Category: Cricket

Middlesex v Essex T20, Lord’s, Followed By Artemis Quartet, Wigmore Hall Lates, 26 June 2009

I often say that there are only two places remaining on earth where staff and stewards still call me “young man”: Lord’s and the Wigmore Hall.

So what better places to celebrate Janie’s birthday than both of those august institutions?

We’d probably booked the Wigmore Hall late night concert before we knew/realised that Middlesex were to play Essex in the T20 tournament at Lord’s that evening. Low marks to the cricket authorities for demographic matching for scheduling that fixture at that venue that night, but they probably won’t make that mistake again in a hurry.

Anyway, Charley “The Gent” Malloy was keen to see that fixture and suggested (once he knew it was Janie’s birthday and that we had a later evening engagement at “The Wig”), that we make that match a couples outing,  with Dot (Mrs Malloy) up for the idea of a T20 game and a picnic at Lord’s. So that’s what we did.

Cricket

Chas and Dot were able to get to Lord’s early, so they established a good spot at the front of the Tavern Stand for us. Their hopes and expectations for the match (as Essex supporters) were much higher than ours as Middlesex supporters. Essex had been doing well in the tournament that year, whereas Middlesex, despite being champions, had been consistently poor. So much so, I had written a scathing “futurology” MTWD match report of the Hampshire away match earlier in the week, before that match even took place.

But of course, as fate would have it, Middlesex played a rare decent match and spoiled Chas and Dot’s fun a bit:

Here is a link to the scorecard.

But it clearly only spoiled their fun a bit, as Chas said in a note the following Monday:

That was a super evening last Friday at Lords with all of us there; it was an absolute delight, although I suspect that the loss by Essex cost them dearly!

Music

The Wigmore Late concert was a real treat for Janie; she loves a bit of Piazzolla and this was a concert full of the stuff.

Here is a link to an interesting article from The Telegraph explaining why this quartet likes playing Piazzolla.

Dying for a Piazzolla?

It was a lovely concert.

It had been a long evening; I recall us going back to the flat feeling very tired but also very happy.

Hampshire v Middlesex T20 Match, MTWD Futurology Match Report, 23 June 2009

In what appears to have been a first (and mercifully last) attempt to produce an MTWD match report before the match took place, Ged produced the following piece for MTWD.

Hawks Prove Too Much For Panthers – click here.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex till we die – Hawks Prove Too Much For Panthers

The reason I did this, I suspect, was that the match was a televised match and we hadn’t managed to find someone to commit to writing a post match report. Also, of course, because Middlesex were predictably awful in the T20 tournament that year, despite having won it the year before.

Here is a link to the predictably awful scorecard.

It certainly says something about commentator predictability and cliche, as the MTWD piece and the comments below it attest. King Cricket lovers will no doubt appreciate the sentiments.

England Women v New Zealand Women and Pakistan v Sri Lanka, ICC World Twenty20 Finals Day, Lord’s, 21 June 2009

My nonchalant box-ticking months earlier…

…”why not? Yes, by all means put my name in the ballot for pairs of debenture returns”…

…led to a very polite letter from the MCC, letting me know that, if I had really meant it, there were indeed ballot returns available for me, both for the last regular Sunday of the tournament and for this finals day.

“That would be absolutely spiffing,” I implied, not by using those exact words, but by ticking some more boxes and writing a fairly substantial Gregory Peck.

Excellent value for my minimal effort and the money.

We had similar debenture seats for finals day as we had for the previous Sunday…

Ireland v Sri Lanka and England v India, ICC World Twenty20, Lord’s, 14 June 2009

…just a little more central in the Grandstand. As the previous week, we were sitting very close to John McCririck. Actually, the previous week we had sat close to…” …you know, that eccentric bloke who does racing, adverts and stuff on the TV”. I had to Google him between time to discover his name.

We certainly wanted to see the women’s World Twenty20 final – that was a big part of the excitement for us, especially as England had qualified for the final. So we set off in good time to catch the start of the first match – this also enabled us to avoid any crush at the gates. Daisy did the picnic again, I’m pretty sure, as we were in Sandall Close that weekend. I think she went more for a bangers and nibbles picnic this time, with the previous week’s having been a more sandwich-based affair. But it might have been the other way around.

I had managed to catch a fair chunk of the England Women v Australia Women semi-final on the TV on the Friday. I thought the Aussie girls had scored plenty but England batted beautifully that day.

On finals day, it was the England bowling that shone through – taking advantage of morning conditions to bowl. Not an enormous crowd for the women’s final, sadly, but a decent number of us turned up to support. The ground started to fill up as the match progressed.

Here’s the scorecard from the women’s final.

It was a great feeling to witness live the England Women win a World Final at Lord’s.

Daisy wears one for the girls (some months later) – thanks to Kim for the picture

For the men’s final, what had been the empty seat next to mine was taken by a young Asian gentleman from Birmingham who was supporting Pakistan. He got more and more excited as the match unfolded and was in a state of great euphoria by the end.

In truth, it wasn’t a very exciting match. The Sri Lankan score always seemed below par and at no point did the Sri Lankan bowlers seem capable of containing the Pakistan batsmen.

Here is the scorecard from the men’s final.

We left Lord’s and wandered over to Harry Morgan’s to wait for a cab in comfort with a coffee. Cars were driving around St John’s Wood hooting horns, hollering Urdu chants and waving Pakistan flags. I don’t suppose the residents of NW8 had ever seen anything like it before.

Thus ended my four days at Lord’s in less than a fortnight (which started here). I must say that these short-form International cricket matches make so much more sense to me in the context of a multi-country tournament than they do when they are simply a string of bilateral matches. I had enjoyed a couple of excellent midweek days with friends and a couple of super Sundays with Daisy. Well satisfied, I was.

Ireland v Sri Lanka and England v India, ICC World Twenty20, Lord’s, 14 June 2009

Back to Lord’s for the third time in a week (or my fourth double-header in six days, if you also count the Orange Tree Theatre double-bill the night before).

The reason for my ICC World Twenty20 excess is explained in the first of my pieces about attending the tournament – here.

This time Daisy is with me and I am pretty sure that she took on the picnic duties for this visit as we would have been in “the country residence” (Sandall Close) the night before.

We got to see two really good matches, as well as enjoy a good picnic:

  • Ireland v Sri Lanka – one of those matches where you always felt that the giant-killer/underdog (Ireland) was still in the hunt, yet sensed that Sri Lanka would eventually overcome them, which they did – click here for the scorecard;
  • England v India – a very exciting match, which England somehow managed to win, despite the sense that India would eventually overcome England’s seemingly below par score – click here for the scorecard.

We watched from the dizzy heights of debenture seats in the Grandstand, my “prize” for ticking a box requesting a shot at a ballot for a pair of debenture returns. These seats were not too far away from the Warner Stand seats I’d sat in earlier that tournament – that Warner side of the Grandstand and a lot higher of course.

My favourite memory from this day was Ravi Bopara’s six, which was caught in a beer skiff by one of the pair of gentlemen sitting next to Daisy in the Grandstand, splashing (mercifully little) beer all around us.

I have just looked up the BBC on-line commentary for that six – click here – which reports that the ball went into the Grandstand (last ball of the fifth over) and then simply says for the start of the next over “Umpire de Silva calls for a new ball”. What actually happened was that, after our neighbour returned the beer-sodden ball, both umpires had a poke at the ball and then a sniff at it, before deciding that the ball was no longer of the requisite quality. Our little section of the crowd, which knew exactly what had happened, took great pleasure in all that.

That England win kept England’s hopes alive for more than 24 further hours, until a rain-affected night match against the West Indies at the Oval proved a bridge too far for England.

But that Sunday, concluding with an unexpected England win, was a very happy day at the cricket.

Pakistan v Sri Lanka and India v West Indies, ICC World Twenty20, Lord’s, 12 June 2009

Just three days after my previous visit to Lord’s for the World T20 and a couple of days before my next visit, this was the second of my four visits for that tournament. The embarrassment of riches, ticket-wise, is explained in the previous piece.

This visit, on the Friday, was with Ian Theodoreson. I first met Ian when he was at Save The Children and I was on my first assignment for Binder Hamlyn. We’ve kept in touch, on and off, ever since. In June 2009, he was about to join or had just joined the National Church Institutions from Barnardos.

Ian very kindly contributed the Foreword to Michael’s and my second Book, IT For The Not For Profit Sector. Indeed, at one time I recall Ian being quite miffed, because the only reference to himself he could find on the whole internet when “ego-googling” was a critical reference to that foreword. I cannot imagine why anyone would or even could criticise that piece – here is a link to the text of the very foreword, so you can judge for yourself.

But I digress.

This was a very enjoyable day at Lord’s. Our tickets were on the Warner Stand, near the Grandstand (as were the seats a few days before with Mark). I remember Ian and I spotting Sachin Tendulkar being entertained in one of the Grandstand boxes, very close to our seat.

The cricket was good without being exceptional, as is often the way with T20 cricket. Little did we know that we were watching a pre-match between the two tournament finalists first up:

Pakistan v Sri Lanka Scorecard – click here.

The second match was also a bit one sided, with the chasing West Indies always seeming to be ahead:

India v West Indies Scorecard – click here.

Still, it was a great opportunity for Ian and I to catch up over one of my classic Lord’s picnics and some fun cricket to watch. A very enjoyable day.

 

Netherlands v Pakistan and New Zealand v South Africa, ICC World Twenty20, Lord’s, 9 June 2009

This was the first of four days I spent at Lord’s during the ICC World Twenty20 tournament when it was held in England in 2009.

If that sounds a little excessive in the booking, it probably was but there was method to my madness.

The county members’ application form made it clear that the last Sunday of the rounds (when England were due to play) and the following Sunday, Finals Day, were completely sold out. My only hope for those days was to tick a box asking to go into a ballot for debenture returns for whichever days I wanted.

Frankly, I thought my chances of getting debenture returns were close to zero, but I ticked the box and said I’d be interested in either or both of those Sundays. Expecting nothing to come of that returns business,  I also booked a couple of the less fashionable match days at Lord’s, so I’d at least get to see some of the world cup tournament.

Needless to say, I got a pair of superb debenture tickets for each of the fashionable Sundays as well as Warner Stand pairs for the two midweek dates I also booked.

I asked Mark Yeandle to join me for the first of the visits, an offer which he eagerly accepted.

Hippity, who was in the middle of his writing surge that summer (mercifully never to be repeated in quantity) wrote this one up for the King Cricket website – click here.

Just in case anything ever happens to King Cricket, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Pakistan v Netherlands World Twenty20 match report

I’ve not a lot to add to Hippity’s straightforward narrative and definitive reporting, except to provide links to the scorecards for the two matches:

It possibly goes without saying, but the second match was a cracker of a low scoring thriller, which made up for the damp squib that was the first match.

Repetitive – moi? Moi?? Moi???

Avid Ogblog readers might detect some similarity between Hippity’s story for this match and his MTWD report just a few week’s earlier. Recycling for different audiences and/or honest reportage of extremely similar experiences – read into it what you will. The little green monster is semi-retired now and anyway you cannot plagiarise yourself, you can merely repeat yourself.

Bore Draw – NOT!!, MTWD Piece, Surrey v Middlesex Day 4, The Oval, 9 May 2009

This turned out to be one of the most exciting days of cricket I have ever witnessed.

It was one of those strange situations in which everything worked out for the best.

Janie and I were all dressed up / picniced up with no place to go that Saturday, as we had Day 4 test match tickets for a Lord’s match which had somehow managed to conclude in three days.

So we went to the Oval and saw a screamer of a Day Four County Championship day there instead.

We attributed the resulting MTWD piece to Daisy feat. Ged:

Daisy watching cricket at Lord’s on a subsequent cold feet, cold hands  day

Here is that Daisy Feat. Ged MTWD report: Bore Draw – NOT!! – click here.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex till we die – Bore Draw Not

If you want to see the scorecard, which barely does justice to this extraordinary match – click here.

Anything Hughes Can Do (Ramps Can’t Do Better), MTWD Piece, Following Surrey v Middlesex and England v West Indies Remotely, 7 May 2009

We sometimes struggled to find reporters MTWD reporters for away matches, so ended up resorting to somewhat detached reports.

It seems that “Hippity volunteered” to report on this particular day, from his vantage point on the bed at the flat.

Hippity’s vantage point

Younger readers (or older readers with early stages of memory loss) might need to resort to this Wikipedia link to learn/remind themselves what Ceefax was.

It is sad to reflect on Phillip Hughes, who played such a huge part in that early part of Middlesex’s 2009 summer and who was so sadly cut down in his prime just five years later.

Over to Hippity: Anything Hughes Can Do (Ramps Can’t Do Better) – click here.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex till we die – Anything Hughes Can Do (Ramps Can’t Do Better)

In case anyone was wondering about the England v West Indies match – click here for the scorecard from that one.

Continue reading “Anything Hughes Can Do (Ramps Can’t Do Better), MTWD Piece, Following Surrey v Middlesex and England v West Indies Remotely, 7 May 2009”

I Do Declare, MTWD Piece, Middlesex v Glamorgan Day 3, Lord’s, 24 April 2009

I took Michael Mainelli to Lord’s on Day Three of this  match, having taken Charley on Day One.

Hippity wrote up Day Three, having apparently jumped into my picnic bag in a fit of pique:

I Do Declare: Middlesex v Glamorgan Day 3 – click here.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex till we die – I Do Declare: Middlesex v Glamorgan Day 3.

Middlesex CCC Season Is Up And Running, MTWD Piece, Middlesex v Glamorgan Day One at Lord’s, 22 April 2009

My article on MTWD tells the tale of the day – the first day of the county championship season for Middlesex.

MIDDLESEX CCC SEASON IS UP AND RUNNING – click here.

You get Charley The Gent and a passing mention of Nigel “Father Barry”, together with both of the lads’ wives with pseudonyms long since forgotten.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex till we die – MIDDLESEX CCC SEASON IS UP AND RUNNING

If you want to know what happened in the match, click here for the scorecard.

You can have various takes on a day of cricket. King Cricket, who takes a particular interest in rotund cricketers, wrote up the same day thus – click here.

Even more strangely, it seems that King Cricket published, that very same day, a short piece about Hippity and his cricket ball – click here.

Just in case anything ever happens to King Cricket, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

A cricket ball in an unusual place

Stranger still, King Cricket published an abridged version of the MTWD piece at a (by King Cricket standards) lightening pace – i.e. within a calendar month – click here for King Cricket’s Middlesex v Glamorgan match report.

Just in case anything ever happens to King Cricket, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex v Glamorgan match report