Feeling the heat
Squeezed between two days at Lord’s for the ICC World Test Championship final…and then another day at Lord’s for that final, I took a break from cricket at Lord’s by going to Queen’s for a day to watch tennis with Janie.
Friday 13 June turned out to be a very hot day indeed, which is potentially more problematic for us at Queen’s, where we had allocated seats in the sun, than at Lord’s, where I can pick and choose a bit more.
Still, we had a good time, not least because it was an excellent day of tennis.
This is the first time there has been a women’s tournament at this professional level since the early 1970s – i.e. a few months before I picked up a racket for the first time.
Anyway, more than fifty years after I lost my tennis virginity, we saw:
- Madison Keys beat Diana Shnaider
- Tatjana Maria beat Elena Rybakina
- Qinwen Zheng beat Emma Raducanu
- Amanda Anisimova beat Emma Navarro
I took one stroll mid match during the first match and checked out the facilities.
One of the “benefits” of a day at Queen’s rather than Lord’s is that I don’t expect to run into a cricketing colleague, friend or acquaintance every five yards or so. Yet, on leaving the Arena at Queen’s, within about five yards, I ran into Josh Knappett, who is my main Middlesex CC link in my capacity as Middlesex’s Trustee on the London Cricket Trust. Josh was even sporting an MCC hat. Always a pleasure to see Josh, of course, but it made both me and Janie laugh when I reported back to her on this chance encounter.
Less amusing was the heat and the crowds as we all left the arena at the end of the first match. I did suggest that we turn right rather than left on exit, but Janie spotted a “toilets” sign and got us caught up in heaving dead end misery at the club house end of the campus, where a fight nearly broke out (not us, I hasten to add). Some folk (again, not us) tank up with alcohol to add to the strain of the heat on such days.
Anyway, we changed tack and ended up at the less-heaving end of the campus, where we observed some fine players practicing and took some delicious iced coffee to cool ourselves down.
We took advantage of some shade and air conditioning at the exhibition stand end of the ground before returning to see the end of the Maria v Rybakina match.
Our smoked trout bagels (lovingly prepared by me in the morning before I went to the physiotherapist and the gym) were not going to eat themselves. I can faithfully report that they indeed did not eat themselves; we ate them. We also ate some hand-made crisps, cheese clouds pretzel thins, strawberries and grapes. Not all at once – throughout the afternoon and early evening.
Next up Qinwen Zheng (who now prefers to be known as Zheng Qinwen apparently) against Emma Raducanu.
We took a break during that match, for comfort and for a game of table tennis in the sponsors exhibition area. My new found stability and confidence transferred to table tennis, where I recorded a rare win over Janie.
Janie’s rage almost certainly knew no bounds at this juncture, but she did a grand job of behaving as if she was having a good time and cared not about the table tennis result.
Soon after our return to our seats, the penultimate match ended and the last match of the day began.
After the first set, Janie looked up and said that her internal weather detector sensed rain approaching. Strangely, AccuWeather agreed, suggesting that we had some 40 minutes or so before the rain would start.
We decided, wisely I think, to leg it at that juncture, avoiding the heave at the gates and getting home in time to catch the end of the last match on the telly.
We’d had a grand day out.