The Second Tufty Stackpole v The Children’s Society Cricket Match, Much In Need Of Improved Memories, 4 August 2002

Another e-artists’ impression of village cricket by Dall-E and me

By way of contrast with the first Tufty Stackpole v The Children’s Society match, which I remember well and have documented in some detail…

…and even by way of contrast with the third match, which took place in 2004

…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:

Despite what happened in the cricket at Tufty in 2002, I’m sure the tea and libations after the match were up to the usual Tufty standards – see the report on the first match for all those sorts of details.

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 2002

The Children’s Society cricketers in 2002

The Very Second Z/Yen Charity Cricket Match – The First With The Children’s Society, 25 August 1998

We returned to the scene of the first Z/Yen charity cricket match, which had taken place just a few week’s earlier…

…again to play with Barnardo’s, but this time also with The Children’s Society.

I know that Ian Theodoreson and Bob Harvey gave us and their Barnardo’s charges every encouragement to make these evenings happen, but I have a feeling that neither of them made it to either evening.

Anyway, it was a very jolly evening and a great chance for people to get to know each other as well as mess around a bit playing cricket.

Not only did Barnardo’s still supply a bunch of dudes who knew what they were doing – see photo above…

…The Children’s Society was also blessed with some half-decent cricketers, including Chief Executive and glove man Ian Sparks:

Ian Sparks on gloves, Harish Gohil at bat; presumably this was warming up pre contest
Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett – starting as he meant to go on

I can’t remember in detail the playing conditions we came up with for this particular evening, but sort-of having three teams in an after work round robin in August was never going to work brilliantly as matches. I have a feeling we played sort-of eight a side with additional supply fielders from the sides that weren’t batting.

No slide rule – but the Barnardo’s score book and my own trusty light meter
Reservoir Dogs but without the ultraviolence? Kevin Parker (striding, front left), Rupert Stubbs (hatted, central), Michael Mainelli (arms folded in disgust, right).
Spot the ball (obviously going uppishly to backward square leg, that’s me batting)
Mainelli looks relieved to have been dismissed.

I still think the whole idea had started with Kevin Parker and some of the Barnardo’s team he was working with – I wonder if I can extract a confession from him.

Kevin probably doesn’t realise quite what a Z/Yen tradition he kicked off. Kevin was long gone by the time Garry Sobers came to watch us play, for example…

…but I digress.

We had a lot of fun with the Barnardo’s and Children Society folk in that summer of 1998.

Below is a link to all the pictures from both of the 1998 matches:

Cricket_1998 (1)