Unfortunately Charley The Gent could not join us this year, so we added a late substitute to the group of five – Jonny “Twophones” Hurst, a friend of mine from NewsRevue. As part of his initiation into the Heavy Roller clan, Jonny & I spent some hours together during the Ireland test match a couple of weeks earlier.
The other four of us were me, Daisy, Nigel “Father Barry” Hinks and Harish “Harsha Ghoble” Gohil.
But before all of that, my now traditional stop off in Leamington for some medicinal tennis with the good doctors of that town.
Not just tennis, but a very pleasant lunch, after a very entertaining tennis match that was a close-fought affair. Five of us (four players plus Janie) sat down and the time flew by, such that I started to worry that we’d get no food and/or be late for dinner.
By the time Janie and I had done the picnic shopping, located our lovely digs in Moseley and unpacked, it was more or less time to meet Harish and Nigel for dinner. (Jonny chose to join us at the ground the next morning).
We went to our now traditional (since Nigel and I discovered the place in 2016), excellent Persian restaurant, Colbeh, on the Hagley Road.
Yum.
Friday 16 June 2023 – Day One
Early start for me as there was a picnic to pull together. Then a 25 minute stroll to the ground for me and Daisy. Bit of a queue, but not too bad at 10:15. We guessed that 5 or 10 minutes earlier the next day would be easier yet. We were right.
Daisy enjoyed photographing the pre match hullabaloo and our reaction to it.
Daisy also likes to photograph people behind the Eric Hollies Stand. Those people don’t seem to mind.
The weather was glorious and the cricket was captivating throughout our time at Edgbaston – indeed the whole match was a cracker.
We were all exhausted at the end of Day One, so went back to our respective diggings and regrouped the next morning.
Saturday 17 June 2023 – Day Two
Daisy took some more pictures during the lunch interval of Day Two.
She also persuaded our mystery lunchtime visitor to take a picture of us…
…then Ged took a picture of the mystery visitor with the Nigel, Daisy and Harish. All the while, Jonny Twophones was off on some mystery mission of his own.
Sam, who was said “mystery guest” wrote up his (apparently) terrifying experience on King Cricket, linked here and below:
In the matter of having a picture of all five of us rollers, Harish put matters right, photographically, with the following five-face selfie – very deft:
You can see all the photos on Flickr by clicking here or below.
The whole match really was a cracker, you can read all about it and see the scorecard here.
Of course it was not the same without Chas, but it was still a monumental Heavy Rollers occasion, with great company, good food and amazing cricket, lovely cricket.