I saw several bits of cricket matches in the first 10 days of May, squeezed between lots of work, real tennis and other activities.
Wednesday 1 May 2019: Radlett & Lord’s
Originally, I had planned to block out that day for cricket, but I needed to fit a client meeting in mid to late morning, so had all-but abandoned the idea of seeing cricket that day.
Then I got a message from Fran to say that she and Simon were packing their sun cream, tee-shirts, thick winter coats, galoshes and brollies with every intention of going to the match come what may.
It also turned out to be a week for me being press-ganged into extra real tennis at Lord’s, so after I had stayed on court for an extra hour the day before to get some doubles experience, one of the pros asked if I could be a late stand-in at 20:00 on 1 May for a tough singles.
So the combination of the Fran message, the timing of that tennis press-ganging, together with some favourable weather and an interesting match position…
…persuaded me to jump into Dumbo to join Fran and Simon for a few hours at Radlett, where Middlesex were hosting Somerset, before driving home via Lord’s.
This was Dumbo’s first visit to Radlett since the 2016 visit, reported (surprisingly recently) on King Cricket:..
…although I did spend a splendid day with Fran, Simon and Charley The Gent at Radlett last season:
So, I got home from my client meeting, had a quick bite to eat while watching the closing overs of the Middlesex innings on the Chromecast/TV and then jumped into Dumbo who “rode like the wind” to Radlett. We arrived just after 15:00.
Dumbo wasn’t very impressed with the large public field in which he had to park – his previous visit, to a second team match, enabled him a parking space with a bit of a view.
I, on the other hand, was pretty impressed by the scale of the enterprise and how well organised the outground team seemed to be on a match day. Very friendly and helpful.
Having learnt from our rather chilly experience in the shade last time, Fran and Simon had grabbed some excellent seats on the sunny side. It was one of those “layers of clothes” days, on which I ended up in rolled up shirtsleeves when the sun came out and then donning my thick jacket, scarf and hat by the end of the match after the sun had gone in.
It was really pleasant to sit watching cricket with Fran and Simon again – they are very knowledgeable cricket followers; there was plenty to discuss in the matter of county and international cricket since we’d last met. Oh, plus catching up on our other news of course.
Middlesex took its time to take the last wicket and I had almost decided to give up on waiting to be sure to get out of the car park and back down to Lord’s in good time, but the trusty satnav kept insisting that the journey wouldn’t take long against the main flow of rush hour traffic.
So I did stick it out to the final ball and we did find it surprisingly easy and relatively quick to get out of the car field – the stewards operating very efficiently to keep the funnelling out of the ground decorous.
So Dumbo and I got to Lord’s nice and early. Moreover, as a special treat for Dumbo, it transpired that there were no functions on that evening so he was allowed to park in the Allen Stand gap and look out onto the field of play.
Dumbo and I returned to Lord’s for tennis on the Friday morning (3rd) when, very unusually, Dumbo was again allowed to park in the Allen Stand gap, as a result of works vehicles blocking the way to his regular Car Park No 6 spot. Actually the above photo was taken on the Friday morning.
The next day, 4th, I played a representative tennis match for the MCC at Middlesex University, reported here and below.
Wednesday 8th May 2019: Lord’s & Oval
I had long-since pre-arranged a tennis lesson on this morning, so rumours that I was having the equivalent of a “naughty boy net” after our somewhat bruising visit to Middlesex University at the weekend are simply not true. Fake news. Perhaps I shouldn’t have spread those rumours myself in the first place.
Anyway, I found myself at two major cricket grounds on the same day for the first time ever, I think, as a result of being asked to attend a somewhat last-minute ad hoc London Cricket Trust meeting with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), for which the only convenient venue was the Oval, where England were supposed to be playing a one-day-international against Pakistan.
It was a horribly rainy day and I thought it unlikely that there would be any cricket at all, but heck, I wasn’t really there for cricket, I was there for a meeting. Still, the way to get us in to the ground on a big match day was to provide us with comps, so I did have an OCS stand ticket for a rather good balcony seat.
Strangely, as there were no rooms available for the meeting, we ended up on the top level of the OCS stand having the meeting on outdoor (albeit covered area) tables and chairs. Even more strangely, the rain stopped and some play was possible for just over an hour, which coincided almost exactly with the hour we spent meeting.
Some people in the meeting must have been making very profound points, because as soon as they had finished their sentence the crowd oohed and aahed – especially if the speaker was talking during one of Jofra Archer’s overs. I didn’t manage to time any of my pearls of wisdom to coincide with an ejaculation of crowd noise, sadly. Perhaps my pearls of wisdom are not so spectacular after all.
After the meeting, AccuWeather told me that there might be 15 minutes or so before the next short but heavy rain storm, so I thought I might as well make full use of my comp for three or four overs before heading home.
I did well, thanks to AccuWeather, as I managed to get home between showers too.
Friday 10th May 2019: Lord’s…Just Lord’s
Just one cricket ground that day? What was the matter with me?
Still, one ground, two purposes; real tennis and cricket. I had arranged to play real tennis on the Friday afternoon long since, with no expectation that Middlesex might have a home draw at Lord’s in a knockout tournament. After all, it is several decades since Middlesex has had one of those, so it hardly falls into the “expectation” category.
I watched the start of the Middlesex v Lancashire match on the TV at home, while having lunch. My plan, which worked well, was to head off for Lord’s in Dumbo at around 14:30, enabling me to put Dumbo onto a four-hour meter near the ground and then not have to worry about him for the rest of the afternoon/evening. Plan worked.
So I watched about 30-40 minutes of cricket before getting changed for tennis. Janie (Daisy) informed me that she’d probably arrive while I was playing tennis, which she did.
Daisy tried very hard to distract my opponent, Stuart, with sledging and left-field questions, but seemed better able to distract my concentration than Stuart’s. All the more so when she was joined in the dedans gallery by Dominic and Pamela…followed soon enough by John Thirlwell. The more they tried to help me with their crowd noise, the more they seemed to help Stuart.
Actually it was a very good, close game of tennis, which I lost very narrowly and felt I’d done well to stay that close, given how well Stuart was playing.
Meanwhile, by the time I got changed, Middlesex were in all sorts of trouble and it looked as though our evening watching cricket might be severely foreshortened.
Still, Janie hunkered down with some wine and nibbles up on the top deck…
…then soon after John Thirlwell joined us.
James Harris (no relation) got Middlesex infeasibly close to the 300+ target having been 24-5 at one point, but (as I had suspected throughout the innings) it wasn’t quite enough to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Still, it was a very pleasant couple of hours of cricket watching and chat. Janie and I rounded off the evening by picking up some of our favourite Chinese grub from Four Seasons, Queensway on the way home.