All Photographs By Charles Bartlett Except Where Indicated (This one by a steward, probably Paul Guppy, on Charles’s camera)
Even before we got to Edgbaston, the 2005 Heavy Rollers gathering was going to be one of the most memorable ever, by dint of the wonderful late afternoon and evening we had spent at Tye Towers the previous day, playing cricket and enjoying a glorious summer barbeque together.
We all stayed at Tye Towers. Janie recalls that I sent her a lengthy SMS message (now lost in the mists of time and/or recoverable only by the security services) waxing lyrical about the wonderful time we were having.
Charles got up early the next morning and took a stroll around “the estate” with his camera, taking all the following pictures before 7:00 am.
We thought we had allowed bags of time to get to Edgbaston & into the ground for the first ball. We were used to going to Edgbaston for the first day of the test match. But we hadn’t accounted for the massive early queues (previously unprecedented at Edgbaston – at least in then recent times) and the additional security required, as there had been a major terrorist incident on London transport only a few weeks earlier. Indeed, Nigel’s son, Adam – himself an occasional Heavy Roller and guest star in our charity cricket matches – had been on one of the bombed trains; mercifully Adam far enough away from the explosion not to be injured.
Returning to the queue on the morning of 4 August 2005, our mood regarding the match to come was one of great hope but diminished expectation, on the back of England having played a poor game at Lord’s leaving England 1-0 down in the five match series. I had spent a couple of days at that Lord’s test…
…a link to my Ogblog postings on that match will appear here in the fullness of time…once those postings are writ…
…we all knew that England would need to up its game considerably to catch up and overtake Australia in the series. This Edgbaston test was crucual.
Then, suddenly, one of our number (I think it was Charles but it might have been Harish) took a call from Kyle Bullock, who was working at The Children’s Society HQ at that time.
Kyle had played in the annual Z/Yen v Children’s Society cricket match in Regents Park a few weeks earlier. Kyle had cruelly dismissed me in that match with an off-spinning delivery that bounced and spun even more than I had anticipated, clipping my glove and thus yielding a catch. To add to the cruelty of that dismissal, the spitting cobra of a spinning ball had clipped a joint on one of my fingers which, despite the so-called protection of a glove and the relative slowness of the ball, had led to trigger finger pain that was sustained for several months. Kyle simply thought this was funny whenever I mentioned it to him.
On the positive side, Kyle had played an important part in one of the most exciting cricket matches I have ever played, click here or below) just a few days before we set off for Bedfordshire and Edgbaston.
At the time, we thought of Kyle as “an Aussie”. In fact, he is, like many people, someone whose nationality and sporting allegiance is somewhat divided between Australia and England. In fact, Kyle’s allegiance for those Ashes leant towards England, we subsequently discovered.
The reason I labour all of this seemingly superfluous material, is the fact that Kyle informed us, by telephone, that Glenn McGrath, Australia’s most reliable bowler at that time, had injured himself in warm-ups and was out of the match, possibly out of the series.
At first we all thought this was a wind up. I had already suffered that summer at the hands of Kyle’s spin and was not going to buy this unlikely-sounding story easily.
But within moments a whisper started to go through the queue and the ground, as plenty of people around us were listening to radios and/or taking calls from friends. The truth of this perhaps-series-defining story was confirmed.
We soon also learned that Australia had nevertheless elected to bowl having won the toss.
Our hope (and that of England fans everywhere) was well and truly restored.
Intriguingly, Nigel’s recollection of the McGrath incident is quite different from mine, as he, Jeff Tye and The Steeds came in separate cars from me, Chas, Nick and Harish. They were entering the ground at a different (probably slightly earlier) time. Nigel writes:
It was the amiable Brummie steward [Paul Guppy] who informed me/us of the ‘unfortunate’ McGrath accident…[Paul] appeared joyful in the sense of “ I know summink amazing that you don’t”. He sensed our doubts as he had, until then, had a tendency to enjoy the odd wind up, to put it kindly. “I should know, I helped put him into the back of a car”. His insights may have been shared elsewhere, but we self importantly formed the impression he had made a beeline for us! Word started to spread as a result…hopes began to escalate.
Here is a link to a match highlights video that, like this article, covers the first two days of the match. You’ll need to survive some adverts before you see just over 30 minutes of footage.
Above embedded video from The Daily Motion.
The video shows the queue of people entering the ground through the Pershore Road entrance, which is the entrance we use, but the queue was much longer than that shown when we arrived in it.
The video highlights for the first two days of this great match also include an infeasibly large number of shots showing us Heavy Rollers in the crowd – especially shots from the first session of the match. I suppose we stood out for the cameras that year, being lined up in our red Heavy Rollers shirts.
Here’s an example screen grab from the above video. Don’t ask how much fiddling around it has taken to grab that. It is c4’36” into the film.
Lunch was a typically wonderful picnic (see Heavy Rollers reports passim), I think a joint effort provided by the Steeds supplemented by the Tyes – not least Liz Tye’s iconic scotch eggs, which Nigel recalls her contributing on several occasions…surely this being one of them… and Samina’s samosas – Samina being a colleague of Nigel and especially Jeff’s from the Bedford office of The Childrens’ Society. Samina contributed samosas for our trip on several occasions.
Chas, Nigel & Jeff were still star struck from their previous exploits blagging their way into the old Edgbaston pavilion – see Heavy Rollers write ups passim, in particular the 2003 one linked here and below…
In 2005 they did it again, with Chas taking several photos including the following:
The following ones from within the pavilion on the stroke of tea Day One…don’t ask!
And one just after tea, proving that Chas, at least, hung around for the whole of the tea interval.
The evening meal was at an Indian Restaurant (or should I call it a Balti House in Birmingham?) on the recommendation of the Steeds (“Peels”) and a jolly good recommendation it was too, as evidenced by the following sole photo of the evening.
We stayed the night at Harborne Hall – our first of several stays there. Why we rejected the place in 2006 in favour of the worst hotel ever in the entire world…
…is a bit of a mystery. But I digress.
Another mystery is why Chas took one…but only one…picture on Day Two of the match.
I can only imagine that Chas felt that he had failed to catch an image of his favourite player on Day One, so returned with his camera determined to put matters right on Day Two…which he certainly did with the above image.
We had a great time on Day Two, much as we had on Day One. David Steed once again did the honours with a splendid picnic and all seemed well with the world as we left the ground at the end of that day.
Shane Warne’s dismissal of Andrew Strauss towards the end of Day Two kept us all thinking that, despite England’s healthy-looking lead, the game was far from over…
…and oh boy was the game far from over.
Here and below is a link to all of Charles’s photos from the match itself.
The wonderful Daily Motion highlights reel (repeated below) shows an insightful view of those two days of unforgettable cricket. Top viewing for Heavy Rollers and non-Rollers alike. For The Heavy Rollers, it was an unforgettable, life-affirming gathering over three days as well as an unforgettable match.
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