Everything that needs to be said about that day, and more, is covered in that piece.
Middlesex CCC AGM 17 May
I was there. I played real tennis at Lord’s beforehand and then hung around for a bit ahead of the AGM. It was a meeting with drinks afterwards.
Middlesex v Durham 19 & 20 May
I barely saw any cricket before and after playing tennis on 19th, but I did see a bit.
The plan had been to take Fran & Simon as guests on 20th, but the weather was decidedly iffy, so we delayed that visit until July. Instead, I got stuff done at the flat in the morning and sauntered over to Lord’s to watch a few hours play as the weather cleared in the afternoon.
Before setting off I got a message from Madz, who is now part-timing as a photographer for Durham CCC, wondering whether I planned to be at the game that afternoon.
We agreed to meet beneath Old Father Time, her favourite vantage point for the photos. Also the favourite vantage point for travelling Durham supporters, who were, by the time I got there, making serious headway with their preferred brews. I’m not certain that they were all drinking Newkie Brown, but it felt and sounded like that sort of crowd.
It was good to catch up with Madz.
At one point, the soon-to-be-new-England-wunderkind Matty Potts came on as 12th man for Durham (being rested ahead of the test match) and fielded for a few balls in front of our stand.
I caught this picture on my smart phone as he came our way:
Matty Potts A Few Days Before Stardom
I was pleased with that photo. Madz wondered whether she could have done better with her Nikon and infeasibly long lens.
Did you get one of those, pet?
…asked one of the Durham stalwarts, as a few of them took a passing interest in my snap.
I missed it, unfortunately,
said Madz.
You’re only here for one thing, pet,
said the stalwart, inducing much laughter from the Durham crowd and also from Madz, who clearly knows those fellas well enough and was able to enjoy the joke.
I sent the snap to King Cricket, who agreed that it was the best picture of Matty Potts he’d seen so far and wondered if he might use it, which of course I said he could and he did on 1 June (naturally crediting me…i.e. Ged Ladd) and also 2 June:
It was a strange period; the height of summer in regular times but the autumn of the pandemic, as it were.
The government had signalled a possible “relaxing of pandemic restrictions” for towards the end of June, but the highly infectious delta variant of Covid 19 led to the deferral of that “freedom day” until 19 July.
There was much re-jigging of diaries and arrangements in the weeks leading up to and following the revised date.
For the most part, Janie and I carried on doing what we had been doing during partial lockdown: working, volunteering and playing tennis.
Middlesex v Leicestershire, Merchant Taylors’ School, 12 & 13 July 2021
The plan was for me and Janie to go with Fran & Simon on Monday 12 July, but plans have a habit of going awry. The weather forecast for the Monday was awful and indeed it was heaving down with rain in Ealing.
Janie and I abandoned all hope of going to the game by mid afternoon, despite the fact that the rain was mysteriously dodging Northwood and play was taking place beneath leaden skies.
I’m rather glad we did decide to bale out of going, as I learnt the next day that it took people from Ealing/Acton way a couple of hours to get home due to the flash floods.
Simon ended up watching some rather good cricket solo on the Monday, while I ended up doing similar on the Tuesday.
I had arranged to play real tennis at Middlesex University early on the Tuesday morning and went on from there to MTS for my first sight of live county cricket since September 2019.
Social distancing was still the order of the day, so I sat in a reserved area and was suitably reserved.
We were allowed to stroll a bit, which enabled me to encounter some of “the usual suspects”, such as Barmy Kev and Jeff Coleman, who for some obscure reason were bemoaning Middlesex’s poor play and poor luck this season.
I tried to cheer myself up by reading The Economist, which for some obscure reason was bemoaning the economic devastation caused by the global pandemic.
Middlesex were in a bit of a hole second dig, so I do understand why people were pessimistic, especially as Middlesex had been snatching defeat from the very jaws of victory all season. Still, I was strangely optimistic about Middlesex’s position given my previous experiences of seeing teams bat last at MTS.
Ealing Samaritans Gunnersbury Park Party, Tuesday 20 July 2021
Janie had hardly met any of her new Samaritans colleagues before, other than in an “on shift” context, as she had done all of her training by Zoom and they had not been able to meet socially during lockdown.
So the “party in the park” idea seemed to be the ideal opportunity to meet some more people…
…which indeed it was. It was just a shame that, apart from Janie and Ilkay, whom Janie had already befriended and met, no-one from their traning group attended that night.
Janie was so late back from work, however, that we missed the entertainment for the evening, Marie Naffah, who was doing 50 gigs in 50 days, apparently. We arrived just in time to say goodbye to her, so for now the video below will have to do.
The Hundred: London Spirit v Oval Invincibles Double Header, Lord’s, Sunday 25 July 2021
In the end we only got to see half a double-header, as the weather closed in after the women’s match. What was predicted to be the possibility of some light showers turned out to be torrential rain and flash floods which caused havoc around London.
Mercifully, my weather app tipped me off before the weather got too bad.
Despite shortened event due to the weather, we rather enjoyed ourselves. I had arranged to return for the midweek games myself and Janie was scheduled to join me on Finals Day, so we anticipated that we’d still get our fill of The Hundred.
Middlesex v Durham at Radlett, Tuesday 27 July 2021
Parking spaces at cricket grounds don’t get much more rural-idyllic than this
Janie and I had an early game of tennis, then met Simon at lunchtime/early afternoon at Radlett. I chatted briefly with Mike O’Farrell and others, holding up the process of finding some decent seats and settling in for some old-fashioned List A 50-overs-a-side cricket.
The weather sort-of smiled on us until mid to late afternoon, when a shower threatened to end proceedings but in any case was enough to scare us away from an exposed ground such as Radlett.
After the rain, a tense Duckworth-Lewis finish, which Janie and I watched on the stream at home. As has been the way this season, Middlesex were “close but no cigar”.
London Spirit v Trent Rockets, Double-Header, Lord’s 29 July 2021
In my desire to really check out The Hundred tournament, I had reserved a member’s place for myself at both of the midweek events at Lord’s. This was the first of them.
I enjoyed the women’s game from the pavilion terrace, where I was sitting right in front of the assembled rockets (as it were) while they waited to do their thing.
I was delighted to be invited to help choose the walk-on music for some of the players, although I didn’t recognise many of the bangin’ hits on offer.
I had planned to take in the men’s game from the sanctuary of the Upper Tavern Stand, but just before the end of the women’s game I was joined by Alvin, who then popped out to make a call before I had the chance to tell him my plans. So I watched the first innings of the men’s game from the pavilion, with Alvin, then relocated to the Tavern Stand for the final innings.
London Spirit did not do very well in these matches…
Pete Reynolds Memorial At Mosimann’s, 6 August 2021
Our first venture in a cab and our first indoor event since lockdown. Shirley was very keen that we join the event, as we (along with so many of their friends) had been unable to attend the funeral during lockdown.
Grace had organised the event wonderfully well. Mosimann’s is a stunning venue and was well suited to the occasion.
The speeches were heartfelt and moving, but it was mostly a party, which was, apparently, what Pete wanted. Pete usually got what he wanted in life, I believe, so he was certainly going to have what he wanted in this regard.
There weren’t too many opportunities to watch live county cricket earlier that summer, with the Covid “spatial distancing” (as Janie called it – probably a better description than social distancing) and all that.
We had hoped to meet up with Fran and Simon, but the former was unable to join us on that occasion. The inclement weather that tries to frustrate our purpose when we meet up with one or both of those two did its best to rear its ugly head, but stayed away for long enough to enable us to enjoy some outground cricket in the lovely setting that is Radlett.
Simon wondered if I might like to see a crude vegetableI suppose this courgette pic will be good for King Cricket
The rain came soon after the innings break. Daisy and I decided to go home and catch the end of the match (assuming the shower really was just a shower) on the stream.
The shower really was just a shower.
Exciting ending, that match, but we enjoyed observing it from the relative warmth and dry of the streaming service at home.
Of course, King Cricket match reports have strict rules: “If it’s a professional match, on no account mention the cricket itself. If it’s an amateur match, feel free to go into excruciating detail.”
As this was a quite extraordinary afternoon of cricket, you might like to look at the scorecard here. The match had ambled to lunch on the third day with only 14-15 wickets down and seemed to be heading the way of a bore draw. Then the weather turned from sunny spring sunshine to wintry gloom, the threat of rain and an early close, but not before another 14-15 wickets fell in not much more than a couple of hours. That’s cricket for you. Middlesex came out the right side of this one the next morning.
Addendum (written 8 December 2016)
I had the pleasure to witness, on the TV this morning, Keaton Jennings score a test match hundred on debut for England. A rare and happy event. That made me wonder whether I had yet seen Keaton Jennings bat live, so my thoughts turned to the day reported in this posting.
Daisy and I arrived at Lord’s soon after play resumed in the afternoon, after the lunch interval. I had the internet radio on. While Daisy was parking up on the St John’s Wood Road, just outside the ground, we heard a cheer, then a few seconds later heard the commentary describe Keaton Jennings first innings dismissal for 98.
After tea, before the rain came, we got to see all of Keaton Jennings’s second innings, including his dismissal for a sixth ball blob. Very unusual for an opening batsman to be dismissed twice in one afternoon.
Exam question for students of linguistic philosophy and amateur lovers of semantics: could/should Daisy and I claim to have witnessed both dismissals in those circumstances?
With a bit of luck, I/we will get to see Keaton Jennings score runs live soon enough.
Not only had the season flown by in a “lost time” manner, that day and evening similarly flew by.
There was a meet the players party in the evening which, if I recall correctly, was quite well attended by Durham guests as well as Middlesex players that year. Did Chas and I manage a quick chat with Colly at that one? Chas might remember.
And talking of remembrance of things past, the match turned out to be one to forget from a Middlesex point of view – see Cricinfo details here.
Before looking at that piece, I couldn’t have told you that the Kent v Essex game was the first of the semi-finals, but on reflection of course it was.
Daisy and I had played tennis that morning and I hunkered down with the TV soon after our return from Boston Manor.
In those days my set up at Sandall Close was a bit rudimentary – Daisy’s dapper Sony VAIO with a plug in thingie to her NTL doodah – or was it already called Virgin by then? Anyway, it was trailing wires and a bit Heath Robinson-like.
The semi-final went Middlesex’s way in a fairly convincing fashion. Daisy and I found that hard to believe, but excitedly realised that we had a final on our hands.
I vaguely remember texting Ed Smith between the matches, which was not a very good idea. I have no recollection of what Daisy and I ate, nor when we ate it, but I’m pretty sure we ate.
What a day. It’s weird that such a day yields so few new insights, but I suppose the reactions/sensations at the time, encapsulated in the MTWD links above, really do tell the story.
