During the summer of 2004 I discovered the Middlesex Till We Die (MTWD) website and started corresponding with people through that on-line community’s message board. I decided to use Janie (Daisy’s) pet name/nickname for me, Ged Ladd, as my moniker on MTWD.
That autumn, the site moderators (in those nascent days David Slater, Kevin Ziants and Jeremy Horne) electronically “tapped me up” and asked if I would contribute some editorial pieces for the winter. I think we even met up that autumn to discuss matters. Part of the deal with the sites host, Sportnetwork, is that you must provide regular (at least fortnightly) editorial, otherwise the site (including the popular message boards) gets shut down. The minimum editorial requirement is easy to meet during the season (e.g. with match reports), but the long off-season presented a problem for the moderators at that time (and as I understand it, still presents a problem today, 2016 as I write).
Anyway, I enjoy writing articles and was happy to oblige. My first contribution was a “career tombstone” piece when Sven Koenig, one of Middlesex’s gritty opening batsmen, decided to hang up his boots. Word reached me later that Sven had seen the piece and rather liked it, as indeed he should.
If anything should ever go awry with the MTWD site, that piece can also be found here.
The highlight, in my view, is the statistical device that indicated that it was not the colour of the ball (white or red) that affected Sven’s batting average, but the colour of his clothing, presumably for sartorial rather than cricketing reasons. Strangely, no cricket administrator seems to have picked up this theory and run with it since when assessing other dapper cricketers. I cannot imagine why not.
Thanks for reviving this article. I’m sure I had a say in the title of article after a few wed rines. Sven was guaranteed not to give wicket away easily but was painfully slow at times. There was a 50 over game I think against Essex where he scored a ton, but we lost easily. He never played for us again in 1 dayers.
Your intervention gosh 12 years ago was pivotal as at that stage we really didn’t think we could keep the site going. Since then with some highs and lows am currently in position what articles not to include.
Thanks for commenting Kev. The article title is referenced in the main text, so if you did have a hand in the title, that must have happened in conversation when we all met. In which case, possibly wed rine, but more likely barm weer with that crowd (David and Jez). I’ll be linking to more of these pieces, including the missing masterpieces from 2007, as this project unfolds.