Tag: Chris Old

A Tale Of Two Cartoons And An Historic Yet Cartoonish Cricket Match, 7 June 1975

Allow me to transcribe this diary entry as best I can. The verb pertaining to my father’s insurance claim I think reads, “blagged” but I might be mistaken:

Saw Prudential Cup. England Won. Old 51 not out. Dad blagged from insurance got two films: Jerry & the Goldfish, and Dr Jekyll & Mr Mouse

“Prudential Cup” that day was actually the very first match in the tournament that later became known as the cricket world cup, so I am rather glad to realise that i really have been following that tournament since the very beginning.

A strange match to say the least. Look at the scorecard:

England v India at Lord’s 7 June 1975

England’s score looks normal by modern standards, but 334/4 was a monster score in a one day match back then. My excitement about Chris Old’s performance was due to the fact that he was one of my favourite players, because he was from the Yorkshire team that I met when I was seven…

A Short Holiday In Brighton, During Which I Met Geoffrey Boycott & The Yorkshire Cricket Team, 3 September 1969

…therefore Chris Old was, to all intents and purposes, my friend. My friend scored 51 runs in 30 balls which was, in those days, a very unusual and exciting run rate.

In response, India crawled to 132/3, with Sunny Gavaskar responding to England’s huge total with what I can only imagine was an act of passive resistance: 36 runs in 174 balls.

I doubt if I saw the whole match through.

More likely, I was captivated by the Tom & Jerry cartoons dad brought home from the shop for me.

Dad’s shop.

His shop window had suffered some serious water damage, with much stock completely written off, but those two Tom & Jerry cartoons (Standard 8) had damaged boxes but the film inside was salvagible.

Dad, being dad, asked the insurance man if it would be alright to hand the unsellable but still useable items to his son. the insurance man probably nearly fainted (or could hardly control his laughter) at being asked such a question and kindly acquiesced to dad’s modest request.

Dad told me that he had persuaded the insurance man to let me have the films and I was most impressed by dad’s negotiating skills.

I loved those films and watched them over and over.

I strongly suspect that dad got home before Sunny Gavaskar’s crease protest was over and that I abandoned the cricket match for the cartoons. The diary is silent on that aspect.

Here is the Jerry & the Goldfish, thanks to The Daily Motion:

And here is Dr Jekyll & Mr Mouse, also from The Daily Motion:

A Short Holiday In Brighton, During Which I Met Geoffrey Boycott & The Yorkshire Cricket Team, 3 September 1969

That short holiday in Brighton was one of the least memorable of my childhood, but for the fact that we happened to be staying in the same hotel as the Yorkshire cricket team.

I’ll explain the context of the holiday after I relate this seminal moment in my lifelong love of cricket.

Dad and I were in the lobby of the hotel, probably waiting for mum, at the same time as the Yorkshire team were preparing to set off from the hotel to the Sussex CCC ground; I’m guessing this was the morning before the start of the three-day match.

Our coinciding will simply have been happenstance. Dad had no interest whatsoever in any sport, let alone cricket.

But Geoffrey Boycott was a big name in those days – one of very few cricketers who might find himself on the front pages of the paper or on the television news, not just the back pages. Dad knew who he was.

So, as we found ourselves in such close proximity to a big name, dad thought he would introduce me to Geoffrey, along the following lines.

This is Geoffrey Boycott, one of the most famous cricketers in England and indeed the whole world.

Being pretty well trained for a seven-year-old, I looked up at Geoffrey and said words to the effect of:

Very pleased to meet you, Mr Boycott.

Boycott2
“What a polite young man”, said Mr Boycott, patting me on the head: Sigerson, CC BY-SA 3.0

Geoffrey responded well to these polite enquiries. I’m told that this is not always the Geoffrey way, so he must have been in a decent mood and I guess we came across as suitably deferential, fellow hotel guests.

What a polite young man.

Geoffrey patted me on the head. He might even have added

I do like polite young men.

He then explained the teams presence to me and my dad, half-introducing us to some of the other players. For reasons I cannot explain, Phil Sharpe, Geoff Cope and Chris Old’s names stuck in my head for ever. Perhaps it is to do with the minimal number of syllables to those names.

From that holiday onwards, for many years, I thought of Yorkshire as my team. After all, I knew them. I’d met them. They were my friends.

Is that Yorkshire yon?

Here is a link to the scorecard from the match Yorkshire played while staying in that Grand Hotel with us. It did not go well for Geoffrey, who had to retire hurt on 3, just a few minutes into the match. Neither did the match go well for Yorkshire.

My family took that unusually short and proximate break, because I had my adenoids and tonsils removed a couple of weeks earlier, so mum and dad felt that a short break (sea air, ice cream, that sort of thing) not too far from home was the safest option and might aid my convalescence.

There is a short home movie from that holiday – not one of dad’s best:

https://youtu.be/U_EhZsvMRbM

A few transparencies too – below is a link to the highlights of that, which includes some pictures of me in school uniform when we got home and possibly my earliest efforts with the camera – a couple of pictures of dad:

1969 Brighton Highlights (1)

Mum and dad clearly put a lot of effort into trying to keep me amused – frankly that holiday must have been deadly dull for them.

But I met the Yorkshire cricket team on that short Brighton break and my love of all things cricket was surely sparked there.