Kev is silent on the party afterwards, but I’m pretty sure that, in those days, the forum was in the Thomas Lord Suite whereas the party was in the Allen Stand’s Middlesex Room.
Given Kev’s rapid report and silence about partying afterwards, I’ll guess this wasn’t one of the occasions when the libations continued afterwards in the Tavern or the Robert Browning.
I believe this momentous day was my first ever match report for King Cricket. At the time, I was still editing the Middlesex Till We Die (MTWD) website, so I also co-wrote a match report for that one.
I had been campaigning quite hard for some time for MTWD match reports to be impressionistic and alternative, rather than traditional narrative reports of the game. In the early days of MTWD, providing narrative reports was a useful “free service” for fans as it wasn’t so easy to find match reports on-line. But by 2008, there was little need or demand for an amateur version of rapid narrative reportage on-line, although several of the reporters seemed wedded to “ball-by-ball match reports” (as Barmy Kev tended to describe them).
Meanwhile, I’d discovered the King Cricket site and loved his match report rules: “If it’s a professional match, on no account mention the cricket itself. If it’s an amateur match, feel free to go into excruciating detail.” However, King Cricket sought match reports as fillers to be used weeks or months after the event; yet would not (as a commercial site, could not) simply recycle material that had been published elsewhere first.
This pair of match reports is, therefore, probably the only example of me writing pretty much the same story in different words for both sites. From then on, I continued with occasional pieces (as well as editing) with MTWD for another couple of seasons while writing wholly different occasional stuff for King Cricket.
In King Cricket and MTWD match reports, Ged and Daisy are nicknames/noms de plume for me and Janie. Friends (such as Charley “The Gent” Malloy) are always referred to pseudonymously. If my diary is to be believed, Charley was a substitute as my guest for that day, as the day is marked in my diary as a stumpfmerde, which means the original idea was to visit Lord’s that day with “Timothy Tiberelli”. Something important must have come up for Timothy.
One of the regular/irregular meet ups between me and John White. John had not yet been to Lord’s to see proper (i.e. red ball, white clothing) cricket, nor had he yet done the pavilion thing.
As it was my turn to choose the eating venue, I hatched a plan for the meal to be at Hereford Road (which I was sure would be to John’s taste) and for both of us to finish work early for a change, starting our late afternoon at Lord’s. My e-mail to John a couple of days before:
We’re meeting early at Lord’s if you are still on for that – I have 4:30/4:45 in my diary. I have booked Hereford Road for dinner – excellent restaurant between Lord’s and my place – owned and cheffed by the former chef from St John.
So John joined me at Lord’s for an hour or so of cricket and the informal tour of the pavilion, then the restaurant, both of which he seems to have enjoyed – John’s subsequent e-mail words:
As always a lovely evening. It was very kind of you to let me into Lord’s. Although nobody is really that interested I have been endlessly describing the various bars, characters and atmosphere of the place. I don’t know if you won? Orient managed a 2-0 win away at Walsall on Saturday if you’re interested.
…but again only for the last couple of hours, primarily as a convivial meeting place with Steve Tasker to go through some UNISON business; probably thinking through project budgets for 2009. I’m sure we got to see a bit of cricket and enjoy a beer at the end of the day as well.
I have two abiding memories of this Sunday at Lord’s with Daisy.
They both relate to the charming South African gentleman and his Zimbabwean friend who sat next to us in the Mound Stand. We chatted with them at length in the earlier part of the day.
In particular, the Zimbabwean gentleman explained the currency chaos prevailing in Zimbabwe at that time; sacks full of bank notes to buy basic items, the authorities producing ever larger, ludicrously large denomination bank notes; worthless before they had even rolled off the printing presses.
I asked the gentleman if I might buy some from him for our Z/Yen edutainment boat trip games. He said he had none with him but sack loads at home. He said his wife would bring some for me when she was next in London (in a few weeks’ time) and refused to take money for them. He did not even accept the offer of hospitality on the boat in exchange.
To his credit, he followed through with his promise. A few weeks’ later a mysterious woman apparently arrived at our St Helen’s Place offices with a large envelope stuffed with billions upon billions of Zimbabwean dollars:
Try for the fifty billion?
This multitude of notes came in very handy in Z/Yen edutainment games for many years and I really am very grateful to the kind man who took so much trouble to respond to a casual request that came up in chat at cricket.
I also remember feeling slightly sleazy about the matter as, given his refusal to take anything in reciprocation, the transaction felt, in essence, as though I had successfully begged for money – albeit worthless money. Janie and I debated that aspect for a while, as I was at that time in the process of preparing my Gresham Lecture on Commercial Ethics.
But I digress.
The other abiding memory was the disappearance of that South African and Zimbabwean double-act as soon as a heavy storm blew across. It was very heavy rain, but it was scheduled to pass quickly and the new drainage at Lord’s is terrific. I even said to them that I thought the game would restart within an hour of the rain stopping, despite the heaviness of the rain.
The gentlemen both said that they had spent too long over the years waiting for Lord’s to fail to dry, so headed off as soon as the rain relented.
Play did resume within an hour of the rain stopping. It proved to be an exciting match in the end.
Lots of Worm activity (i.e. Janie’s “Wormleighton” family and friends) during August 2008 if my diary is to be believed, but no photographic evidence. For more detail on some of these activities, we might need to ransack the attic and retrieve Janie’s diaries.
Saturday 2 August – Phillie.
My diary also has “Anth” crossed out, so I think the original idea was for Anthea and Mitchell to visit when Phillie was with us, but I think they came the following week and Phillie alone stayed with us at the maisonette and had dinner. Tony was away on business if I recall correctly/
Monday 4 August – Middlesex v Somerset floodlit.
I took Paul (Belmonte) that evening and gave him the pavilion experience for some of the game and also I recall watching a fair bit from the Upper Edrich Stand. I think this was only the second floodlit game at Lord’s; at least only my second experience of it. Here is a link to the scorecard.
Saturday 9 August – Anth
Not sure what we did but quite possibly Anthea and Mitchell came over for dinner. I think my diary would have more detail if it had been a bigger adventure than that.
Sunday 24 August – Worms
The Monday was a bank holiday of course. This will almost certainly be Hil and Chris; I think we might have all have gathered at their place in Bristol – i.e. including Phillie, Tony and Charlie. I think this was the year that Janie and I went down just for the day – a late lunch barbecue – then drove home. Quite a success I seem to recall.
Correction/update: It is clear from Janie’s diary that she and I stayed at the Hotel Du Vin in Bristol that time – possibly our first stay in that place. We stayed in Berringer and at that time they parked us at the hotel. Still a success though, as described.
I tended to get strange e-mails from Barmy Kev in those days, while I was editing Middlesex Till We Die (MTWD):
“Can’t get me poll up”…
…being one that caught my eye as I tried to do forensics on my strange diary scribbles and the even stranger MTWD match reporting for some of this match.
Then I found the Barmy e-mail I was actually looking for:
We seem to be just about OK with reporting for 5 days…
…I will attend 1st session Thurs morning. A strange irony, luckily I realised over weekend my passport has just expired. I have arranged emergency passport re-issued at Victoria Thurs morning which takes 4 hours. While waiting I’ll be at Lords. May ask some Leics players if I can help them out while I’m there.
It is very unlikely I’ll be attending another game this season.
The joke about Leicestershire players was born of the feeling at that time that a couple of counties were relying very heavily on the Kolpak ruling to import a great many players rather than grow their own. Frankly, at that time, Middlesex were not doing much better in the home grown v imports department, but at least had been sowing the seeds of a much improved youth system.
My diary suggests that I wasn’t at the ground on the Thursday but was there on the Friday… …I think I managed to rejig things a little and get to the ground for some of the day both of those days.
My main task at the tail end of that week was going through the Payroll Giving Awards; an event for which I was chairing the panel of judges at that time. Lord’s was an ideal venue for going through the thick file of applications and that match perfectly timed for the task. I just didn’t want match reporting duties as well.
Astute Ogblog followers might read between the lines and conclude that I perhaps did some work that day and/but was able to spend some of the day at home with the internet radio on…
We have Charles Bartlett to thank for the most wonderful relic from this trip: a superb stack of pictures – 80 of them – click here to see them all. I’ll pepper this piece with just a few.
30 July 2008
This was one of those rare occasions that the test started on a Wednesday and so we actually travelled up on the first day and watched days 2 and 3.
Thus we gathered for pre match cricket in David Steed’s local park in Stirchley.
Adam was not impressed with his batting performance
Never mind Adam’s body language above, that muck-about game on David’s local green went well for Adam and did not go at all well for me, as evidenced by this page of my jotter.
Nigel “Father Barry” (and son) did well, as did a local lad, Craig, who wandered along and asked if he could play with us.
Harish (Harsha Ghoble) also had a good go, although I do recall bowling him on one occasion with one of my moon balls which descended vertically onto the stumps. “How are you supposed to play a ball like that?”, complained Harish. Nigel then dispatched my next, similar ball for six. “Like that”, said Nigel.
I also recall lots of bites on my legs afterwards. Yet I was (uniquely amongst those in the following photo) wearing long trousers.
As darkness fell…
…then on to David and Anita’s place for a super barby:
Super barby at Steed Towers
31 July 2008
Chas and perhaps some of the others must have gone for a good walk the next morning, in the grounds around Harborne House…
Signs of some walking around Harborne House…
…while Harish and I, great athletes both, exerted ourselves with some morning sports activity:
For those looking in black and white, Ian’s the one dressed in red…
Some signs of mis-spent youth there; not least Ian’s ability to play a little better after a couple of bevvies.
Then the annual Heavy Roller shirt ceremony…
…for some reason Chas got a unique, pink one. As I’m the Middlesex supporter among us, “it should have been me”…
…then off we go to Edgbaston.
All action it was. Could this have been the year that someone started a row with Nigel 20 minutes before the start of play asking him to sit down?
We had the honour of witnessing “that” over from Flintoff to Kallis:
The crowd was just a little bit involved.
We’re all standing now (apart from Hippity and Monkey-Face)!
I think we went to Zizzis that night – correct me if I’m wrong, folks
1 August 2008
We did it all again! But Chas didn’t take pictures that day.
I made my own way home by train, as oft I do. Unusually, though, Nigel and Chas stayed on an extra day, having decided to brave the Eric Hollies Stand.
Aftermath – Chas and Nigel in the Eric Hollies
There are plenty of pictures in that photo album, but I’d really like one or both of the lads to write a short side piece describing their very different day “on the other side”…
…the dark side…
…with brigades of Amy Winehouses…
…and extra police protection. Had the fuzz been tipped off that Chas and Nige were coming?
Before looking at that piece, I couldn’t have told you that the Kent v Essex game was the first of the semi-finals, but on reflection of course it was.
Daisy and I had played tennis that morning and I hunkered down with the TV soon after our return from Boston Manor.
In those days my set up at Sandall Close was a bit rudimentary – Daisy’s dapper Sony VAIO with a plug in thingie to her NTL doodah – or was it already called Virgin by then? Anyway, it was trailing wires and a bit Heath Robinson-like.
The semi-final went Middlesex’s way in a fairly convincing fashion. Daisy and I found that hard to believe, but excitedly realised that we had a final on our hands.
I vaguely remember texting Ed Smith between the matches, which was not a very good idea. I have no recollection of what Daisy and I ate, nor when we ate it, but I’m pretty sure we ate.
What a day. It’s weird that such a day yields so few new insights, but I suppose the reactions/sensations at the time, encapsulated in the MTWD links above, really do tell the story.
Ed had been injured early in the T20 campaign – see my Ogblog about the day it happened here. As it turned out, the injury was a career ending injury, but at the time Ed was simply at a loose end around Lord’s hoping to recover quickly.
As I understand it, Richard Goatley suggested that Ed have a chat with me about stuff, possibly in part to clear the office at a crazy time (SGM day), possibly in part because he thought that Ed and I might not only find stuff to talk about, but even be able to tolerate each other while doing so.
First I knew of it was an SMS, which seemed to come from Ed Smith, suggesting we meet for a chat. At first I thought it was a joke/hoax (I was editing MTWD back then) but anyway it wasn’t a hoax. I did wonder whether Ed knew that I was MTWD’s Ged, but we never discussed the matter and (strangely) I have never asked Richard Goatley whether Ed was told/knew. I might ask Richard one day.
In any case, that Tuesday I was reporting for MTWD, but there was so much else going on I was able to fill my report with stuff and not feel that I was giving the readers short change by omitting the Ed Smith bits.
I recall a conversation about Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Ed had been asked to write a review of and/or comment upon The Black Swan. Ed said he was finding it impenetrable and asked if I had read it. I told him I had read it and recommended, as a way in to Taleb, Fooled By Randomness and the essay The Fourth Quadrant; the latter (in my opinion) being much shorter and much more to the point than The Black Swan.
A few months later, Ed wrote a piece (I think for The Times) about Lord’s being the only place on earth where you can strike up a random conversation about Nassim Nicholas Taleb and end up chatting with someone who knows as much, if not more, about Taleb than you do!
Thursday
Originally there would have been no hope of getting to any more of the Worcestershire match, but in the event both of my Thursday business meetings were moved; in the case of the Z/Yen Board meeting brought forward to the Wednesday.
That enabled me to pick up a copy of Fooled By Randomness (we had a few) and take it to Lord’s with me for Ed on the Thursday. So as it turned out, I got to see two days of that match and spend a bit more time chatting with Ed Smith.
The only problem with that was the cricket, which was mostly seeing Middlesex getting beaten up by relatively lowly Worcestershire.
I remember that I did watch the denouement of the Worcestershire match with Ed and I remember that we discussed whether the player’s minds were on topic or whether thoughts of Finals Day at the Rose Bowl were more to the fore. We also wondered whether the extra day’s rest would help Middlesex ahead of Saturday’s massive event. As I recall it, our combined wisdom concluded that we didn’t have a clue.
