rain and no sign of respite. I remember staying back, making some notes about Heavy Rollers visits from years gone by, which are now proving to be a most useful starting point for this blogging.

I also remember how much Harborne Hall had declined since our last visit. Not down to Beechwood Hotel levels – those depths would take some plumbing – but still decline. Harborne Hall had been the VSO conference centre, run along similar lines to The Children’s Society’s Wadderton. But it seemed that VSO had sold (or at least put under management and attempted to commercialise) Harborne Hall. The resulting approach had subtracted almost all of the friendly, folksy character of the place, leaving only the distressed gentility and a rather grasping approach to commercialism.

The nadir for our visit was on the final morning, when Nigel made the mistake of asking for an additional slice of toast with his breakfast and was informed that he would be charged extra for that extra slice. Did I see steam starting to come from Nigel’s ears? I don’t remember exactly how this matter was resolved. Nigel probably does recall.

The other occupants of Harborne Hall were now mostly peripatetic tradesmen. We played some pool and I think darts with some of them, at least one of the evenings, during that stay. We more or less held our own. Perhaps they were more inebriated or had failed to mis-spend their youths playing those games any more than we had.

I also don’t remember when we bailed out of this hopeless situation. I don’t think we stuck around too deep into the second day. I don’t even remember whether Chas gave me a lift back to the Essex borders or whether I stuck with my original plan to take the train home after the game.

It was the first time that the first two days of a test match had been entirely rained off in England since 1964. Not even the modern drainage could save play from that type of relentless rain. This telegraph piece has a lovely photo.

Despite the fact that we saw precisely nothing of this match live, it still counts as one of our Heavy Rollers matches in my view, so here is the scorecard. No surprises that the match was a draw, but there was a surprising stand between Dinesh Ramdin and Tino “mind the windows” Best who put on nearly 150 for the last wicket, Tino managing a batting-career-defining 95 of them.

Crickey, I have generated some 900 words, merely to elaborate on the main point, which I managed to get across in the first two words.

It rained.

Postscript: Nigel kindly submitted a wonderful guest piece with his own take on this particular (non) event:

Long To Rain Over Us – Heavy Rollers Edgbaston Trip 2012 – Nigel Hinks’s Take, 6 to 8 June 2012

England v West Indies, 1st Test, Day Two, Lord’s, 18 May 2012

Our little group for this day of test cricket comprised Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett, Mac Small (who used to look after our cars, Noddy & Nobby, at Ruislip Honda), me and Daisy.

Daisy and I both recall that I was on picnic duty that day, so I no doubt did the smoked salmon bagels thing, plus probably some ham and cheese rolls or something of that ilk.

Everyone brought their wine/beer ration which made for a jolly day in the spring sunshine. Not “o-t ‘ot” but certainly “very very warm for May”. We were either in the Upper Compton or the Upper Edrich – I cannot remember which. Good seats, I do remember.

Here is a link to the scorecard.

Mac hails originally from Barbados. Charley seemed convinced that Mac must be related to the great Gladstone Small. Indeed Chas failed to hide his extreme disappointment when Mac informed him, rather emphatically, that he and Gladstone were not related. Mac and Chas spoke little after that.

In truth, Mac is a fairly quiet chap and seemed to be enjoying his day at Lord’s in a rather Zen style, while Chas and I chatted incessantly about cricket, as usual. Daisy drifted between a quiet state and joining in the conversation.

England were doing rather well, it has to be said. We saw Andrew Strauss score a ton, which was always a bonus for us, especially for Daisy, who single-handedly revived Straussy’s career with a pep talk back in 2008 – a matter to be Ogblogged in the fullness of time.

We vaguely recall that Mac left a little earlier than the rest of us, but not very early. Daisy and I are pretty sure Mac enjoyed his day, as afterwards he often referred to it, in only positive tones.

Here is a vid with some match analysis:

Two Wheels On My Roller, But I Keep Rolling Along…England v India Days One and Two, Edgbaston, 10 & 11 August 2011

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Pretty much everything I want to say about this event, has been said at King Cricket, click the link below.

I think it is fair to say that matters did not go according to plan in 2011, especially as far as Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett was concerned, for reasons explained in sufficient gory detail in the King Cricket piece I wrote about our 2011 visit to the Edgbaston test – click here or below:

England v India, Edgbaston Test match report

If anything ever happens to the King Cricket website, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog and you can click and read all about it here instead…

…except, of course, you can’t read ALL about it at King Cricket, because of that site’s reporting rules…

…so here is the scorecard if you want to know how the match turned out.

Also there was the backdrop of the riots that summer, which were unfolding as we arrived and during our stay, although leafy Harborne seemed unaware of or at least untouched by them.

Naturally Nigel and I made the most of it without Chas. It would be cruel to harp on about the extent to which we were nevertheless able to enjoy ourselves despite Chas’s indisposition. In any case, I doubtless harped sufficiently when I saw Charles again a bit later that season.

It must have been especially galling for Chas as I seem to recall he had gone to a great deal of trouble that year to secure our “honorary” front row seats, book nets, book rooms, book an Indian feast…oy!

I believe that I drove up that year having booked the extra night after the second day’s play. That might have been Nobby’s only visit to Harborne Hall.

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Nobby never really acquired a taste for cricket…unlike Dumbo subsequently...but I digress.

 

England v India At Lord’s Days One And Two, 21 & 22 July 2011

I needed to do some archaeology in my e-mail system for this match to work out who I went with on which days.

Turns out I went with Graham Stedman …latterly known as Iain Insteadman…:

Three Days At The Lord’s Test, England v West Indies, 7 to 9 September 2017

…on the Thursday, then with Janie on the Friday.

I hadn’t thought about this before, but Graham seems to be a bit of a rainmaker, if the story of his 2011 and 2017 visits to Lord’s might be deemed to be a reasonably-sized sample.

We only got just over half a day’s play on the Thursday; quite slow stuff at that.

Whereas Janie and I got a giant-sized day of cricket on the Friday, with fair weather and a Kevin Petersen double-hundred.

Here is a link to the match scorecard.

Still, Graham seemed to enjoy his day out:

Thank you very much indeed for an excellent day at the cricket. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it was a very welcome distraction from the office. I am only sorry our enjoyment was cut short by the rain.

I will follow the remainder of the match with extra interest.

I replied to his message by saying:

It was a pleasure and was good to see you.  Janie felt badly on Friday that she and I did so much better weatherwise that day!

I am pretty sure this was the first of the occasions that Janie and I had our ears bent by a pair of retired Reuters journalists who told us exactly the same anecdotes, more or less word for word, both times.

But you do get a decent type of bore at Lord’s, you really do.

England v Sri Lanka Day Four, Lord’s, 6 June 2011

This match had unusually started on the Friday, so the plan was for me to go on the Friday and the Monday. The Friday went like this:

England v Sri Lanka Day One, Lord’s, 3 June 2011

Janie and I were supposed to go with Hari and Mawju, both Sri Lankan people we know, Hari from the Lloyd’s bank in Ealing and Mawju from the Atari-Ya Japanese fishmongers (long story, don’t ask).

Also don’t ask why Mawju didn’t turn up and didn’t call to excuse himself or return his ticket.

Anyway, we had a very pleasant day at the cricket with Hari, who loved our picnic and we loved the cake he brought from home as his offering. It all sounds a bit TMS commentary box, doesn’t it? In some ways it was.

The match had been badly rain-affected the day before so we got an elongated day on the Monday. England did very well to turn a seemingly nailed-on draw into a possible winning position by the end of the day, although we had a sneaking suspicion that it would end up a draw anyway.

Spoiler alert – the scorecard – click here- will tell you what happened.

England v Sri Lanka Day One, Lord’s, 3 June 2011

Unusually the first day of a Lord’s test match on a Friday.

That day I went with Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett, Ian “Iain Spellright” Theodoreson and Mark “Uncail Marcas” Yeandle.

The following extract from my e-mail to Mark and Chas the day before reveals the expectation of a very hot day:

Weather looks set fair for tomorrow.

Please could you both bring plenty of water with you.  I’ll have my hands full and Ian T was muttering about “fancy juices” as his contribution to the soft drink side of things, but I think we might all need good old fashioned (still) H2O.  Especially given the weather and the picnic I have planned.

Don’t forget your booze rations also – as if I had to remind you about that!…

Mark threatened (and saw through his threat) to bring some Frittenden strawberries with him. His strawberry offering the previous year had gone down an absolute treat. If you look closely at the picture of Charles below from that report, you can make out the colour and shape of a Frittenden strawberry. The 2011 batch was delicious, but I believe the 2010 batch was “peak strawberry”.

Click the photo or the link below to see that May 2010 match reported in full

England v Bangladesh Day 2, Lord’s, 28 May 2010

A few years later there was a potentially ugly fruit incident, as Ian and Mark were reunited with me at the test on the same day. Mark brought famous Frittenden strawberries while Ian brought a giant bag of plump cherries that he had been unable to resist en route. This competitive soft fruit showdown could have been very bloody indeed, but it mercifully led only to MAD (mutually assured delectation):

England v Sri Lanka, 3rd Test Days Two, Three and Five, Lord’s, 10, 11 & 13 June 2016

But I digress.

Back to planning for a very hot June day in 2011. Chas wrote back threatening to soak me in factor 30 sunscreen.

I don’t recall the exact nature of Ian T’s fancy juices, but I think they might have been the flavoured water variety, which does work rather well on a ludicrously hot day.

Ian T seems to specialise in weather extremes when he comes to Lord’s with me. Our 2014 visit (which will eventually be published on King Cricket, I believe) was one of the hottest days I ever remember at Lord’s and Ian nearly melted.

The scorecard suggests that we saw England have a very good day – click here.

I suspect that I was quite careful with the booze, because I was going to see a late night concert of Paco Peña at the Wigmore Hall after stumps. I suspect that all of us were a bit careful with the booze, partly because it was a very hot day.

I do recall this one, despite the heat, being an especially enjoyable, dreamy day at Lord’s. England were hot off the back of an away Ashes win and had even won the first test of the summer the previous week. What could ever, possibly go wrong again for the England test team?

Some Vague Memories Of August 2010, Not All Cricket, But Including The Boundary & Lord’s

Boundary Street, Jwslubbock, CC BY-SA 4.0

7 August 2010 – Did It Happen?

Janie’s diary suggests that we had a gathering in Sandall Close with Kim, Micky, John, Mandy, Lydia & Bella, but I think that idea fell through in the end. We might have had Kim & Micky over for a casual supper, but possibly not even that happened in the end.

14 August 2010 – The Boundary With Anthea & Mitchell

We certainly did have dinner with Anthea & Mitchell the following week, at The Boundary. Janie remembers a superb platter of fish. Janie remembers that we took drinks after dinner on a rather splendid roof terrace. We both recall that all of us thought the place very good – indeed I thought it so good that we ended up booking it for Z/Yen’s Christmas party four months later.

I also remember that we enjoyed a lovely evening in the company of Anthea & Mitchell.

21 & 22 August 2010 – An Ironic Weekend Of Kinesiology

Janie did a weekend Kinesiology course with Lisa Opie. The irony comes from me forgetting to cancel our tennis court and therefore using the slots to try and teach myself how to serve left-handed.

Note to self: don’t overdo an extreme movement such as the tennis serve using a shoulder that you have never previously used for that purpose.

Suffice it to say, Janie got a lot of practice using her kinesio tape (other therapeutic taping methods are available) on me in the aftermath of her course and my excesses.

Forearmed is forewarned – a few months later in India strapped up for cricket

24 August 2010 – A Net With Charley the Gent, Then Dinner At Seventeen

It took a review of the e-mails to find evidence on this one. Here is Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett’s take on the evening:

I am a complete mess this morning i am so unfit.
It was great to have the net but to get some real benefit from it i do need a better level of fitness. My bowling disappointed me, felt ok about my batting and tonking you around the park. Your bowling is better, well at least somewhere the the timbers, your batting well anyone could hit my bowling at the moment.
I need a return, maybe october sometime?
Thanks for the meal it was very good.
Best to all
Chas

The meal was in Seventeen, by Royal Oak. Still there and still well regarded nearly 10 years on as I write in April 2020 – at least it was pre-Covid. Strangely, I do recall the meal being good but I have never returned there. I guess I am spoiled for choice in Bayswater and it is normally just a tad off my beaten track.

28 August 2010 – Day Three England v Pakistan Lord’s Test

A birthday treat for me at Lord’s with Daisy. I believe we were in the Upper Edrich for this one or it might have been the Upper Compton.

The match had been weather affected the first two days, so England were still accumulating their first innings runs at the start of the day.

By the end of the day England were well on course to win – see scorecard.

Basically we had enjoyed the only full day of cricket in the whole match. Thank you cricket gods – that was a very sweet birthday present, was that.

A Scaled Down Edgbaston Test Visit, One Night At Harborne Hall, Then England v Pakistan Day One, 5 & 6 August 2010

With grateful thanks to Dan Steed for the pictures

There could be a fierce debate among the Heavy Rollers as to whether this match qualifies as a Heavy Rollers event at all.

The match was scheduled to start on a Friday and half of Edgbaston was a building site for this match, so most of the rollers chose to absent themselves this year. Also, Anita was in hospital recovering from an op, so I think David & Dan were unable to join us the evening before the match.

Anyway, the Edgbaston party comprised four diehards: me, Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett, David and Dan Steed.

Chas’s e-mail to me, cc: Dan & David after the event provides some evidence:

Just a quick note to all and thanks for a great day – so lucky with the weather.

Ian, special thanks for your generosity, so much appreciated, I will look for an Essex match within the next few weeks and also let you know about the face off at lords when I have that date!

David, Thanks fro taking us to the Hospital to see Anita, so pleased she is recovering well – keep me posted

Dan, don’t forget the link for the photos.

I will research the matches for next year. To include Edgbaston, Lords and the Oval, so far it looks to be India and Sri Lanka.

Regards

Charles.

PS – just thought I would mention it that I did say England needed 400 in the first innings, so not to bat again, its gets boring being so right so often!!

We stayed at Harborne Hall and my records show that my generosity extended to a meal at Henry Wong‘s on the night before the match – I think just me and Chas.

I recall that, before dinner, Chas and I visited Anita in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which was brand new that summer. She was in good spirits while recuperating and was in superb spirits when we saw her again, in more convivial circumstances, the following year.

As for the cricket, I recall Edgbaston looking quite sad in its building-site-fulness and the Day One crowd was quite sparse.

We were in exile in the RES Wyatt Stand, some distance from our normal seats in the Priory Stand (subsequently a few blocks round in the Raglan Stand).

I also recall many locals (including Dan) griping about the prices that year – they felt that Warwickshire CCC had failed to notice the unattractiveness of this match in the circumstances and still tried to charge “Ashes prices”.

Not the best Pakistan performance we’ve ever seen

I’m not quite sure how Chas’s point about England scoring 400+ is vindicated by the ultimate scorecard, click here, but he must have known what he was talking about at the time.

Shilpa Patel, Alec Stewart, Michael Vaughan and Jonathan Agnew all furiously debating whatever it was that Charley the Gent might have been going on about.

Here’s the note from Dan in response to Charley’s note:

Few photos from the building site – didn’t take too many! The score board ones say it all really. Great day, apologies its taken me a few weeks to send.

Ian/Charles, Take care all and see you again next year at the Oval…….hopefully?!!

P.S. Ian, forgot to give you your Z/Yen cap back – if you need it let me know your address and I will post it?

I never got round to asking for my cap back. I wonder (in April 2020, nearly 10 years later) if it is too late to ask?

A Day Of Neutral Test Cricket At Lord’s, Australia v Pakistan Day Three, With Paul Deacon, Mat & Tim, 15 July 2010

Paul Deacon, taken a few week’s earlier at England v Bangladesh

The Pakistan cricket team had just started their 10+ year sojourn following a terror incident in their homeland. England hosted a couple of neutral tests and I was keen to sample the delights at Lord’s.

To join me that day, Paul Deacon (this was to be his last hurrah of test cricket before he and his family went into self-imposed exile to Canada) along with Mat and Tim from the gym.

This was the second of two farewell treats for Paul, the first being England v Bangladesh a few week’s earlier:

Paul clearly enjoyed himself at the neutral match but did not take (or at least did not post) any photos on the second visit. The headline picture and the one below are from the Bangladesh day.

But Paul did write this:

Hi Ian


just to say another big thank you for a fantastic day at Lord’s.
Thoroughly enjoyed it. A nice tumble of wickets today!

Will fix a time for us + partners to meet up for a meal. Do you like Indian? Chinese? Thai? Or all 3 on one plate even?

Paul

In the end it took us some years to get together family-wise but it was worth the wait when we did:

If by any chance you want to know what happened in that particular cricket match – here is the scorecard. Day Three had left the match poised.

England v Bangladesh Day 2, Lord’s, 28 May 2010

A day at Lord’s with Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett, Mark “Uncail Marcas” Yeandle and a final hurrah with Paul Deacon before he abandoned us all for the Great White North.

You’ll have to take my word for it that Mark Yeandle is there between me and Paul.

Photos lifted from Facebook with implicit permission from Paul Deacon.  Paul took lots of photos that day, which Facebookers can see by clicking here.

Looks as though I am polishing off one of my smoked salmon bagels when that photo was taken, presumably by an amiable neighbour.

Mark Yeandle, despite hiding between me and Paul in the photo, made a momentous contribution to the day (and to the picture, if you look closely at Chas’s right hand) in the form of a monster ration of his local, outstandingly good Frittenden strawberries, picked specially for the occasion. By my reckoning, that particular day was “peak strawberry” day – the very best ones ever…or I should say to date (writing in late 2017).

England were doing rather well

Very much a batting day, was Day 2, although we got to see some (mainly tail-end) wickets too.

By the end of the day England were working hard in the field to little avail.

We had superb weather for a May test match and I recall a very pleasant day in every respect. We were lucky – the next day the weather was less than special and there was very little cricket.

Here is a link to the scorecard for the match. England prevailed in the end; but the end wasn’t until the Monday.

Paul’s next visit to Lord’s, I think, was more than seven years later with family in tow – click here.