Our little group for this day of test cricket comprised Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett, Mac Small (who used to look after our cars, Noddy & Nobby, at Ruislip Honda), me and Daisy.
Daisy and I both recall that I was on picnic duty that day, so I no doubt did the smoked salmon bagels thing, plus probably some ham and cheese rolls or something of that ilk.
Everyone brought their wine/beer ration which made for a jolly day in the spring sunshine. Not “o-t ‘ot” but certainly “very very warm for May”. We were either in the Upper Compton or the Upper Edrich – I cannot remember which. Good seats, I do remember.
Mac hails originally from Barbados. Charley seemed convinced that Mac must be related to the great Gladstone Small. Indeed Chas failed to hide his extreme disappointment when Mac informed him, rather emphatically, that he and Gladstone were not related. Mac and Chas spoke little after that.
In truth, Mac is a fairly quiet chap and seemed to be enjoying his day at Lord’s in a rather Zen style, while Chas and I chatted incessantly about cricket, as usual. Daisy drifted between a quiet state and joining in the conversation.
England were doing rather well, it has to be said. We saw Andrew Strauss score a ton, which was always a bonus for us, especially for Daisy, who single-handedly revived Straussy’s career with a pep talk back in 2008 – a matter to be Ogblogged in the fullness of time.
We vaguely recall that Mac left a little earlier than the rest of us, but not very early. Daisy and I are pretty sure Mac enjoyed his day, as afterwards he often referred to it, in only positive tones.
Also there was the backdrop of the riots that summer, which were unfolding as we arrived and during our stay, although leafy Harborne seemed unaware of or at least untouched by them.
Naturally Nigel and I made the most of it without Chas. It would be cruel to harp on about the extent to which we were nevertheless able to enjoy ourselves despite Chas’s indisposition. In any case, I doubtless harped sufficiently when I saw Charles again a bit later that season.
It must have been especially galling for Chas as I seem to recall he had gone to a great deal of trouble that year to secure our “honorary” front row seats, book nets, book rooms, book an Indian feast…oy!
I believe that I drove up that year having booked the extra night after the second day’s play. That might have been Nobby’s only visit to Harborne Hall.
I hadn’t thought about this before, but Graham seems to be a bit of a rainmaker, if the story of his 2011 and 2017 visits to Lord’s might be deemed to be a reasonably-sized sample.
We only got just over half a day’s play on the Thursday; quite slow stuff at that.
Whereas Janie and I got a giant-sized day of cricket on the Friday, with fair weather and a Kevin Petersen double-hundred.
Thank you very much indeed for an excellent day at the cricket. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it was a very welcome distraction from the office. I am only sorry our enjoyment was cut short by the rain.
I will follow the remainder of the match with extra interest.
I replied to his message by saying:
It was a pleasure and was good to see you. Janie felt badly on Friday that she and I did so much better weatherwise that day!
For those who have the stomach to look (i.e. most often neutrals and Surrey fans for these occasions), actually it looks as thought his was a pretty good match, despite the fact that I must have missed quite a fair chunk of it – click here for the scorecard and reports.
One extra bit of evidence on who, from “Ged Ladd & Co”, attended that time, in addition to “The Tiberellis”, comes from Jez’s e-mail to me a few week’s before the match:
Mark
Monique
Steph
Ben
Rich
David
Simon Strez would also like to come as it’s his last chance to see a cricket game in England before returning home to New Zealand. I also have 3 friends that will be coming to the game.
Janie and I were supposed to go with Hari and Mawju, both Sri Lankan people we know, Hari from the Lloyd’s bank in Ealing and Mawju from the Atari-Ya Japanese fishmongers (long story, don’t ask).
Also don’t ask why Mawju didn’t turn up and didn’t call to excuse himself or return his ticket.
Anyway, we had a very pleasant day at the cricket with Hari, who loved our picnic and we loved the cake he brought from home as his offering. It all sounds a bit TMS commentary box, doesn’t it? In some ways it was.
The match had been badly rain-affected the day before so we got an elongated day on the Monday. England did very well to turn a seemingly nailed-on draw into a possible winning position by the end of the day, although we had a sneaking suspicion that it would end up a draw anyway.
Unusually the first day of a Lord’s test match on a Friday.
That day I went with Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett, Ian “Iain Spellright” Theodoreson and Mark “Uncail Marcas” Yeandle.
The following extract from my e-mail to Mark and Chas the day before reveals the expectation of a very hot day:
Weather looks set fair for tomorrow.
Please could you both bring plenty of water with you. I’ll have my hands full and Ian T was muttering about “fancy juices” as his contribution to the soft drink side of things, but I think we might all need good old fashioned (still) H2O. Especially given the weather and the picnic I have planned.
Don’t forget your booze rations also – as if I had to remind you about that!…
Mark threatened (and saw through his threat) to bring some Frittenden strawberries with him. His strawberry offering the previous year had gone down an absolute treat. If you look closely at the picture of Charles below from that report, you can make out the colour and shape of a Frittenden strawberry. The 2011 batch was delicious, but I believe the 2010 batch was “peak strawberry”.
Click the photo or the link below to see that May 2010 match reported in full
A few years later there was a potentially ugly fruit incident, as Ian and Mark were reunited with me at the test on the same day. Mark brought famous Frittenden strawberries while Ian brought a giant bag of plump cherries that he had been unable to resist en route. This competitive soft fruit showdown could have been very bloody indeed, but it mercifully led only to MAD (mutually assured delectation):
Back to planning for a very hot June day in 2011. Chas wrote back threatening to soak me in factor 30 sunscreen.
I don’t recall the exact nature of Ian T’s fancy juices, but I think they might have been the flavoured water variety, which does work rather well on a ludicrously hot day.
Ian T seems to specialise in weather extremes when he comes to Lord’s with me. Our 2014 visit (which will eventually be published on King Cricket, I believe) was one of the hottest days I ever remember at Lord’s and Ian nearly melted.
I suspect that I was quite careful with the booze, because I was going to see a late night concert of Paco Peña at the Wigmore Hall after stumps. I suspect that all of us were a bit careful with the booze, partly because it was a very hot day.
I do recall this one, despite the heat, being an especially enjoyable, dreamy day at Lord’s. England were hot off the back of an away Ashes win and had even won the first test of the summer the previous week. What could ever, possibly go wrong again for the England test team?
Here is a link to the King Cricket piece, which relates to one of several games of garden cricket on that holiday – this one at the Frangipani Tree, near Galle, on 19 February:
Frankly, some of the comments are better than my report – it is worth reading for them. King Cricket can be like that.
Lord’s isn’t the only place where cricket and tennis intertwine
Here is my contemporaneous journal record for the whole day:
Very heavy overnight rain – some of Daisy’s things get wet – no point in even considering tennis this morning at seven – Daisy does hair drying instead.
We invent our own exercise regime.
Breakfast, reading (Kalooki Nights), lunch of grilled calamari, chips and bread! With beer.
World Cup [cricket] 2011 starts but we play our own garden version.
Five aside, Wojciech refuses to play but tennis ball cricket enables Daisy to have a go.
We make a respectable 89 for three of eight (I scored 15 in an open stand of 40 odd). We meet “Major General” Richard and his sporty son Chris (my opening partner) and daughter Millie and who knows we might meet the wife (Rosie?).
Our side loses as big fella Sanjay takes advantage of asymmetric field which helps left-hander with big hitting ability.
Even Daisy scores a run off my bowling.
More reading afterwards, followed by dinner of lamb tajine followed by chocolate ice cream washed down with a Spanish Crianza
Tough day.
Our album of Galle photos, all 31 of them, can be seen through the flickr album below:
Our other Sri Lanka photos- 79 excluded from the album – can be found through the link below:
Our album of Galle photos, all 31 of them, can be seen through the flickr album below:
Rise before six and take coffee before setting off in Praseeth’s tuk tuk to Lighthouse hotel for tennis.
Ged wins 7-4 (6-2). Mendis looked after us there.
Went back to Villa for wash and ready for 9 am Massage with wonderful Milton and Roshan (Milton’s son) who looks about 15 but apparently is 28.
We take a herb-infused tea and a late breakfast, then relax in our villa most of the day while Praseeth, Roshan (the Villa) and Wanita fuss over us.
We swim a little and sunbathe a little. Then we cover ourselves in skeeta protection and go off to the ramparts with Roshan for cricket.
No one is playing and a few mangy layabouts don’t seem too keen, but the peace offering of an Indian red heavy tennis ball seems to do the trick. One lad runs off to get stumps and a bat – it’s game on.
Deceptively straight bowlingA hoick to mid-wicket, where a you can just make out the stray Queenslanders
A stray Aussie from Brisbane watches for a long time and eventually decides to join in, after some baiting of an Ashes variety by Daisy, “to try and dislodge the pom” when I’m batting.
This pom was not for dislodging
The Aussie softened a little when I suggested that he might be “Matthew Hayden’s evil twin (if that is possible)” after he played a half decent stroke.
Roshan and Praseeth played well, especially Praseeth’s batting, despite him “feeling un-special today” apparently.
Daisy stuck around & took the photos. When stumps were drawn, the locals asked if I would be coming again tomorrow. I said “maybe”, by which I meant, “probably not”.
Our album of pictures from Bastar, more than 100 of them, can be seen through the following link:
I got up and out a bit earlier than Daisy this morning – did write-ups and took breakfast ahead of her.
Got away 8:30 to visit Nayanar, (speaking Halbe, Gondi and Bhatri). Bison Horn Maria village.
No school today – Sunday – but plenty of kids who enjoyed the skipping rope.
Then the tribal dance – older folk do the dancing in this tribe (no ghotul system) and so it is a slower, more sober affair (they’ll be drinking soon enough in the market).
The chief came out to welcome us and after the main dance & invited both of us to join the respective female and male roles – good photo fodder and we both seemed to amuse the locals.
After a stroll through the village we were all dressed up with no place to go – 11 o’clock in a place where the market gets going at 2:30 to 3 o’clock. We decided to go back to Jagdalpur.
Daisy donated Jolly’s skipping rope to the children, which was very kind of her/him.
A girl from the village has been feverish and sick for some time and a fever has returned so we agreed to take her to the local village hospital which turns out to be a rudimentary doctors clinic but better than the shamen stuff as she probably has typhoid or at least some form of dissentry. Uncle comes with her and touches Jolly for some money, which looks dodgy to me and turns out later, via Chetan (Jolly’s fixer) to be just that.
On to Jagdalpur.
First stop, The Palace, site of the Jagdalpur massacre in 1966 and home of Jolly’s cousin Hari. Hari isn’t there but we look around.
Then Jolly phones Hari to say we’ve been, only to find out that Hari was arriving home, so we have the whole thing explained to us again by Hari who seems very sweet.
Next stop the Rainbow Hotel, Bunty’s place. Primarily for toilet and refreshment (coconut water) but it transpires that Bunty’s restaurant overlooks the local cricket pitch and there is an Interstate 25 over match in progress.
Bunty suggested that I might help out with some commentary, which I thought was a joke, but it turns out they like English commentary and a semi-pro commentator is announcing away over the PA in immaculate English.
Soon enough there is a kerfuffle and I am told to get on the back of a motorcycle as my commentary stint is due to start very soon.
I am welcomed into the chair while the commentator quickly summarises the game so far, then the scorer keeps whispering the score and key facts to me.
Daisy is also biked around to join me.
Soon I’m in my stride, but towards the end of my five over stint I can hardly see what’s happening on the field of play as I’m surrounded by reporters and photographers.
When a wicket falls, I am two balls shy of my stint and I decide to handover (heck, I can’t see) and am then taken aside for interviews at length for the local TV cable network City Cable Jagdalpur & quizzed by some other reporters. Daisy is also interviewed. Tremendous fun.
We say our goodbyes [to our new friends the cricket commentators and jourtrnalists] and walk back round to the hotel. Jolly is thrilled too.
We set off back towards the market, stopping at a Dhaba – Keslur Dhaba in Keslur – daal fry, chicken curry (half), tandoori roti.
Then on to the market, which is named Pamela market and is far more of a fun fair than a market. Cock fighting is the centrepiece. Stalls are mostly food and booze and the people are almost all very friendly, some drunkenly so!
Back through Jagdalpur, where we buy a couple more hard tennis balls and another skipping rope, +3 pairs of sandals for me. Then back to the resort late, but Jolly and the lads all seemed keen for a quick match.
Ged made a bad decision to field in a fading light game, but in any case Jolly and his team are much better today scoring 54 and Ged’s team manage a paultry 14. Jolly top scored with 30+.
Then some time to wash and change. Chicken supper (hot and sour soup to start) and Gulab Jamun desert.
Relatively early night. That had been some day.
In addition to the Bastar album, linked above, there is a collection of over 200 photos from that part of the adventure that didn’t make the album, which can be seen at the link below:
