This was the first of four days I spent at Lord’s during the ICC World Twenty20 tournament when it was held in England in 2009.
If that sounds a little excessive in the booking, it probably was but there was method to my madness.
The county members’ application form made it clear that the last Sunday of the rounds (when England were due to play) and the following Sunday, Finals Day, were completely sold out. My only hope for those days was to tick a box asking to go into a ballot for debenture returns for whichever days I wanted.
Frankly, I thought my chances of getting debenture returns were close to zero, but I ticked the box and said I’d be interested in either or both of those Sundays. Expecting nothing to come of that returns business, I also booked a couple of the less fashionable match days at Lord’s, so I’d at least get to see some of the world cup tournament.
Needless to say, I got a pair of superb debenture tickets for each of the fashionable Sundays as well as Warner Stand pairs for the two midweek dates I also booked.
I asked Mark Yeandle to join me for the first of the visits, an offer which he eagerly accepted.
It possibly goes without saying, but the second match was a cracker of a low scoring thriller, which made up for the damp squib that was the first match.
Repetitive – moi? Moi?? Moi???
Avid Ogblog readers might detect some similarity between Hippity’s story for this match and his MTWD report just a few week’s earlier. Recycling for different audiences and/or honest reportage of extremely similar experiences – read into it what you will. The little green monster is semi-retired now and anyway you cannot plagiarise yourself, you can merely repeat yourself.
It is sad to reflect on Phillip Hughes, who played such a huge part in that early part of Middlesex’s 2009 summer and who was so sadly cut down in his prime just five years later.
Astute Ogblog followers might read between the lines and conclude that I perhaps did some work that day and/but was able to spend some of the day at home with the internet radio on…
The evening of 11 June 2008 was the first Domestic T20 match of the year for Middlesex. I was editing the Middlesex Till We Die (MTWD) website along with Barmy Kev at that time.
We were finding it difficult to generate much interest for the T20 tournament among Middlesex fans – this was to be the sixth year of the tournament and Middlesex had rarely managed to avoid humiliating defeats and low positions in the qualifying tables so far – not once had our beloved team even managed a quarter-final berth.
So deep was the low interest quotient, we were struggling to find match reporters for several of the matches, including the first. I agreed to “commission Hippity” to write a piece based on listening to the internet radio for the first match, which was away in Southampton, if no-one came forward to volunteer.
Then a full day’s work (for me, not for Hippity). Clients in the morning, a dash across town to London Bridge City Pier and a Z/Yen boat trip aboard the Lady Daphne that afternoon. Also, if I recall correctly, I needed to stay on a while and entertain one or two of the guests after the boat trip before dashing home.
I must have missed much of the Middlesex innings, as this extract from my e-mail to Kevin Hand at BBC Radio London (not to be confused with Barmy Kev of MTWD) attests:
Kevin/Big Al
Enjoying your commentary tonight enormously. Fun fun fun etc.
Problem is, I got home from work c 7:40 so missed the first 35-40 minutes of the game.
At the risk of boring less workaholic listeners, could you both update me…
Middlesex did very well that night. Hampshire had consistently been one of the most successful teams at T20; Middlesex had gone to Southampton and was winning the game well.
I got over-excited; even the BBC commentary team got over-excited, as this later extract from my e-mails to them attests:
Kev/Al
Get a grip.
Stumped/bowled/lbw – surely you can tell the difference. From here…I would say it was probably hit wicket.
So I decided that “Hippity” needed to file his match report in a hurry. To generate and/or build some interest in tournament. As much as anything else, I had meetings scheduled throughout the following day and was due to go straight to that evening’s game at Lord’s with a gang of people, so the report needed to go up quickly or not at all.
Why “Hippity” got it into his bean-filled head that one win meant that Middlesex were well on their way to winning the tournament, goodness only knows, but for once his mindless optimism proved to be justified.
Why “Hippity” thought that Delhi might have anything to do with it is more of a mystery. There was a shot at the ill-fated Champions League for the top teams, but I don’t think the Indian organisers had ever intended that tournament to take place in Delhi. In the end it was scheduled for Mumbai but had to be cancelled at the last minute following a hideous terrorist incident.
Anyway, given the late hour and early start scheduled for the next day, you can imagine how much time “Hippity” spent rattling off his rah-rah piece – here’s the link again. Indeed, looking at the timings on my e-mails to live commentators and the publishing time for the piece, “Hippity” must have written it before the match had completely finished.
The only other thing that needs explaining here is Hippity’s references to Gnomic the Leprechaun. At that time, Hippity had an imaginary friend of that name, who occasionally manifested as Charles Bartlett’s toy Yoda (see photo above). That now said, the matter seems to me to be fully elucidated, entirely normal and thus requires no further explanation.
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.
