Ged & Daisy gently watching on early in the day – Court 12
We had a truly lovely day at Wimbledon.
We were mostly there to see two quarter-finals on No. 1 Court:
Iga Swiatek v Liudmila Samsonova;
Jannik Sinner v Ben Shelton.
Unusually, we ended up seeing both of the eventual singles tournament winners in action on No. 1 Court that day.
LiudmilaIga to pleaseJannik & Ben at the tossJannik and his shadow in full flow
But before all that, as usual, we got Wimbledon well early and made a bee-line to Court 12, where we saw bits of:
Fabrice Santoro & Anne Keothavong v Nenad Zimonjic & Martina Navratilova;
Hannah Klugman v Charo Esquiva Banuls.
Anne & Fabrice foreground, Martina and Nenad behindHannah preparing to playCharo in full flow
I did a fair bit of wandering around during and between the quarter finals matches on No. 1 Court, mostly taking in some junior action or just taking in the atmosphere generally.
Anyway, Daisy and I did our usual thing in Leamington – stopping there for a game of real with Dr Snoddie & his pals; also lunching and shopping in that fine spa town, before driving on to Birmingham (Moseley).
This time we had taken an out house in a family home as our Airbnb, which was less eccentric than the 2024 place but not quite as spacious and posh as the 2022 place in Edgbaston.
Still, plenty of room for producing smoked trout and smoked salmon bagels, smoked chicken, duck and cheese sandwiches, grape and strawberry courses and assorted snacks.
Nigel joined me and Daisy for dinner at Sabai Sabai the night before the test started. Harsha was unable to join us until Day Two, hence his absence from the pre-test repast. He (and we) had very much enjoyed that place in 2024, much as we all did in 2025.
A fairly large table, including cricket writers Simon Wilde and John Etheridge also dined in Sabai Sabai that evening. Being cricket writers, they must be discerning folk who know what they are on about food-wise.
Nigel, Morg, Jonny & Me – photo by Daisy
Here we are gathered at the start of Day One, brimming with antici…
…pation.
Jonny Twophones was making a third appearance this year, while his friend, Huge Morg, whom I had met through Jonny at Lord’s a couple of years earlier, was making his first appearance at a Heavy Rollers event. Unfortunately we neglected to conduct Morg’s initiation ceremony this time, so it will have to be a more extreme version of the initiation next time. Something for everyone to look forward to.
Did Sam come and visit us at lunchtime on Day Two?
Yes. As well as this selfie, he also took the headline photo for us. Thanks Sam.
Of course he did.
Daisy took a good few photos around the back of the Eric Hollies Stand over the three days, which will find their way as an educational feature on the King Cricket website in the fullness of time. A link to that feature will be annexed soon after that fullness.
Here is an example of such a photo, not used in that feature.
Knight time is the right time.
My performance in the traditional Heavy Rollers prediction game was dismal this year, whereas Daisy, professing to “knowing nothing” did quite well for a change.
As always, the days seemed to fly by and sooner than we possibly could imagine we were all on our way.
I had hoped to get to Lord’s a bit earlier than 4:15 on Disability Cricket Day, but work and other necessities intervened. By the time I got to Lord’s, most of the peripheral activities had finished, although there were still plenty of people enjoying their day around the Nursey Ground, especially the small stand at the side of the Cricket Academy.
Some of my steward friends urged me to hurry round to the pavilion side of the ground, lest I missed the whole of the flagship match between England and India, as England were seven-down for diddly-squat.
But this was no day for hurrying – I ambled around with my tennis equipment in hand, with a view to stowing the equipment and working out where to sit.
I had no jacket and tie with me, but suspected that it would be a “relaxed dress code” day and that my smart casual look would be sufficient to gain entry into the pavilion.
I asked one of my steward friends whether it was relaxed dress code today.
Totally relaxed – they’ve even told us we can let people in wearing flip-flops today.
I was flabberghasted.
I wish I’d phoned to ask before I left home. I’ve always wanted to wear flip-flops in the pavilion.
Relaxed dress – I still have this longyi somewhere…and flip-flops
On asking one question about the nature of this disability match, another friendly steward handed me a programme – then I found a seat on the front terrace.
The programme was helpful in answering my questions about what “mixed disability” is. In short, there are three categories of disability cricket:
Physical Disability;
Deaf / Hearing Impairment;
Learning Disability.
This mixed disability format requires a mixed team because all three categories of disability need to be represented in the top four batting and each category needs to bowl at least 25% of the overs – thus requiring a minimum of two bowlers from each category.
Clever.
By the time I had got my head around it, the England innings had revived somewhat and were making a good game of it for the last few overs of its 20 over allocation.
That said, India set off in the power play looking as though they would make short shrift of the 124 target.
At that juncture, I realised that I needed to go to the dressing room and change for my next gig – real tennis club night, which I curate, so it would be rude to be late.
On my way out, as I progressed through the Long Room, I ran into Arfan Akram, besuited in a conventional MCC stylee, whom I know well from his role with Essex and my role with the London Cricket Trust.
After greeting me warmly, and us both agreeing that the disability cricket day seemed to be a great success, Arfan asked,
are you going to write this up on your blog?
You don’t say no to Arfan without good reason.
Yes, of course,
I said.
In truth, I was really impressed by the quality of the cricket. It is the first time I have seen this mixed disability format. I think it is a great idea, to showcase the best of the disability cricketers and to encourage players in each of those three disability categories to aspire to make the most of their talents.
I can’t find any video from the match I saw, but here is a YouTube of the mixed disability match earlier in the day, MCC v Middlesex D40 First XI, which was also a humdinger:
I tried to explain to anyone who’d listen to me that I should be allowed to represent at mixed disability cricket, given the ravages of time and the advent of Pinky, my brand-new hip.
I was politely informed that I wouldn’t be good enough, not that I really needed anyone to tell me, given the quality of cricket I had witnessed.
No such impediment for real tennis club night. We play a mixed ability format, the criterion for which is quite straightforward – all are welcome regardless of ability.
Just as well that criterion is simple, because real tennis is a complex game which we amateurs play on handicap. For “all are welcome” sessions such as club night, where several of the players tend to be of unknown or unsettled handicaps, I favour the use of sliding handicaps, to ensure that each set will tend towards a tight finish. Works almost every time.
Again, no footage from club night itself (heaven forbid) but I do have some footage of several of us regular “Club-night-istas” at play in early February, just before I parted company with Pinky’s organic predecessor.
Of the four of us depicted, only me and Mike Lay were at Club Night this June. Mike was my nemesis on that February “quarter-final-like” occasion, and proved to be so again at Club Night, even though my ability to move has already come on leaps and bounds since February and the op.
It is wonderful, though, to be back on court playing with my friends again, without pain and at something starting to approach the level to which I aspire.
Back To Lord’s The Next Morning For Some Endorsing, While The MCC & MCC Foundation Launched The Knight-Stokes Cup
Young people…at Lord’s…enjoying themselves? Whatever next?
After a physiotherapy session first thing (planned, I hasten to add, not a reaction to the tennis the night before, which my body seemed to absorb most satisfactorily), I returned at 9:15 to Lord’s for a full morning of candidate endorsing.
When I agreed to endorse on the morning of 26 June, I didn’t realise that we’d end up doing the interviews in The President’s Suite of the Grandstand, while the MCC and the MCC Foundation launched the wonderful Knight-Stokes Cup for independent schools:
In some ways, there was something incongruous about conducting candidate endorsement interviews on such an auspicious occasion. Hardly any, if any of the candidates we interviewed that day had been to a state school. Still, the MCC can only do its best to try and widen its demographic; the Knight-Stokes Cup is one of the better ideas behind which the club is throwing its weight.
My interviewing partner for the session was Steven Bishop, another real tennis enthusiast who, coincidentally, had been one of my nemeses in the 2024 real tennis club weekend – on that occasion in a nail-biting semi-final:
But I digress.
We mostly interviewed young folk in this session and tried our best to present a very 21st century demeanour. Steven, in particular, spoke with them in detail about the MCC Foundation and the wonderful work it does, both nationally and internationally.
Steven did, however, on one occasion, while waxing lyrical about all the wonderful work the Foundation does overseas, mention Zaire, which slightly took me aback, partly because I had no idea that the MCC Foundation was active in DR Congo (I’m not 100% sure it is), and secondly because that country hasn’t been called Zaire since the previous millennium (1997 to be precise). I held my tongue. At least that small error is steeped in the late 20th century and not the 19th century, where the typical and unfair caricature of an MCC member, blissfully unaware that Queen Victoria is no longer with us, is perceived mentally to reside.
After six interviews I parted company with Steven and progressed, after a very short break for some lunch, to…
Steep Myself In The MCC’s 19th Century History – Research In The Library On Spencer Ponsonby-Fane & Other Related Topics
As part of my research for my forthcoming talk & small treatise on the emergence of the laws of tennis (lawn variety) around 1875, a central character in that story is Sir Spencer Cecil Brabazon Ponsonby-Fane, who chaired the MCC Tennis committee at the time those laws emerged and who also founded what is now MCC Heritage and Collections, including the Library and Museum.
Alan Rees in the library, as usual, was enormously helpful and had found some fascinating stuff for me to examine – some of which is highly pertinent to my talk and some of which is the sort of wonderful rabbit hole down which I like to dive when doing this sort of research.
When Alan told me about it, I thought the Ricardo in question was John Lewis Ricardo, perhaps the most famous of the nephews of the great political economist David Ricardo. But no, the cricket-loving Ricardo who was one of the first members of I Zingari and thus hanging out with Spencer Ponsonby and the like, was one of John Lewis Ricardo’s younger brothers, Albert Ricardo, whose wife, Charlotte Ricardo, aka Daisy, compiled the album.
It’s a shame that John Lewis Ricardo was not the cricketer, as I wanted to say that he was “never knowingly under bowled”. I’ve said it anyway.
Soon after 4:00, I decided that it would only be polite for me to return home and start preparing the birthday meal that I had promised my own Daisy, so I headed off around 4:15, almost exactly 24 hours after I arrived for the first of my four activities, having spent more time at Lord’s during that 24 hour period than away from the place.
I was heavily sedated on the morning the LTA released tickets for the ATP event at The Queen’s Club this year; 11 February.
By the time I regained my compos mentis…to the extent that my mentis is ever truly compos…Pinky, my brand-new hip was in place, my non-functioning, organic right hip had gone…and so had most of the decent-looking seats for the ATP at Queen’s.
“No matter”, I thought, in what might have still been a drug-induced state of relaxed acceptance. Ground passes are just £30 a pop and I’m sure I’ll be able to get good seats for the Queen’s WTA tournament when they come out…which I did:
This seemingly unfortunate timing turned out to be a jolly good thing, as Janie and I had a super day at Queen’s without “troubling the stewards” of the main Andy Murray Arena.
On Court One, which ground passes cover, there were to be two excellent looking doubles matches. Although I got very confused as to how many players we would actually see.
First Match: Three Gentlemen Against Two – Arévalo González & Pavić v Mektić & Venus
Marcelo Arévalo González: “There’s only one of me, you twit!”
The problem with modern trends away from the use of punctuation is that you can never be entirely sure where you stand.
Had the reading source I chose stated: “Arévalo-González & Pavić v Mektić & Venus” I’d have understood. I’d also have understood had they used the Oxford comma: “Arévalo González, & Pavić v Mektić, & Venus”. But in the absence of punctuation I assumed we would be seeing three gentlemen against two – which was, after all, a perfectly regular mode of tennis play in Baroque times…
…and which I thought might explain why Arévalo González & Pavić are the top ranked team in the world at the moment.
Anyway, the scoreboard on Court One was quite clear that we were to see “Arévalo & Pavić v Mektić & Venus, so it was not a complete surprise when only four players emerged.
Nikola Mektić & Michael VenusMate Pavić
The Appliance Of Science To Avoid The Inferno
A pair of shady customers in the small, western stand of Court One
…I did some complex geometrical analysis of my own, ahead of setting off to Queen’s, to ascertain which area on Court One was likely to be in the shade the earliest.
Until my treatise has been peer-reviewed I shall not be disclosing my methods. Suffice it to say that my theory played out in practice, which was a real blessing on such a hot day.
Janie and I took turns to go out and refill the water bottles and/or get some iced coffee. We also scoffed our smoked salmon bagels with impunity, once we were in the shade, soon after 14:00.
The young stewards on and around Court One were very friendly and also very helpful.
It was rather a long wait for the second match of the day on Court One; Jacob Fearnley needed to finish his singles match and rest a while before it could start. But from our point of view waiting around in the shade was well worth it, not least because we had spent a full day at Queen’s the week before during the WTA, so had no great desire to look around the exhibition stands.
Second Match: Two Brits & Fritz
Those helpful young stewards started to “advertise” the impending doubles match to inquisitive passers-by as “two Brits & Fritz”. I wondered whether we were to see two gentlemen against one – otherwise known as Canadian Doubles.
Two Brits & Fritz: Taylor Fritz, Jacob Fearnley & Cameron Norrie
After all, but for the unfortunate absence of Señor González earlier in the day, we’d have seen three gentlemen against two, so this sort of made sense.
Eustace Miles, Victorian/Edwardian multiple Queen’s champion, doyen of tennis, rackets and much much more
Further, Eustace Miles much preferred playing tennis two against one if he could not play singles
As a variation, the Three-handed Game is good. One of the best Matches I have ever had was at Boston, when I played against Messrs. Fearing and Stockton. They have practised together as a pair again and again, and they probably form the best working pair and combination of all amateurs. It was capital exercise, and I cannot imagine anything more enjoyable. But I can count on my fingers the Four-handed Games that I have enjoyed.
Yet, when the players emerged, Taylor Fritz brought Jiri Lehecka with him, perhaps attempting an element of surprise or ambush.
Had Team GB doubles coach Louis Cayer been nobbled?Clearly Daisy had been taken by surpriseCam Norrie above, Jacob Fearnley belowSurprise package Jiri Lehecka looks super-fitTwo Brits, Steak & Fritz
But the Brits were not to be outflanked. An excellent win for Messrs Fearnley and Norrie – they could be a formidable doubles pairing should they choose to persevere with their partnership, we both felt.
We avoided the crush at Barons Court Station by walking away the long way around and stopping for a couple of games of table tennis before heading for the exit.
The ground pass thing was very different from any day Janie and I have spent at the tennis before, but still a most enjoyable, relaxing day. Maybe I should try being sedated on the day that LTA tickets are released more often.
The irony of the Gresham Society AGM being held underground in the basement meeting room of Barnard’s Inn Hall, ahead of the Provost’s lecture entitled, Galileo’s Journey to the Underworld: The Case for Interdisciplinary Thinking, was not wasted on me.
Obviously the Society couldn’t go through all that again, so they opted for high tea and some very interesting updates from the new top team at Gresham College: Professor Robert Allison, Professor Sarah Hart & Richard Smith. All had very interesting things to day.
Bob Allison, in particular, teased us with a potted academic biography – basically he is a geographer with expertise in landfalls and stuff like that – so what is the connection between that discipline and his accidental occasional career as an expert witness in high-profile murder cases? We managed to winkle out some intriguing answers.
There should be at least one Gresham lecture in those fascinating topics, although Bob show’s some reluctance, as Chairman, to step up to the Gresham College podium himself.
Tim Connell thought he was doing a smart thing by peppering the AGM material with the updates from the college top team, making it impossible for me to do my usual thing of timing the AGM itself and challenging Tim’s assertion that he can get the main business done in less than 10 minutes.
That was a shame, because I suspect that on this occasion Tim really did keep the substantive business down to less than 10 minutes. Tim missed a sitter by dodging the time & motion aspect.
By the time we emerged from the Barnard’s In Hall underworld, after some high tea and further chat, the early evening was cool enough for some pleasant further chat in the courtyard before attending the Provost’s lecture. Most but not all of the attendees for the meeting stayed for the lecture, but some were unable to do so.
Professor Sarah Hart’s lecture was absolutely fascinating. If you missed it live, you can still of course see it. Indeed, if you visit the Gresham College website you can see lectures going back into the dim and distant past; even the couple that I gave “back in the day”.
In an unusual act of punctuality, King Cricket published my (Ged Ladd’s) write up of the four days I spent at Lord’s enjoying the ICC World Test Championship Final between Australia and South Africa, amongst other leisurely pursuits.
Pretty much everything I want to say about that match is included in that article.
Squeezed between two days at Lord’s for the ICC World Test Championship final…and then another day at Lord’s for that final, I took a break from cricket at Lord’s by going to Queen’s for a day to watch tennis with Janie.
Friday 13 June turned out to be a very hot day indeed, which is potentially more problematic for us at Queen’s, where we had allocated seats in the sun, than at Lord’s, where I can pick and choose a bit more.
Still, we had a good time, not least because it was an excellent day of tennis.
This is the first time there has been a women’s tournament at this professional level since the early 1970s – i.e. a few months before I picked up a racket for the first time.
Anyway, more than fifty years after I lost my tennis virginity, we saw:
Madison Keys beat Diana Shnaider
Tatjana Maria beat Elena Rybakina
Qinwen Zheng beat Emma Raducanu
Amanda Anisimova beat Emma Navarro
Shnaider serving to Keys
I took one stroll mid match during the first match and checked out the facilities.
One of the “benefits” of a day at Queen’s rather than Lord’s is that I don’t expect to run into a cricketing colleague, friend or acquaintance every five yards or so. Yet, on leaving the Arena at Queen’s, within about five yards, I ran into Josh Knappett, who is my main Middlesex CC link in my capacity as Middlesex’s Trustee on the London Cricket Trust. Josh was even sporting an MCC hat. Always a pleasure to see Josh, of course, but it made both me and Janie laugh when I reported back to her on this chance encounter.
When you’re hot, you’re hot…
Less amusing was the heat and the crowds as we all left the arena at the end of the first match. I did suggest that we turn right rather than left on exit, but Janie spotted a “toilets” sign and got us caught up in heaving dead end misery at the club house end of the campus, where a fight nearly broke out (not us, I hasten to add). Some folk (again, not us) tank up with alcohol to add to the strain of the heat on such days.
Anyway, we changed tack and ended up at the less-heaving end of the campus, where we observed some fine players practicing and took some delicious iced coffee to cool ourselves down.
Above, Neal Skupski, below, Joe Salisbury Amanda Anisimova practicing
We took advantage of some shade and air conditioning at the exhibition stand end of the ground before returning to see the end of the Maria v Rybakina match.
Above, Elena Rybakina, below, Tatjana Maria
Our smoked trout bagels (lovingly prepared by me in the morning before I went to the physiotherapist and the gym) were not going to eat themselves. I can faithfully report that they indeed did not eat themselves; we ate them. We also ate some hand-made crisps, cheese clouds pretzel thins, strawberries and grapes. Not all at once – throughout the afternoon and early evening.
Next up Qinwen Zheng (who now prefers to be known as Zheng Qinwen apparently) against Emma Raducanu.
We took a break during that match, for comfort and for a game of table tennis in the sponsors exhibition area. My new found stability and confidence transferred to table tennis, where I recorded a rare win over Janie.
Janie’s rage almost certainly knew no bounds at this juncture, but she did a grand job of behaving as if she was having a good time and cared not about the table tennis result.
Soon after our return to our seats, the penultimate match ended and the last match of the day began.
Above, Emma Navarro, below, Amanda Anisimova
After the first set, Janie looked up and said that her internal weather detector sensed rain approaching. Strangely, AccuWeather agreed, suggesting that we had some 40 minutes or so before the rain would start.
We decided, wisely I think, to leg it at that juncture, avoiding the heave at the gates and getting home in time to catch the end of the last match on the telly.
Daisy likes these Lord’s double-headers, where you get a nice, reasonably quiet women’s match in the afternoon, followed by an increasingly noisy and boozy men’s match in the evening. The Hundred is her preferred choice of such double-headers, following a confusing experience in 2023, watching Sunrisers in May, as reported 18 months later on King Cricket:
This year, the women’s team has reverted to being Middlesex Women, so the idea of a Middlesex double-header of Middlesex v Sussex made a bit more sense and attracted us to attend.
Naturally Daisy’s favourite sun deck was the location of choice. Naturally we brought lashings of ginger beer with us and resolved to make a meal of the Long Room Bar Baps and salad (gammon again, seeing as you were going to ask).
Unlike Daisy, I prepared for this event inadequately, by assuming that at least one of my Middlesex caps was in my Middlesex bag. Neither of them were. In need of head protection, and with Daisy having doubled-up in the head gear department, I tried to look sensible in Daisy’s floppy hat.
In truth, I was struggling to look sensible in that hat.
Eventually I gave up trying to look sensible in that hat:
I took a stroll between matches – firstly to move the car and then around the ground, which took a long time as I ran into lots of people I knew – some regular friends from Lord’s but also, somewhat surprisingly, Andy Shindler.
We enjoyed our grub between the two matches. So much so that we didn’t even photograph each other eating the food. Older people like us just don’t get the entire purpose of eating out – which is to photograph the event and show your so-called friends that you know how to eat.
As the place started to fill up for the men’s match, Daisy became less enthralled and more aware of it being a bit chilly. After about half-an-hour, it became quite obvious to us which way the match was likely to go and we resolved to catch the end of it on the TV when we got home…which we did.
Whose “bright” idea was it to book a play about dementia and stuff for a week after mother-in-law Pauline’s funeral – which was the closing scene of Pauline’s long, slow demise at the hands of that disease?
OK, so it was my idea. But, to be fair, the idea of seeing this piece had been brewing in my mind for some time, given that Lydia White was appearing in it.
After all, Lydia is my best mate John’s daughter and has been helping me to grapple with the shreds of my so-called singing voice for some five years now. Still, I had told John early in the year that I thought that the subject matter would be too close to the bone for Janie at this time and that the journey to the Arcola too far for my healing bones in May, just three months after my hip replacement.
Between February and April, though, the hip replacement went well and Ben Schwartz had coincidentally arranged to see this very show in Leicester – one of several stops on a tour scheduled to finish at The Arcola in London. When Ben reported back to me in April that the play, and Lydia, were the bees knees – (expressed with well-chosen, professional words to that effect) – I decided to book the show. I suggested to Janie that I’d go it alone on the Saturday matinee, while she was having her hair done. But so impressed was Janie with Ben’s informal review, she decided to move her hair appointment and join me.
That was on 16 April – about 12 hours before Pauline expired.
Still, coincidence followed coincidence when I told John that we’d be going along after all, as he reported back that he and Mandy would be at that matinee with several friends.
In Other Words…
“But what about the play and production?”, I hear frustrated readers cry.
Matthew Seager plays the male lead, as he has in previous productions of his play. He and Lydia certainly make this piece fly. [Insert your own joke here about the production flying to the moon or being a play among the stars].
Strewn with Frank Sinatra songs, it is the sort of play that could easily come across as mawkish or cloying, yet Seager somehow manages to avoid those pitfalls, while retaining warmth, humour and empathy. The fact that he spent a considerable amount of time working in care homes before writing this play might well have helped in that regard…as does an evident talent for playwriting of course.
Both performers did a great job of transforming their body language in a near instant, as the scenes move backwards and then forwards again in time. Matthew’s physical changes were the most profound ones, yet Lydia’s subtle transformations from lovestruck young woman to worn-down, middle-aged accidental-carer were in some ways even more impressive for their subtlety.
But then, I’m biased. After all, Lydia has almost managed to make an audible silk purse out of the sow’s ear that is my voice.
There is a scene during In Other Words in which Matthew’s character explains how bad he is at singing and demonstrates same with a bit of Sinatra. I asked Matthew after the show if Lydia had taught him how to feign singing that badly. Matthew’s reply:
Far be it from me to pretend to be a Jester. But this was a match at The Queen’s Club, so I am in the habit of representing various different teams there, regardless of whether I am actually a member of that club (e.g. MCC, The Dedanists’ Society) or not (e.g. The Queens Club itself, or, for this match, The Jesters Club).
In this instance, I wasn’t supposed to be playing at all. I had promised myself, and my surgeon, that Pinky, my brand-new hip, would be spared competitive matches and tournaments until the autumn. But when the call comes from Tony Friend, it’s difficult to say no…especially when he says, “feel free to say no”, in his “please help” tone of voice.
Also, the call to play the kick-off rubber of this match, as a substitute Jester, could be construed as more like the friendly hours of doubles that I am now playing, than a fierce competitive bout. I said “yes”.
“Would you also be willing to write the match report please? …fully understand if not,” said Tony.
The gentle art of watching on: Anton, Patrick & Josh (above) – Peter, Jon, Tabby & Jez (below)
Had anyone present been paying attention to the scores, they would have seen a match that built to a tremendous climax. First the Jesters took the lead, then the Dedanists’ clawed it back and took the lead, then the Jesters levelled the match again. After six rubbers, there had been two wins for each side and a couple of drawn rubbers. Naturally the final rubber went to a nail-biting one-set-all, five-games-all decider that was determined in favour of the Dedanists’ by a whisker.
James, Stuart, James & Paul. Did any of them know their rubber was determining the match?
But in truth, no-one was paying attention to the scores, other than a vague interest in the rubber that was in front of those indulging in the gentle art of watching tennis. Such is the way of matches such as this, between two peripatetic sides, with many players eligible for both teams and some, like me, representing the team for which they are not eligible.
The well-worn but suitable phrase on such occasions is that tennis was the winner. Several hundred pounds raised for the Dedanist’s Society, after a convivial afternoon and evening at Queen’s, playing & watching tennis, then dining and chatting with friends. Bliss.
