Ever true to his word, David Steed indeed booked a minibus for our transport that year, in the light of our increased size of group. Here is the picture, presumably taken by Anita, of us all dressed up and ready to go first thing on that first morning, at Wadderton:
Of course there would have been many bants about drinks muling, as had been the case in previous years, but I think the consensus by 2004 was that most muling was likely to get caught. Thus only the expert did the muling – a wine box (outer removed of course) disguised as a cool bag bottom.
I suspect this trick doesn’t work any more, but here are photos of the operation in process:
David will have been describing the picnic contents in a quickfire patter styleeGang-master Jeff looks smug and satisfied
Jeff took on the role of mastermind rather than implementer in the matter of the prediction game too. I remember getting a call from him early in the morning of 28th, while I was getting ready to leave the flat.
JEFF: Ian, it’s Jeff here. I’ve screwed up. I cannot lay my hands on a prediction game template and need to go out now. I know you did one for Trent Bridge – any chance you could print it out for Edgbaston this year? It’ll be the devil’s job to try and get it done at Wadderton.
ME: I’m rushing to set off this morning too…but leave it with me…
…which Jeff did…for the rest of all time.
By 9:02 on 28 July (according to the meta-data), I had produced this masterpiece, which became the base template for all subsequent Edgbaston trips. Please note the correct spelling of Edgbaston & everything:
Not entirely suited to the nine player version of the game, but still
The next picture was taken just over an hour into the match. Note that our regular seats in the Priory Stand had a splendid view of the notorious Eric Hollies Stand while being a very safe distance from it. Even the 12th man seemed to be eyeing the Hollies with suspicion, while Bananarama Monkey-Face tried to sneak into any photo he possibly could photo bomb.
At lunch we peruaded a friendly steward, quite possibly Paul Guppy, to take a group photo of us:
Later in the lunch hour, Chas must have gone for one of his traditional lunchtime strolls, observing some cultural appropriation of Caribbean music:
My memory and the official record is silent on the delights that David served up to us for dinner on the Thursday evening. We won’t have been all that hungry because a David Steed Wadderton picnic left little room for dinner. It will have been very tasty, whatever it was. Everyone will have been in excellent spirits – England was doing extremely well.
Harish looks very happy indeedI think the player kindly giving Chas the thumbs up is Jermaine Lawson
At lunchtime Chas must have wandered over to the book signing, but whether he commissioned a private message about London buses and pigeons from Blowers, or simply took a photo of him plying his trade in audiobooks, I suspect is lost in the mists of time.
Following the coup with Nigel and Jeff the previous year, getting into the pavilion for a session or so (click here or below)…
…Chas couldn’t resist trying the same wheeze again – seemingly with some success.
Matthew Hoggard going in to batAndrew Flintoff returning with a daddy-hundred to his name
If you look very closely at the above photo, you can see, in the distance, the number ten batsman striding towards the crease. That is a young James Anderson and this was our first (but far from our last) sighting of him as Heavy Rollers.
We had a wonderful time in 2004, as always, but I do recall a sense that 2004 was an especially good one. I don’t think any of us realised at the time that we were at the dawn of a golden era for England as a cricket team and The Heavy Rollers as a motley band of visiting enthusiasts.
If you want to see all the pictures, including scans of the prediction game results sheets (surely everyone will want to know, as much as anything else, how I cunningly accounted for nine players on an eight-column template), you can see it all in the Flickr album linked here and below:
I’m not sure why The Heavy Rollers became, for a few years, a significantly bigger and bolder event. Part of a natural life cycle for such things, perhaps. Possibly something to do with the England cricket team’s partial revival, prompting a bit more realistic optimism (rather than the “hope against hope” optimism of the 1990s and early years of the new century) in England’s potential performances.
Or possibly it was due to our spiritual leader, Nigel, adopting a policy of suggesting that our journey would soon reach an end.
Here’s the 19 November 2003 note from Nigel to us Rollers:
Subject: Heavy Rollers 2004-the penultimate tour
Dear Heavy Rollers , Associate and Junior members
Despite phone bookings not being available until January (Warwicks. CCC staff are so bribable) have just heard that our allocation sorted, usual places, although on Friday 2 of the group (now 9- what an evening game that should be) will be directly behind (Just in case this all sounds too far off and you are thinking I am a sad git for even considering booking it when Rugby is the game, they told me that the row we occupy is now sold out for the second day!). I am a sad git but that’s another matter.
Tickets are 30.25 x 2 each = £60.50 (I got stung for a second booking fee as I added more on!).
Payable between now and end of the year to avoid serious surcharges applying.
The nine for that year were, as depicted in the headline picture (left to right seated, then left to right standing):
In 2004, the core group seemed to solidify. Most who had attended previously in earnest wanted to attend.
David Steed sprang into action immediately, sealing the deal on the Wadderton element of our trip within a couple of days of Nigel’s missive. David’s reply on 23 November 02003:
Dear Heavy Rollers (all grades),
Suitable accommodation now reserved for the Wednesday and Thursday. I wonder if we can persuade her indoors (scuse me it’s her that’s doing this typing!!!) to repeat the lasagne?
We have actually found a REAL Heavy Roller deep in the undergrowth at the back of Wadderton, so if I slip Peter a couple of cans of Banks Original we may even attempt to roll out a strip!
Nigel – cheque in the post in couple of days – and thanks for being a sad git!
Sadly, our 2004 exploits proved to be a final hurrah for Wadderton, as far as the Heavy Rollers were concerned – Wadderton was gone by the summer of 2005. Mercifully, those 2004 exploits were wonderfully memorable, not least thanks to Charles Bartlett’s trusty Canon PowerShot camera.
Wadderton looking splendid, 28 July 2004
No sign of Peter having cut a strip by the time we got there in July 2004, quite possibly because the bribe of Banks’s Original didn’t make it from the Steed quarters into Peter’s hands. [I must admit that Banks’s Mild was always my personal Banks’s beer of choice, but I was not even faintly likely to cut a strip. I digress].
Observant readers will note, from the headline picture, that the Heavy Rollers were all wearing a Heavy Rollers Edgbaston 2004 shirt. This was the first of several years for which shirts were commissioned. Jeff and Chas were the brains behind the idea.
I vaguely heard a story about consternation over the production of this first shirt. Something to do with Chas taking the lead, a deal done down Romford market and Jeff’s dissatisfaction with the combination of quality and price. The upshot was that subsequent shirts were produced elsewhere under Jeff’s auspices. I cannot comment on that debate but I can, nearly 20 years later, still model the very shirt:
Thanks to Janie for this picture 19 March 2023
Frankly, in my case, nearly 20 years later, the shirt appears to be maintaining its look better than the wearer.
Downhill From Here: The Night Before The Test, 28 July 2004
Frankly I’m not sure a cut strip would have much enhanced our game the night before, but I am sure that the nine of us had a splendid early evening game.
I suspect that all who were present remember one particular detail of this game of yard cricket…probably to the exclusion of all other details. Certainly in my case, the one pivotal moment of the evening – one ball – has extinguished all and any other memories of the game.
I cannot remember who bowled it (it might even have been me), nor can I remember who struck the ball (certainly not me given the quality of the strike – probably Nigel or Biff), but I do remember who sought to field the ball. Charley.
The ball hurtled off in the direction of the lower slopes below the garden which was, in effect, our pitch. Coincidentally, Charley, who is a photographer extraordinaire as well as a fielder extraordinaire, had photographed those lower slopes earlier that afternoon:
The lower slopes of Wadderton
I don’t think Chas leapt over the fence, I think there was a strategic gap through which the ball, then Chas following the ball, went.
It took everyone (including Chas) a few seconds to realise that running as fast as you can down a hill to try to stop a ball has certain consequences in the matter of how the momentum of that run comes to an end. For an excruciating few moments it became obvious to everyone, probably including Chas, that his run would have to end with either an inadvisable dive or an involuntary tumble.
We could debate at great length the exact nature of the concluding moment. Suffice it to say that it looked extremely comical and yet at the same time, in the moment, I suspect we were all genuinely concerned for Chas.
I have asked Dall-E to help me depict this moment, both in cartoon form and in photograph form, by explaining the matter in words to the AI tool. Here are the results:
Chas Downhill in Cartoon FormChas Downhill in Photo Form
Once it became clear that Chas’s moans were the result mostly of bruised ego rather than serious physical harm, the incident became a matter of much mirth, for the rest of that evening…and the rest of that Heavy Rollers 2004 event…indeed for the rest of all time amongst those who witnessed it.
Other reports on the incident or other aspects of that evening’s game will be gratefully received.
I have no idea whether the evening meal was indeed centred around the ever-popular lasagne, but I strongly suspect that it was.
A memorably convivial evening at Wadderton
We sat around after dinner for quite some time that year, reminiscing about Heavy Rollers events past, the earlier events of the evening and of course looking ahead with eager anticipation to two days of test cricket between England and West Indies.
Chas looks revived – no doubt describing his “dive” in Jonty Rhodes/Paul Collingwood terms
I shall write up the Edgbaston element of the 2004 Heavy Rollers event separately.
Charles Bartlett’s wonderful pictures of the events described in this piece and of the 2004 Edgbaston trip can be found in the Flickr album linked here and below:
Postscript: Indeed We Did Eat Lasagne
I have just discovered one more e-mail – this one from Anita to Nigel the weekend before the event. Proof positive that we had lasagne and also that we already knew that this stay would be Wadderton’s last hurrah, Heavy Roller-wise:
Subject: Re: Nearly time……
Hi Nigel,
David’s working this evening but I thought I’d reply anyway and if he wants to get back to you tomorrow then I am sure he will.
He and Dan are really looking forward to next Thursday and Friday. David is off work Wednesday too to prepare!!
I think everything is fine about people staying here but you will need to bring sheets or sleeping bags, pillow slips and towels, as the laundry contract has finished and I don’t think I have enough!
I have been commissioned to make another lasagne for one of the evenings and I think David has plans for food for the other one. He said he would book a minibus for Thursday but, if there are fewer of you needing to come back here after the cricket on Friday I can be chauffeur!
The Children’s Society XI in 2004 – Photos by Charles Bartlett
It is hugely helpful to have a stack of photos from Charles from the 2004 match – I’ll pepper this account with some of those and provide a link to the “album” at the end for those who would like to look at all of them.
…so keen scouting and selection was going to be key for this third match – such a huge task, the event didn’t take place until a couple of years after the second match.
Chas’s selection missive was sent on 12 July 2004:
This looks to be the final lucky 13. – What I must stress is that if you are committed to coming and let people down by not turning up you will deny others the opportunity to play.
Howard Bartley (friend of mine – club cricketer) Ian Harris (Z/yen) Charles Bartlett Nick Bartlett Mat (aussie wicket keeper – club standard known to Ian Harris)- Nigel Hinks Dorian (friend of Jeff Tye – club standard) Harish (runemout) Gohil Kyle Bullock Lyall Orange Doug Turvey Richard Britain Kelly plus brother
There followed some correspondence between me and Chas about possible drop-outs and fall-back positions, details of which should probably remain between me, Chas and the data protection legislation prevailing then and now.
Here’s a taster of it:
ME: You’re the skipper, but I’d have Xander in the squad as well – I have visions of 13 becoming 9 or 10 as the day approaches, but perhaps you feel you have sufficient assurances and a fit enough squad (and the squad members have fit enough wives, children, father-in-laws etc.) to prove me wrong…
CHAS: To have the best possible team (no half measures) would mean leaving out the lesser players (and there are a few!) probably you and me for a start. I do not want to be a non-playing captain and you are a mate who is always in the side, because I pick you, need I go on…who said , Captain and Chief Selector was easy? let alone having a Mrs Duncan Fletcher at home who put Nick back in the team.
We can only assume that Mrs Duncan Fletcher was none other than Dot “Mrs Malloy” Bartlett.
In the end Nick didn’t play – I have a feeling he dropped himself. Nigel also didn’t play; I think he struggled to get to North Crawley that weekend or perhaps injury. Jeff Tye was never listed to play – I think he might have dropped himself by then or possibly was temporarily “offf games”.
Anyway, this was a reasonably good team with some proper talent in it – not least Mat “The Tasmanian Devil” Watson (my mate from the health club) and Chas’s former work mate Howard.
Children’s Society Supporters 2004, North Crawley. Back row l-r: The Boy Malloy, Mrs Malloy, Daisy. Front row l-r: Bananarama Monkey-Face, Hippity The Green Bunny.
Most of the day it was glorious weather for playing and watching.
I think Tufty put on about 240 off 45 overs. During tea we felt this was challenging but gettable with the team we had brought with us that year. The Britten Kelly brothers, for example, could both hold a bat, to supplement the club standard folk we had with us that day and the “bits and pieces” regulars like me.
I think Chas opened that year to take some of the shine off the ball – I think with me – but certainly the meaningful batting line up comprised Mat at four and Howard at five and some decent allrounders scheduled to follow.
One year in the sunshine I recall opening and having Glenn Young in my ear from behind the stumps trying to put me off by chirping about the nice cool beer that was waiting for me in the clubhouse as soon as I got out. It was hard to keep a straight face let alone a straight bat with that going on. That particular chirp-fest might have been a different year of course. Or every year for someone or other.
Waiting to bat – the Britten Kelly brothers with the scorebook, Mat behind them.Chas dismissedHoward waiting to bat
Mat and Howard came together when we were three down for not too many but they then put on a good stand of 50 or so.
I’m calling it a good stand, but in truth the vibe we were all getting was that the pair of them couldn’t stand one another. They had an altercation while we were fielding, as Howard refused to move to a position Chas had chosen for him, which Mat, chirping away as keeper, felt was utterly unacceptable insubordination.
In short, the two of them batted extremely well “against one another” rather than as a pair – each trying to show that they were the more complete cricketer.
Anyway, it was all working swimmingly well until a huge cloud appeared and decided to rain heavily on North Crawley. I think we were something like 80 for 3 off 20 at that juncture, which Messrs Duckworth and Lewis might well have concluded had The Children’s Society marginally in front, but these matches are not so determined so the match was abandoned as a rain-affected draw.
I do think the ending might have been properly close. The following year, Chas’s insightful team selection led to the most exciting match I have ever played in, which just proves that Chas knew a thing or two…or perhaps that he got lucky a few times:
The tea and the post match conviviality in one or other of the village pubs would have been similar to that experienced in the first match – click here or below for those details:
…there are some strange pictures at the end of that stack. Charles Bartlett in the company of several of the Tufty Stackpole people. Undeniably at Lord’s – in the Edrich Stand to be precise. Undeniably at the first test match of that 2004 West Indies tour – a mere few days after the battle described above – merely a week before that season’s Heavy Rollers event at Edgbaston.
Trevor Cooper & Mike ArcherGeoff YoungMike Archer scoffs a nugget with Charles Bartlett alongside
Charles has a little bit of explaining to do about this. Has he been batting for both sides all these years?
By 2004, the Z/Yen v The Children’s Society cricket match had become a well-established fixture in the social calendar.
In the few years preceding this 2004 match, we had settled on Regents Park as the venue of choice, but Regents Park was unavailable that year, so we thought we’d try Holland Park’s non-turf pitch for a convenient change.
Two extraordinary things happened on this day in 2004. The handful of relics remaining of the event leave only tiny clues about those things, but in this Ogblog I shall deploy my forensic skills and reveal those memorable happenings.
The annual Z/Yen versus The Children’s Society cricket match was held in Holland Park around the longest day, 22 June. And it must have seemed like a long evening to the largest ever crowd of friends and spectators, huddling under the trees in the cool drizzle. Perhaps it was the bottles and pin of superb beer sponsored by Youngs brewery (via George, Giles Wright’s brother) that kept the crowd motivated and audible throughout.
Z/Yen batted first and accumulated 91 for 4. More or less everyone got a bat with several players, even Ian Harris, retiring not out. Restricting things to 15 overs per side saved the game from the impending rain, as well as the use of some handy Astroturf. Z/Yen bowled well – John Davies (Helen’s husband) getting man-of-the-match for his efforts – restricting The Children’s Society to 73 for 6, despite some late heroics by Harish Gohil and Richard Britain-Kelly. So for only the second time ever, Z/Yen has regained the Rashes (risk/reward ashes) trophy.
In a desperate attempt to rebuild the devastated relations with this important client, Ian Harris helped The Children’s Society to win (for the first time ever) its annual Tufty Stackpole match a few weeks later. Ian’s help was mostly vicarious of course (p-lease), lending The Children’s Society Z/Yen’s star ringer Mat for the 45 overs-a-side Sunday marathon.
Yes, the original write up records one of the key features of these quintessentially beer-match-style cricket matches. Giles Wright’s brother George being an essential ringer for our Z/Yen team, not least because he was the head of marketing at Youngs Brewery and would insist on donating lashings of beer for the event. No wonder we started to draw sizeable crowds during that era.
I also have the scorebook for this match:
Play Of The Day
The casual reader glancing at the above relics would not settle upon the name James Pitcher and imagine that the play of the day might have anything to do with him. Did not bat. Did not bowl.
James was a reluctant member of the team. That’s not to say that he was an unwilling participant in events, far from it. But James was convinced that everyone else in the team deserved their place in cricketing terms more than he did. So when time was running out and I offered him my place in the batting line up, James deferred. He also stated firmly that he could not and should not bowl.
Importantly, James also implied that he couldn’t really field that well either, but he could run, so we agreed that the outfield would be best for him.
When my friend/nemesis Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett came out to join Eugene Kinghorn at the crease, the match was still well poised, but the Children’s Society knew they needed to get on with it; they were falling behind the required run rate.
Charles drove his first scoring shot (it might even have been his very first ball, you know) extremely well, straight down to long on, quite near to the location where James was peacefully grazing in the long grass.
Eugene, gazelle-like compared with most of us, set off at Charles’s call of two and I’m pretty sure again yelled “yes, one more” on the turn, as he would be running to the danger (non-striker’s) end.
But James didn’t throw to the non-striker’s end. Why would he? How could he? James, the non-cricketer, simply ran as fast as he could, picked up the ball and hurled it (he’s not named Pitcher for nothing) vaguely in the direction of the action.
Had James thrown to the non-striker’s end, Eugene would have been home easily even if James had hit those stumps directly.
Instead, James’s throw somehow managed to hurtle an additional 22 yards past the non-striker’s stumps and directly hit the stumps at the striker’s end, with Charley still running a few yards short of the line. Run out.
It was an incredibly long throw for a direct hit. As James has subsequently agreed, we could set him that throw as a deliberate exercise and he might hit the stumps one time in a couple of hundred attempts.
I am reliably informed that Chas still has nightmares about this dismissal.
Pitcher by name… (this photo from the 2007 match)
Match Of The Day
But even that incredible dismissal was not the most extraordinary thing to occur that evening. In fact, both the score book and contemporaneous match reports are silent on the momentous occurrence.
I mentioned earlier Eugene Kinghorn as Charley’s batting partner during the unfortunate run out incident…the run out described above in some detail…the one that Charley still has nightmares about…
…anyway, Eugene formed another partnership that evening…
…with Fran Birch, one of the Z/Yen players.
By the time we all returned to “the scene of the crime” – three years later we again needed to decamp to Holland Park, those two had got married, Eugene was no longer working for The Children’s Society and he thus ended up playing for Z/Yen.
These are the lengths some Z/Yen folk are prepared to go to in order to strengthen the Z/Yen cricket team.
Joking apart, I really do believe that Eugene and Fran’s initial meeting at one of our silly cricket matches is one of the very most wonderful things to have come out of all of those events.
Linda gives Fran and Eugene the “match of the match” award, Holland Park, 2007
As luck (and a little bit of tactical captaincy on my part) would have it, Eugene and Fran even ended up partnering each other at the crease to knock off the winning runs in the 2007 game. Funny old game, cricket.
Photographs by Charles Bartlett. Above: Nigel & Jeff With Paul Adams
We shall return later to the above image of Nigel and Jeff smugly mingling with the South African players in the pavilion just before tea on Day One of the 2003 Edgbaston test.
Let us start this write up of the 2003 Heavy Rollers event from the beginning.
Big Match Build Up: October 2002 To May 2003
A lengthy e-mail from Nigel on 10 October 2002 set the ball rolling for this one. The key text:
The Edgbaston Test is scheduled for 24-28 July, 2003 vs. South Africa (where it all began!).Tickets go on sale in early January. Get it into the diary before holidays, personal injury, life changes and other meek excuses hamper another traditional gathering in the interests of the wonderful game.
By that time, Nigel was no longer with The Children’s Society and had not been able to attend the previous year, as documented at length in the 2002 Heavy Roller’s piece. I was not sure that the tradition would continue and was very pleased to receive that e-mail.
Then, on 3 December, came confirmation via a similarly lengthy epistle from Nigel:
Your ticket secretary has reported back with news that tickets have been acquired for England v South Africa, Thursday and Friday 24/25 July 2003 (Row A Block 03 Seats 4-10). These will be held in safe keeping until a personal transfer can be effected but cheques for 2 x £30.00 per person would be appreciated in due course…
…The secretary is happy to bear all additional costs associated with daily calls to the very nice women in the box office, reports of postal applications going missing, resubmissions, original application surfacing, consequent near purchase of too many tickets etc. etc……what stress.
Possibly it was Nigel’s use of the word “hamper” in his first e-mail about this, but the rest of us were motivated by that second e-mail to club together and send Nigel & Viv a hamper of grub for Christmas, not only to thank him for his 2003 efforts but also the 2002 efforts which, from his personal point of view, resulted in no cricket at all.
I commissioned Dall-E to help me illustrate the gift:
Not bad, but the liquid bottles within were French and grape-based, not water
On 31 December, Nigel sent what might well be his most pretentious e-mail ever:
Monsieurs ‘Heavy Rollers’
C’est avec plaisir que je mange le grand cadeau et je bois le vin et le champagne.
Merci de votre generosite mes amis!
Amities,
Nigel (et femme)
Next, in mid-May, a disappointing development, passed on to the rest of us through Nigel:
Dear Heavy Roller
It is with deep regret that I have to inform you that one of the senior membership has been forced to put an exotic holidaying experience with spouse before this great, and possibly final, annual occasion. Just when English cricket begins its renaissance after the disappointments of the winter (and summer). David reassures us that, despite this dubious decision (yes it is he), the bookings remain solid for accommodation and limited overs warm up…
David himself chimed in a few days later, not least with the following statement.
…Not sure if Dan is up to the cooked breakfast but therein lies a challenge!!!…
These messages remind me of two Wadderton traditions that I have not previously discussed: games of garden cricket on the Wadderton lawns and the traditional cooked breakfast at Wadderton before setting off for the ground.
The Night Before The Big Match: 23 July 2003
Wadderton in 2004: more slope than Lord’s, more than a tinge of green on the track
I’m pretty sure that the garden cricket prior to 2003 had been a fairly low key affair – perhaps it started in 2001 with a gentle knockabout. In 2002 it was replaced by “yard cricket in the rain at Trent Bridge”, which was quite different.
My memory of the night before cricket in 2003 is quite strong and I recall quite a good game. David’s replacement (at one time his son Ben was mooted) turned out to be “Dan’s Mate” Robbie, who was good company, a keen scout and a very useful addition to the garden cricket. Here is the cast list for 2003:
Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett;
Nigel “Father Barry” Hinks;
“Big Papa Zambezi” Jeff Tye;
Nick “The Boy Malloy” Bartlett;
Me “Ged Ladd” (accompanied by Hippity The Green Bunny, Henry The Duck and Bananarama Monkey-Face);
Dan“Dan Peel” Steed;
“Dan’s Mate” Robbie.
This group made for some good garden cricket.
Towards the end of the game, we were joined by a woman named Jill Rose, whose company was supplying computers to The Children’s Society and who for some reason wanted to meet with Charles that afternoon/evening. I think it might have been as simple as the fact that she was nearby.
She was a larger than life character, I remember. I also recall her hoving into view from the main house, much later than she had intended to visit, while our game was in full sway. Mercifully, Jill did not tumble down that slope, nor did any of us tumble down the even steeper slope, which is out of view in the above photo. You’ll have to await the 2004 report for that story. Indeed, an abridged match report for the 2003 Wadderton Garden Games can be found in Nigel’s Epistle To The Rollers, at the end of this piece.
Jill watched us playing for a while and then, when we stopped playing for rain and Charles invited her to join us for the Chinese takeaway we had agreed we would get from the Barnt Green Chinese in David’s absence…
…was that place already named Happy Valley back then? Anyway it wasn’t bad…
…Jill insisted on getting the takeaway and refused to accept any money from us.
I vaguely remember Charles Bartlett describing “going to hell and back” form filling back at TCS HQ, at Charles Nall’s behest, to declare fully the circumstances behind this receipt of supplier hospitality. Whether that form-filling trumped the form filling required to get Day Two refunds on Edgbaston tickets, I cannot say, but I did end up doing the latter.
England v South Africa Day One: 24 July 2003
Did Dan provide a cooked breakfast in the style of his inimitable Dad? I have a feeling that he did and it would have been jolly tasty.
But it was Jeff, not Dan, who provided the central picnic for Day One of play. This included a fair amount of booze which Jeff was determined we should all smuggle in to the ground. Booze-smuggling into grounds does not come naturally to me. We had some interesting debates about “who should do what”, which I think resulted in me avoiding booze-mule duties, much to Jeff’s chagrin. My argument was that I would look guilty as hell if trying to hide something, would be likely to crumble when confronted by an authority figure and therefore was, in every way, the Roller least emotionally suited to muling and most likely to get caught.
…which is a far more risky and serious form of smuggling than a bit of booze muling at Edgbaston. (Are you technically people smuggling when you smuggle yourselves across a border)? I digress.
In the end we all got in with our share of the stuff; legitimate and contraband alike.
Below is the view from the front row of the Priory Stand as it was then. This photo is the very first Heavy Roller’s photograph taken on a digital camera by Charles Bartlett. It makes Edgbaston, not least the Eric Hollies Stand beyond, look magnificent, which it truly is.
The Tye picnic
I note from the above photo evidence of the smuggled but (at lunchtime) barely concealed wine (see plastic cup on far right).
Kids playing Kwik Cricket – lunchtime entertainment. In the background the famous old Edgbaston pavilion, demolished and replaced 2010/2011, in all its (lack of) splendourTwenty20 cricket was born a few weeks before this test match. This proto-mascot Warwickshire Bear, in cricket whites, with moll, looks more growly than subsequent mascot bears.
I’m hoping that Nigel can tell the story of how a few of the senior Heavy Rollers blagged their way into the pavilion between lunch and tea that day. Nigel mentions Clive in his epistle and I do recall there was a senior administrator by that name who was associated with our group’s peculiar ability to get the seats it wanted in all circumstances without us having been on a 30 year waiting list or anything like that.
My memory of the pavilion event is very limited, but I do remember a call coming through to the rest of us with the news. I remember declining the invitation. I think there were only one or two more spaces and I was less keen than others. In any case, I had little-‘uns with me and would not have wanted to leave them unattended.
Nigel and Jeff look chuffedPaul “Frog-In-A-Blender” Adams, right, Thami Tsolekile (I think), leftHerschelle Gibbs followed by Graeme Smith returning undefeated for teaJeff Tye applauding in our so-far totally unrewarded England stalwarts at tea
Not much more than five minutes after the players went in for tea, Charles and the others were back in the Priory Stand with the rest of us when this incident happened.
Perennial joker of a supervisor steward, Paul Guppy (subsequently reported on in the Birmingham Mail honoured for his soccer stewarding) accosts me with some invented regulation prohibiting my little ‘uns from sitting in their favourite Priory Stand “seats” Photographic evidence of Paul Guppy arresting Hippity while putting him into a dangerous stranglehold. Meanwhile I seek to rescue Bananarama Monkey-Face and another steward callously looks on
Moments after the above two pictures were taken, Paul Guppy was no longer able to keep a straight face and the ruse was undone. I think it was Jeff Tye who put Paul Guppy up to this, presumably while they were doing the pavilion thing. I guessed that it was pay back time for refusing to mule the booze. But it might have been Nigel and/or Charles who put Paul Guppy up to it. I do think, now that 20 or so years have passed, it should be confession time. Actually the incident was very funny, not least because Paul Guppy was a uniquely unsuited character to the role of officious senior steward concocting a ludicrous rule on the fly.
I am pretty sure that Jeff Tye organised the prediction game in 2003, as I have no record, either electronic or paper, of the game. From 2004 onwards the mantle had passed to me for the rest of all time.
I don’t recall what we did that evening – I don’t think we went out – I suspect that the Wadderton breakfast and Jeff’s picnic catering, into which we all naturally chipped in to cover the costs, had included enough food to tide us over between Days One & Two.
The Day Two That Didn’t Exactly Happen, 25 July 2003
…at least we had enjoyed some fine garden cricket and a glorious day at Edgbaston in 2003. In any case, if you were going to hang around waiting for nothing to happen, you’d sooner hang around at Wadderton than at Harborne Hall- especially the 2012 quasi-commercial manifestation of Harborne Hall with its novel “price per slice of breakfast toast” mentality.
Charles took some photos of us on that rainy day at Wadderton, around 10:15 that morning. It looks dark. It was dark.
Nigel looking resigned: “no chance”Jeff emphatic: “you might as well go to New Street now, Ian”The eternal optimist: “let’s wait and see”Dan, sanguine: “heck, I’m at home anyway”.
As the rain persevered throughout the morning, one by one the Heavy Rollers succumbed to the inevitable and decided to leave. I think Jeff might have bailed out first. Then Nigel. Then Charles & Nick.
I maintained a level of optimism based on a detailed reading of the rainfall radar which told me that, as long as the wind speed and direction didn’t change, that better weather would start sweeping in to the West Midlands around 15:00.
Each departing Heavy Roller assured me that I was waiting in vain, while depositing their tickets with me, the designated mourner, which meant that I would be responsible for getting the refunds if play was indeed abandoned.
Anyway, I enjoyed sitting around chatting with Dan, who possibly shared my optimism, but in any case was off work for the day and at home. When the sun came out, we were both buoyed and feeling a sense of “told you so”…we even started planning our journey to the ground…until the announcement came on the Tv broadcast just a few minutes later that play had been abandoned for the day. There was not enough time to mop up after the relentless rain and get started before the cut off time.
Dan very kindly drove me in to Birmingham New Street, in glorious sunshine, to catch a convenient train back to London.
I remember sitting with a nice cricket-lover on that journey home whose one day of test match cricket a year had just been washed out. I realised how lucky I was. Not only had I already seen a day of this test match but I was by then already a life member of Middlesex and seeing/due to see plenty of cricket that season.
I wrote the following missive to “the lads” at soon after 7:00 that evening:
OK, OK, You called it right
Folks
Daniel and I had the surreal experience of watching the televised inspection c3.15 with glorious sunshine at Wadderton (we were planning to set off for the ground), only to learn that play was abandoned for the day!
We were so disgusted that we tore up our tickets and yours – so sorry guys – no refund. Oh all right, I have your tickets and will sort out the refunds and will reimburse you if/when the dosh turns up.
Still enjoyed the cricket we did see and the splendid company for two days. Here’s to the next time.
Ian
Nigel responded later that evening, with sufficient detail to allow the observant reader to realise that I don’t really remember all of the above stuff – but I do save e-mails and possibly even re-read bits of them:
These weather forecaster were just wishful thinkers.
Us hardened ex-players and watchers knew from experience of endless pavilion waiting that it was going to be a long shot.
However, respect to you both for sticking with it. As I was driving S-Westerly (in relentless driving rain) I heard that the South Africans had left the ground, doubtless following Steve Rouse’s words of wisdom that it was going to take at least 2 hours once the rain stopped for any play to begin. Pat Murphy said he was “not optimistic” (Interesting that the Brumbrella is no longer due to it damaging the outfield and regularly breaking down!).
Perhaps the refunds can go towards the 2004 event? How can we ever relinquish this little bit of magic?
Thanks to Jeff for the food…brilliant and glad we have a photo (c/o Charles) for David to witness. Thanks to Dan for extending the Wadderton/Steed hospitality.
The ‘yard cricket’ was an even affair with contributions from all (Robbie and Dan can play, Ian was turning it flatulently, but who can forget Nick’s runout and Charles’ 2×4’s to win the second match?? Only eclipsed by Jeff’s dismissal as the rain started).
Thanks due also to Clive (the tip at the 20-20 was worth its weight).
I have already started to bore people with tales of being, “that close” to frog-in-a-blender”. I v. nearly got into the changing rooms.
Hard to believe it is over for 12 months after waiting for it for so long.
Hope paths might cross between now and summer 2004 but there are a few memories to conjure it up during the dark winter nights?
(Ian’s muling antics will never be mentioned again, like yeah…) As T.S Eliot (might have) said “you never know the true lengths of your achievements in life until you try to take in drink to Edgbaston”.
Until the next time, your obedient, and ‘still lively off a short run in small doses’, Admissions Secretary, signing off for 2003.
Nigel xxxxx
Indeed, “that close to “frog-in-a-blender”
Finally, although I have used most of them, here is a link to all of Charles Bartlett’s pictures from that event:
Steeped in controversy, the 2002 visit to Trent Bridge. For reasons unbeknown to me, the idea of visiting Edgbaston in May for the early season test match there was rejected by the elders of The Heavy Rollers, in favour of this excursion.
The following e-mail from Nigel, dated 7 November 2001, sort-of explains.
Dear Jeff, Ian, David, Charles and Nick,
We agreed, I think, unanimously that we won’t resume our traditional places at Edgbaston this coming year given that it is taking place in May. However some mutterings abound for us to up sticks and try Trent Bridge. This would be for 8th and 9th August, in Nottingham, against India (2nd Test) and it would mean adding in some accommodation costs if we do the 2 days.
So, before I do anything, could you let me know if you are interested.
In the end, neither Jeff – who pulled out of this idea quite early, I think – nor Nigel – who ended up withdrawing at the last minute due to Viv’s sudden and unfortunate indisposition – attended that year.
Indeed, on subsequent occasions, there were even suggestions (mostly emanating from Jeff, I suspect) that 2002 should be scrubbed from the record of Heavy Rollers events, by dint of it not being at Edgbaston and neither featuring Jeff nor Nigel.
Unfortunately, there is nothing in the sacred texts of The Heavy Rollers to provide a categorical answer to this question. Something akin to Exodus 20, with its tablets of stone and explicit commandments, might provide unequivocal guidance. But Nigel’s revelation that led to the Heavy Rollers is less tangible than that:
My judgment on this point is clear. Nigel had organised the 2002 event and would have been there but for mishap. Ipso facto it was a Heavy Rollers occasion. Anyway, history is written and shaped by the victors; I am writing the history of The Heavy Rollers and I have deemed this most certainly to have been a Heavy Rollers event.
Importantly, 2002 was the first visit for several people who had, or have, a regular spot in The Heavy Rollers story – in particular Dan Steed and Harish Gohil.
Dan – at home with The Heavy Rollers in 2003Harish in 2004 – by then a regular Roller
There was also an early example of a “one hit wonder” guest appearance that year. Here is the cast list from 2002:
Harish “Harsha Goble” Gohil (a 2002 initiate);
Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett;
Nick “The Boy Malloy” Bartlett;
“Nick’s Mate” Matt (a one-hit wonder, Heavy Rollers-wise);
Me “Ged Ladd”
David “David Peel” Steed (second day only);
Dan “Dan Peel” Steed (a 2002 initiate – second day only).
We stayed in a hotel described in my records as Nottingham Premier Lodge. No Premier Inns go by that name now and there are several in Nottingham – it might have gone or it might have been this one…or at least one that looked like this – click here. It was functional, most certainly adequate, inexpensive, and also, it has to be said, rather soulless, as such places tend to be.
I seem to recall those of us who were staying at the hotel ahead of Day One (all but The Steeds) purchasing a picnic of sandwiches, drinks and snacks on the morning of the match on the way to the ground. Not yet the post-Steed fierce debates, about Doritos and the like, that latterly echoed through the hollow chamber of Harborne Waitrose on the morning of the match. Nor the beautifully crafted and curated picnics provided by Mrs Malloy to ease the pressure on the pre match Day One proceedings. For Day Two, I am pretty sure The Steeds brought with them a fine picnic for us all; that tended to be the Steed way.
In Jeff Tye’s absence, I picked up the mantle of running the prediction game…a mantle that Jeff, within a year or two, ended up leaving on my lap for posterity.
Below is the very first prediction game template that I produced.
The unfortunately absent Nigel had secured us excellent seats. For Day One we were at the front of the Fox Road Stand, for Day Two at the front of the Radcliffe Road End.
The match was badly rain-affected, such that we only got the equivalent of one day’s play across the two days; roughly two sessions on Day One and one session on Day Two.
I especially remember Dan Steed sensing that the authorities made sure, on Day Two, that we got precisely enough play to deny ticket refunds but no more than that. I suspect that the matter was coincidental rather than by design, but who knows?
On Day Two especially there were lengthy breaks in play – it was very disjointed. I recall someone (either Dan or Matt) buying one of those souvenir mini bat and ball kits, with which we (mostly me, Nick, Matt & Dan) engineered some quite enjoyable “yard cricket” around the back at the Radcliffe Road end.
We probably looked quite comical – I have asked Dall-E to help me to reimagine the scene:
Studying the scorecard, I realise that those of us who were there on Day One witnessed Steve Harmison‘s debut and those of us who were there on Day Two witnessed Harmison’s first two test wickets. Priceless treasures for our memories of live cricket-watching, those.
Observant readers/link-clickers of the above link will have spotted flag wavers in the crowd quite consistently waving the Flag of India, which, in their hands and the hands of most wavers, looks like this.
Flag of India, regular look
Unfortunately, Harish went his own way with the waving of his India flag at the front of the Fox Road Stand, waving the flag thusly:
Flag of India, Harish style
Some India supporters spotted Harish and his flag and approached him. They gently explained to him that he was wielding the flag upside down. They also kindly explained to Harish and to all of us the significance of the colour scheme,: the green symbolising the land of India, the orange symbolising the glow of the sun above that land.
I have never forgotten their explanation and would henceforward be very sure which is the right or wrong way up…and why.
In a similar “never to be forgotten” vein, we Heavy Rollers have never let Harish forget the Indian flag incident, just to make absolutely sure that Harish never makes that same mistake again. We think of it as an act of kindness and educational policy to remind him about the matter at least once every four years when England play India…and occasionally on other occasions too.
Naturally, Harish’s trademark smile doesn’t leave his face when we are having such conversations.
I remember Harish cheering when England took a wicket, which to me seemed anomalous with the waving of an India flag. I asked him who he supports when England played India. His reply, typically harish, I paraphrase:
I love it when England play India, because whoever wins, my team has won.
I was reminded of this wonderful attitude recently, when chatting with one of my real tennis friends from Leamington, who said, again I paraphrase:
I always win when I play real tennis. I am on court playing a game I love. That’s a win. I am spending time with friends I want to spend time with. That’s also a win. I also try to win the match I am playing, but even if I don’t win that, I already have won two out of three.
I think this attitude translates also to Heavy Rollersism. Of course we want to see our team do well and go on to win. But even on the occasions when it doesn’t go so well for England…or on the rare occasions when we see little or no play, it is still two wins out of three because we are watching the game we love with people with whom we want to spend our time. That Nigel was on to something when the Heavy Rollers idea was revealed to him from behind the curtains in 1995.
…the second match has almost totally evaded my memory. It existed. I have e-mail and diary evidence for it.
Here’s Charles “Charley the Gent Malloy” Bartlett’s shout out from 9 July 2002:
CRICKET MATCH – SUNDAY 4 AUGUST
I am delighted to say that we have arranged a cricket fixture a against a village cricket side called Tuffty Stackpole at their home ground in a village called North Crawley – it’s a 15 minute drive from the Milton Keynes turnoff on the M1 Motorway.
Some of you may remember we played them last Summer, it was a great day, great cricket, great food, great pubs and in beautiful surroundings – there is a small cover charge towards the food and refreshments.
I originally met members of Tufty Stackpole on TCS Treks in China and Peru, they are keen supporters of TCS, and monies from the cricket match will go towards sponsorship for other TCS Treks (sadly theirs not mine!).
The match will start around mid-day and be a 40 over match (that’s 40 overs each!) – we will probably need a number of 12th men, for cover and substitutes, along with scorers as there is a full size scoreboard.
There will be a number of cars travelling, so transport should not be a problem, I expect everyone to be fixed up with a lift – there and back.
Please advise me on your availability ASAP.
This time around, Janie and I took the precaution of booking out the whole of the Monday following the match. We had a busy weekend ahead of the match, with a night at the Proms on the Saturday preceding.
Reflecting on my absence of memory for this fixture, I even wondered whether the match had been cancelled at the last minute due to an inability to get a team together or inclement weather.
But no.
Janie remembers attending one in which Tufty Stackpole soundly thrashed The Children’s Society – to such an extent that everyone agreed that it would not make sense to repeat the exercise unless or until the Children’s Society could muster a better eleven to give Tufty Stackpole a decent game.
That must have been this second match. The thrashing factor, together with the need to pull together a better squad, might at least in part explain why the fixture didn’t happen again until 2004.
We had no Biff this time around, no Martin Hinks and no Nigel “Father Barry”. “Big Papa Zambezi” Jeff Tye was there, as was Harish “Harsha Goble” Gohil. Janie thinks she remembers having a long and pleasant chat with Liz Tye on that surprisingly inclement August watching occasion, although that nice chat might have been another year of course.
The only other clues in my e-mail archive include a note from me to Chas on 31 July 2002 suggesting initials for some of us in a desperate attempt to make us sound more like real cricketers:
Perhaps
CPU Bartlett JFDI Tye ICT Harris HTTP Gohil
Also an e-mail exchange between me and Chas after the event, on 16 August 2002, which shows we clearly had “strengthening the team for Tufty on our minds.
ME: Z/Yen is probably close to signing a lapsed but formerly decent club standard player, who would also be suitable and willing for the Tufty fixture.
CHAS: I think I am concerned at this remark by you – because I do not believe it. It is clearly designed to strengthen your team for the annual fixture at Regents Park against TCS!!. Will you stop at nothing to win that trophy?
ME: Nothing.
That hiring, I should say parenthetically, was Mark “Uncail Marcas” Yeandle, who did turn out for Z/Yen a good few times, but never did turn out for TCS against Tufty Stackpole. Probably, in Chas’s memory, Mark is best known for what he does best at cricket…watching. He has joined us several times, e.g. the never-to-be-forgotten 5th day of the 5th Test at the Oval in 2005 and the occasion at Lord’s in 2010 which Chas refers to as “The Day Of The Monster Strawberries” which came courtesy of Mark:
Returning to August 2002, the other thing that will have weakened my memory for this Tufty match is that it was just a few days before we headed off for our Heavy Rollers adventure at Trent Bridge that year:
In short, I need help from other people who were at this second ever Tufty Stackpole v The Children’s Society match if we are to pull together anything more authoritative about the match than this.
Perhaps some of the Tufty folk have better memories of it and might be encouraged to chime in with their thoughts. If there is a scorebook somewhere in the North Crawley archives, with the details of the Tufty Stackpole v The Children’s Society matches, scans of those pages would add greatly to the record here.
We have no pictures from 2002 either. So, as it is, I have had to collaborate sparsely with Dall-E to generate some sort of pictorial record of the two sides.
Tufty Stackpole cricketers in 2002The Children’s Society cricketers in 2002
Village Cricket At the Turn Of The 21st Century – by Dall-E & Me
We interrupt The History of The Heavy Rollers to cover a related (and soon to be overlapping) activity: Tufty Stackpole v The Children’s Society cricket matches. In the same way that we cannot entirely separate the birth of Z/Yen charity cricket matches…
…several of the people involved in Heavy Rollers outings in the first decade of this century were friends from the Tufty Stackpole matches.
Much like the early Heavy Rollers outings, there is precious little actual evidence from the events. The odd e-mail but no photos and no contemporaneous match reports. Only memories, which might be flawed or partial. Strangely, I have very strong memories of the first Tufty match and almost none of the second. Hopefully others who participated can chime in with comments and help me to improve the pieces.
The initial shout out for the first Tufty Stackpole match came from Charles Bartlett on 29 May:
Game against ‘Tuffty Stackpole’ (I met members of this team on the TCS trek’s in China and Peru). They are a village side and take their cricket very seriously. So experience will be useful. The match is arranged to be played on Sunday 15 July at their ground at North Crawley which is near Milton Keynes
Students of historical research based on e-mail trawling will realise why this e-mail was hard to find in my archive 20+ years later – note Chas’s spelling of “Tufty”.
It was quite a late night for us on the Saturday night in Halifax. Mike and Lottie sure know how to make guests welcome. I’m sure some especially juicy red wine will have flowed to accompany excellent beef and other culinary delights late in the evening after the show.
But that didn’t really matter, as we knew that we had time in the morning to take a breakfast at the Imperial Crown and get most of the way back down the M1 in plenty of time.
Actually we half expected to be stopping only briefly on our way home, as the weather was poor and the forecast, on Saturday, for the next day, yet poorer.
But in the morning, when I turned on the Ceefax (this was back in the days before smart phones and internet access on the fly), the simple weather chart suggested that the shoddy weather was at its worst in the North of England…and in the South of England, with the Midlands, including Beds/Bucks/Northants borders villages such as North Crawley, spared the rain and expecting sunshine.
We motored through driving rain until just after Sheffield – thereafter the weather looked promising to the point of looking like cricket weather. When we got there, we learnt that those travelling from the south had experienced similar poor weather until they got a few miles north of the M25.
Lovely village. Lovely cricket ground in the village. Great bunch of local people too. Tufty Stackpole was basically the veterans side of a “proper” village team. These people could play.
The Children’s Society team had its own weapons for that first fixture. Nigel “Father Barry” Hinks was with us, along with his uber-enthusiastic brother Martin. “Big Papa Zambezi” Jeff Tye brought his mate Biff with him:
Probably the best batsman in the county never to have played for Northamptonshire…
…said Jeff…and you don’t argue with Jeff when he’s talking up his mate.
The Children’s Society also had Charley “The Gent Malloy” Bartlett, me and a few other enthusiasts of no fixed ability.
My abiding memories of the cricket that day are quite strong.
Most of the enduring Tufty folk were there that first time: Geoff Young, Glenn Young (I think), Ian Cooper, Trevor Cooper, Nick Cooper, Trevor Stapleton, Mike Archer, Nick Church (I think) plus the gentleman who sometimes kept wicket whose name I never learnt but whom we nicknamed “Builder’s Bum” because of his appearance when wicket-keeping.
With thanks to Dall-E, which couldn’t quite bring the troos down to builders’ level
We didn’t really have the bowling depth to put the Tufty batting line up under too much pressure. Nigel bowled well and took a couple of wickets, but in a 40 over match each bowler can only bowl 8 overs. Martin was quite useful with the ball too, but there were still 24 other overs to try and escape from;
It didn’t help to have several fielders of my “quality” in the long grass. I think it was at that first Tufty match that I juggled a couple of would-be catches but basically spilled them, much to the chagrin of my skipper and team mates – not that I was the only fielder to spill catches;
Martin kept encouraging his older brother, Nigel, to field closer and closer in the hope of snaffling a catch off his bowling. Frankly Martin’s bowling wasn’t really good enough to justify insanely close fielding. Eventually one came straight to Nigel at high speed, which he took, partly in self-defence but a clean catch. The bruise was visible at the back as well as the front of Nigel’s hand within seconds. Barely a wince. Brave lad;
Tufty Stackpole made plenty. Still, we had some weaponry in the batting department, so preserved an element of hope while everyone tucked in to one of the quintessentially English summer village cricket match teas, provided by, I’m pretty sure, the Merry Wives Of Tufty Stackpole. Derry Young was almost certainly involved in that aspect;
I asked Dall-E to help me reproduce the look of such a cricket tea – indeed there I am enjoying a cuppa in a virtual village hall before a lavish spread:
I was scheduled to bat 7 or 8, so I umpired at the start of the resumption;
Biff was clearly a proper batsman, but he hadn’t played for ages and kept complaining to me bitterly, whenever he got down to my end, that he wasn’t timing it properly and that he was finding it all very difficult after all this time. I tried to boost Biff’s confidence by telling him, truthfully, that he was, relatively speaking, in the context of our game, batting extremely well. Also that he would get back into the swing of it as the innings progressed;
Chas was one of the earlier wickets to fall and took over from me umpiring when the third or fourth wicket fell;
Nigel batted one place ahead of me. Biff was still batting well and keeping us just about in the game when Nigel joined him at the crease. Nigel himself can tell you the extent to which he was able to bat normally with such a badly bruised hand. I do recall Nigel getting his eye in and then launching at least one big straight six. At that point, just for a very short while, some of us perhaps dreamt of victory. But Nigel’s attempt to replicate the six resulted in a clattering noise behind him and it was my turn to bat;
I joined Biff and again tried to boost his confidence, which, given that he had by then scored well north of 50 and might even have been thinking of 100, he was still chastising himself for not batting as well as he used to decades earlier when he batted regularly. “Problem is”, he said, “I’m completely exhausted now. Do we have to keep running ones and twos?” My problem, of course, is that I don’t really have shots at all, so ones is probably the best you can hope for unless I take absurd risks. Biff was by now so tired that his scoring shots were not quite making it to the boundary so we did run a few twos;
Eventually Biff played a tired shot and was out. It was an honour for me to have shared the crease with him for a while. We were still some way from the Tufty’s score and frankly we knew we didn’t have the batting to score at the requisite rate, which might have been something like 80 runs needed off 8 or 9 overs at that stage. Big Papa Zambezi Jeff joined me at the crease with the instruction, “we’re to bat for the draw”;
This instruction was playing to my extremely limited skills as a batsman – i.e. to prevent a competent but tiring bowling attack from getting me out. It transpired that Jeff had similar skills. We frustrated the Tufty Stackpole bowlers and managed to extract some honour from that first match by not being bowled out.
…North Crawley has two pubs and the cricket club is honour bound to divide its business between the two. Over the years we certainly tried both.
We enjoyed the post-match conviviality for quite a while and revelled in raising a goodly sum for the charity. I remember that Janie and I got home quite late, ahead of punishingly early starts the next morning. We only made that mistake the once, opting to take the morning or even the whole Monday off after subsequent Tufty matches.
Yes, the big fuss is for that little urn. Do you have a problem with this?
In November 2000, there will have been an outbreak of joy in several households, not least mine, when we received the following missive from Nigel Hinks:
Just to confirm that despite “unprecedented interest” (Warwickshire CC) TICKETS have been secured in usual places (Priory Stand Row A 12-17) for the above.
Cost of £67 (32 Thursday+35 Friday). Payable as soon as you like………
Haven’t yet spoken with David. No assumptions about Wadderton or indeed David as ‘catering manager’. Just book it in the diaries and look at it throughout the winter months!!!
Nigel
Needless to say, Wadderton & David Steed’s catering management came through.
Nick “The Boy Malloy” Bartlett (like me, a 1999 initiate);
Me “Ged Ladd”.
The mists of time have left a mystery, nay even controversy, surrounding the absence of Nick Bartlett in 2000. I’ll leave that debate for others to argue out in articles other than this one…or possibly in court if the debate gets too adversarial.
Differently controversially, my team of mascots, which had included Henry The Duck & Hippity the Green Bunny in 2000, was increased by the addition of Bananarama Monkey-Face in 2001.
Bananarama Monkey-face in 2004, no doubt “in care” having been rescued from Jeff’s clutchesDaisy & I were adopted by Bananarama Monkey-Face in Pickering in July 2000. This image from his post trauma writing phase in 2014.
I don’t suppose that Nigel’s 1995 vision included duck, bunny & monkey mascots, but that simply shows that revelations of that kind only reveal part of the future story. It also shows that, to some extent, you should always beware what you wish for, even if it is something as wonderful and enduring as The Heavy Rollers.
Actually it was Jeff Tye who seemed least pleased with the mascot contingent and took some pains over the forthcoming years to ease them out of the picture.
Many of us had a sense of foreboding about the 2001 Ashes, despite the seeming opposite from some of us in the November 2000 e-mail bants:
Jeff: What a prospect – the tide has turned – England 480 for 8 after 2days in Pakistan – just imagine the score after 2 days against Australia at Edgbaston – the book is already open Charles !!!!
Me: I just hope those Aussies can last two whole days.
Chas: I do not wish to sound unpatriotic, but the Aussies will give us the most extreme test of our cricketing abilities!
Our sense of foreboding was more than justified. Here is the match scorecard. The sense that England might somehow be in with a shout dissipated soon after lunch on Day One.
I’m pretty sure this was the match at which Charles managed to persuade some autograph-hunting youngsters that Nick was Andrew Flintoff, watching with us from the front row of the Priory Stand.
Nick BartlettFreddie Flintoff
You can see for yourselves above that this must have been an easy scam to pull off, especially with Nick ‘s poker face showing no sign whatsoever that this was a lark.
Nevertheless, a few dopey kids lined up and collected Nick’s forgery of Freddie Flintoff’s autograph.
Frankly, I think Charles might easily have passed himself off as Freddie Flintoff at that time. Again, judge for yourselves.
Freddie Flintoff setting a fieldCharles Bartlett setting a field
Joking apart, and despite the fact that the memories of these matches, writing them up more than 20 years later, are quite faded, I do recall that we had a superb time yet again.
I also recall that, on the Friday afternoon, I popped out to the loo, anticipating an hour or so more of play, but when I came out of the loo the heavens had opened and everyone was pouring out of the stands. Nigel very kindly gathered up my things, rescuing Henry, Hippity and Bananarama-Monkey-Face from what could have been a very soggy demise.
As well as rescuing “my boys”, Nigel must also have rescued Jeff Tye’s “betting sheets” for the prediction game, which ended up in my hands for computation that year – perhaps for the first time but certainly not the last. Those relics remain with me to this day – here they are:
Unmistakably you can see Jeff’s templates with Jeff’s writing all over them…until you get to the computations which are in my trademark scrawl. I note that the going rate at that time was just 20p per punter per line.
I think several people had brought cars with them to the church grounds near Edgbaston Stadium with a view to driving home from the ground on the second day. Nigel kindly took me to the railway station on his way out of town. Our correspondence that weekend (I peppered his e-mail with comments):
Nigel: Hope you got home ok. Friday. We experienced the most amazing flooding in suburban Harborne after we dropped you off.
Me: Hope it didn’t hold you up too much – I got home c20.40
Nigel: Ah well we got the best couple of days and possibly the day of the series.
Me: almost certainly
Nigel: Shame about the collapse today again. But what a knock from Gilchrist who you fancied….just as well he didn’t get in on Friday!
Me: Yup
By November 2001, though, we were lining up for a breach of tradition in 2002. Nigel again:
Dear Jeff, Ian, David, Charles and Nick,
We agreed, I think, unanimously that we won’t resume our traditional places at Edgbaston this coming year given that it is taking place in May.
However some mutterings abound for us to up sticks and try Trent Bridge.
This would be for 8th and 9th August, in Nottingham, against India (2nd Test) and it would mean adding in some accommodation costs if we do the 2 days.
So, before I do anything, could you let me know if you are interested.
How did that all pan out? Well, unless you can remember, you’ll simply have to await the next exciting episode to find out.
I have documentary evidence to prove that I went to the Oval on the first day of the fifth test. Not much was arranged by e-mail in those days, but I wrote an e-mail to TMS. I was reminded of same, today (13 January 2017) as a result of some discussions about left and right-handedness on King Cricket – click here – which triggered a memory that I possess a great essay on the subject in The Boundary Book: Second Innings.
I found the book. Marking that very essay in my copy of The Boundary Book: Second Innings was a printout of the following e-mail, to TMS:
In the hope & expectation that Nagamootoo will be selected for the Oval, try this limerick for size.
There is a young man Nagamootoo,
Who the girls find it hard to stay true to;
He’s a little too shy,
Like the song by that guy,
Named Limahl from the group Kajagoogoo.
Do look out for us today, near the front of the Peter May North Stand. A monkey, a green rabbit, four chaps (including two American rookies trying test cricket for the first time) and a yellow duck named Henry. Henry bears more than a passing resemblance to Henry Blofeld.
Ian
Earlier that same summer at the first test with the Heavy Rollers, plus Hippity the Green Bunny, Henry the Duck but no monkey. The monkey joined our household later.
We met Bananarama Monkey-Face in Pickering in early July 2000. This photo from 2014, after he’d established his own small-time writing career.
FALSE MEMORY PARAGRAPH
I have a feeling that the first day of the fifth test must be the occasion that Jeremy, Michael and I went together, with the additional American Rookie being a client or prospective client of Michael’s who turned out to have the attention span of a flea. He watched for about 5 or 10 minutes, got bored, wandered off and made us feel thoroughly irritated, as we knew loads of people who would have loved that hot ticket. As Michael said afterwards, “I’m not making that mistake again”.
CORRECTED MEMORY PARAGRAPH
Following an e-mail trawl for other summer 2000 matters, I realise that the above memory is false, or rather a memory from a later year/test match day. On 31 August 2000 the attendees were:
me
Michael “Timothy Tiberelli” Mainelli
Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett
Bob “Big Mac” Reitemeier (this pseudonym previously unused, but in the grand tradition of On The Waterfront characters as pseudonyms).
Both Michael and Bob were suitably interested in the cricket and indeed both have attended first class cricket and/or played several times since their initiation that day. Perhaps Charles also has some memories of that day. Big Mac e-mailed to say:
I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the day. I must admit that I did follow the events on Friday, Saturday and Sunday with some interest following my induction on Thursday. Great stuff. The hook has been planted…
What about Monday?
But far more importantly, Aggers clearly liked my limerick a lot, because I heard him read it out at one point and learned that he broadcast it more than once during the day on that first day of the match.
I got very excited on the Friday, as Clean Business Cuisine (still available at all good bookshops, both on-line and real world) had just come out and we were promoting it heavily, so I got our book PR lass, Tanya, to bike a copy of the book to the TMS team at the Oval with a note of thanks re the limerick. I am now sure that such effort and expense is utterly futile. We live and learn.
That evening (the Friday) Janie and I saw Anthea and Mitchell. My diary says so. On the Saturday evening we saw Maz – my diary says so. I think it was her goodbye party ahead of going off to Malawi. A trawl of Janie’s diaries (and other people’s memories) at some stage in the future might well retrieve more stuff about those two evenings.
Monday 4 September 2000
Somehow, England, a shocking test match side at the time, had got itself ahead in a series against the (once) mighty West Indies (heck, they still had Walsh and Ambrose in those days, ageing though they might have been).
Going into the final test, England were 2-1 up. And now England were poised, in a great position to win the historic match and series on Day 5.
Several of us recovered our memories for that piece and commented. Here’s my comment about 4 September 2000:
I remember taking an early call from Big “Papa Zambezi” Jeff on the final day of the series, wondering whether I wanted to join him on a walk-up expedition south of the river (Thames, not Zambezi) to the Oval. He reckoned we’d still get good seats walking up Day 5 and it turned out he was right. But I had unmovable client commitments that day (long since forgotten by me and probably the clients), so he walked up and got splendid seats for an historic day without me. I made amends by buying Day 5 seats for the Oval in 2005 as a precautionary measure; Big “Papa Zambezi” Jeff was one of the beneficiaries of that forethought.
Well I have now looked up my diary and can see exactly what I did that day. I was sort-of on a deadline with an important report. Plus lots of calls. But I did have some slack that week.
Could I have burned some midnight oil and caught up? Of course I could.
Should I have gone with Jeff that day? Of course I should.
The annual Z/Yen versus The Children’s Society cricket match was held in Holland Park around the longest day, 22 June. And it must have seemed like a long evening to the largest ever crowd of friends and spectators, huddling under the trees in the cool drizzle. Perhaps it was the bottles and pin of superb beer sponsored by Youngs brewery (via George, Giles Wright’s brother) that kept the crowd motivated and audible throughout.
Z/Yen batted first and accumulated 91 for 4. More or less everyone got a bat with several players, even Ian Harris, retiring not out. Restricting things to 15 overs per side saved the game from the impending rain, as well as the use of some handy Astroturf. Z/Yen bowled well – John Davies (Helen’s husband) getting man-of-the-match for his efforts – restricting The Children’s Society to 73 for 6, despite some late heroics by Harish Gohil and Richard Britain-Kelly. So for only the second time ever, Z/Yen has regained the Rashes (risk/reward ashes) trophy.
