Zara Larsson making a mockery of the pavilion dress code.
Janie and I went to the final of the Hundred…again.
Pretty much everything I want to say about the day is beautifully summarised in the King Cricket piece, “authored by Daisy”, in which I am Ged and Janie is Daisy:
If anything were to befall the King Cricket website, you can read that piece here.
The only details to add, as King Cricket match reports religiously omit anything about the cricket itself, are:
the women’s final was Welsh Fire v London Spirit, which the latter won. This was the first time a domestic home side had won a white ball trophy at Lord’s since the 1980s, so we were dancing in the seats of the Lord’s pavillion that afternoon;
This brace of matches (women’s and then men’s) was also a Nell Mescal concert.
Pretty much everything I wanted to say about our afternoon and evening was captured in a King Cricket piece, which was published with alarming speed, I think because it touched on one of KC’s pieces about Dan Lawrence’s gyratory bowling action.
As is so often the case with these matches, the women’s one was closer and in that regard far more entertaining. We didn’t stay to the end of the men’s one. We rarely do, regardless of how it is going. You CAN have too much of a good thing – especially when it starts to get a bit chilly in the evening.
My only other comment/memory is a conversation I had with a charming fellow when we were milling around in the Tavern Stand awaiting the post match presentations and inevitable Jimmy farewell ceremonials. He had come down to London from a remote place in the North of England, the exact location of which escapes me but I think Northumbria. He was recently retired and was also recently widowed. He had treated himself to some fancy photographic equipment and was delighted to be able to photograph Jimmy’s last match at close quarters and seemed similarly delighted that he could talk photography with someone like me while he waited.
Did my new friend get better pictures than me?
Almost certainly. But mine with my phone are not too shabby.
Everything I want to say about this matter is covered in the King Cricket piece that I wrote up in my capacity as Ged Ladd.
Alex “King Cricket” Bowden was clearly taken with the piece, as I submitted it on 21 March 2024 and it went up on King Cricket less than a month later.
In a minor break with tradition, we gathered at that Mexican institution, Cafe Pacifico, in Covent Garden this year, at Andrea’s excellent suggestion.
In compliance with the strict traditions of our group, Andrea was late. In the modern era, Andrea is able to pre-announce her tardiness by sending a message to everyone explaining why, on this one occasion, she has been delayed. It always feels in keeping with our long-established social mores. If Andrea is ever to be on time I think she should message us to warn us of that – the shock of her timely arrival might be too great for some of our ageing tickers.
Andrea back then
Anyway, it is always worth the wait to see Andrea, just as it is always worth the wait to see everyone from the youth club gang again. We used to gather almost every week, of course – youth clubs tend to be a bit like that.
Time rolls on, but when we gather it feels as though the decades have changed this gang remarkably little. Coincidentally, Cafe Pacifico similarly felt much like the place I remember trying many decades ago; probably because it is little changed.
As always, we had a very enjoyable evening.
Wednesday 31 May – A Redoubtable Bout Of Doubles Tennis At Lord’s
Our real tennis court at Lord’s has been sequestered by the cricket authorities “for media purposes” during the major matches this year (don’t get me started) so it made obvious sense to have a game the evening before the temporary closure.
Indeed, even without the closure, I realised that it was a personal tradition for me to play the day before an Ireland test at Lord’s – I have now done so every time such a test has ever been held throughout history (both times):
This time it was a ninety minute doubles helping to warm up my friends Andrew Hinds and John Thirlwell who are partnering each other in the in-house tournament. We had a three-set epic, which my partner, Bill, and I managed to take at the very last gasp in a decider, having been one-set-all, five-games-all.
Great fun and a good battle.
Thursday 1 June – England v Ireland Day One At Lord’s
Pavilion View
I went to the gym to get a bit of exercise ahead of the excesses of a few days at Lord’s. I togged up for the pavilion and enjoyed 30-40 minutes of cricket from there before lunch, chatting with Nick Brown from Dulwich College, exchanging interesting thoughts and word on our respective initiatives on community participation cricket.
After lunch, it seemed if anything to get colder in the pavilion. Then the sun came out and I realised that the pavilion would warm up slowly, whereas I might warm up more quickly in one of my favoured sunny spots in the Tavern Stand – if I could get there before the stampede from the chilly Pavilion and Warner.
Made it. No sweat. It was still quite cold, even in the sun, so no sweat.
I watched and read a bit, interrupted only by the arrival of Sidney Yankson & his entourage – I was inadvertently sitting behind their chosen patch. Sidney is one of my real tennis pals, whom I first met when he organised a match between the MCC and Honourable Artillery Company five years ago.
Mid afternoon I received a message from Jonny “Twophones” Hurst to say that he had a spare seat in the Compton Lower and was wondering whether I would care to join him and his mate, Huge Morg. Who could say no to such an invitation.
Jonny Twophones & Huge Morg
We spent the rest of the afternoon watching cricket and nattering…which is not exactly an unusual combination of pastimes when a Lord’s.
All very enjoyable.
Friday 2 June – England v Ireland Day Two With Awesome Simo
I decided to get to Lord’s well early to secure good Tavern Stand seats for me and Simon Jacobs. I figured that the previous day’s good weather and the sunny start would make the Tavern Stand very popular, which it did.
Despite being on picnic duty which included some hand-made onion bagels from Papa Joseph’s place, I was still early enough to secure a brace of end of block seats in the second row.
Tavern Stand seats with excellent view of Jonny Bairstow’s warm-upsI also wanted to tell Janie, pictorially, that I had arrived safe, sane & sound
Simon arrived around 11:30, but not before my row had been invaded by several real tennis “stars” in exile from our beloved court with only cricket to watch: Tony Friend, Simon Martin & (latterly) James Coley.
An engineer trying in vain properly to equip a 19th century tennis court for 21st century media.
Unfortunately, much like the chinwag occasion, Simon simply couldn’t help himself in the matter of mentioning the names of despicable politicians, usually just after I had eaten a few mouthfuls of delicious smoked trout bagel or some of my “salad-in-a-cup” morsels. “Cruella” being the cruellest mid-mouthful blurt of the lot.
Still, we managed to get over all that and enjoy a glorious sunny day watching the cricket.
I did so little getting up and walking around on this day that I thought my right leg had utterly gone to sleep when I finally gave up on the day about 15 minutes before stumps – Simon had baled out about 10 minutes earlier. Fortunately the walk to Edgware Road tube brought my leg back to life.
I have no idea why a day of doing more or less nothing is so tiring, but I always feel in need of a long deep sleep after such a day of cricket and achieve same without any difficulty. Some people sleep during the cricket, of course, which is an entirely different matter and not usually my thing.
Saturday 3 June – England v Ireland Day Three With Daisy
We might only be here for six balls
We had no idea what to expect of Day Three. The result was pretty much no longer in doubt, but we wondered whether Ireland might collapse within an hour or make a day of it. They did the latter, very well.
We got to Lord’s well early, mostly to get a decent parking space rather than a decent seat but the early arrival meant that we achieved both.
That allowed us plenty of time to observe the England team warming up and interacting with the crowd.
Josh TongueMatty PottsChris WoakesChris & OllieWe need help to identify these three. Any ideas?Early morning autograph hunters
We did a bit of strolling around but mostly watched the cricket during the hours of play and chose to stroll during the lunch interval. The place was busy but not heaving on Day Three.
Daisy’s mum, The Duchess, seems to be moonlighting as a fast food outlet
I ran into yet another of my real tennis pals, Alastair Robson, during a pit stop, or “in the jacks” as Alastair so politely put it. Janie and I chatted with him for a while before the resumption, although we’ll hopefully have plenty of time to chat with him in Leamington in less than two week’s time on our way to Edgbaston.
Subsequently Alastair crafted some material for King Cricket, which I helped him to submit under the name Doctor Alexander Snoddie.
If anything ever goes awry with the King Cricket site, you can read that piece here.
The match even went on until tea, during which time, while politely putting away most of our things as the end was clearly nigh, I also did a bit of stretching.
A dedicated follower of fashionat tea
When England took the final wicket we made our escape ahead of the crowds, realising that a lead of 11 runs was not going to take much hunting down.
Back in mid September, I sat next to Amal at a 50th anniversary bash for Saddlers’ Scholars. Amal had been part of the very first batch of such scholars, while I had been part of the very second batch.
If you look very hard, you can see me just to the left of the tree
Naturally conversation got around to cricket and naturally Amal and I ended up arranging to have a net at Lord’s for old-times sake a couple of months later.
Everything I want to say about that evening was captured in a King Cricket report on the matter, published soon after. (Less than a year is “soon after” in King Cricket terms):
If something ever befalls the King Cricket site, you might click this scrape instead to read that report.
Amal’s recollection was pretty spot on, if this extract from the Alleyn’s Scribblerus 1974 is anything to go by. For some reason, Colin Page doesn’t mention Amal carrying his bat for 0* -can’t imagine why not. But apart from that…
Actually the visit on 30 August started off as a real tennis match in the morning, in which “The Coley Kids” (which sounds like a 1960s Saturday morning pictures series) took apart me and my doubles partner Andrew Hinds.
Never mind. We had a most enjoyable day.
Andrew and I consoled ourselves with a light lunch at The Ivy and then watched The Hundred women’s match together, before Andrew sloped off to Vicarage Road while I stayed on and watched most of the men’s match…
…before ambling home before the end.
Finals Day – 3 September 2022
Pretty much everything that Janie and I want to say about finals day has been said in our (Daisy and Ged’s) King Cricket match report:
We witnessed the whole of the women’s match and bailed out about 30 balls before the end of the men’s match, which turned out to be a closer finish than we anticipated. Never mind. We had a most enjoyable day.
If anything ever goes awry with the King Cricket site, you can read that piece here.
We had a very enjoyable day. It was bright and not all that cold.
Day Four: Sunday 5 June 2022
I had also bought Janie a guest ticket for Day Four – she likes to see the end of a test match and Day Four is often that. We could always pop back on the Monday if need be.
On this occasion, we knew there would be a result that day – the only question was precisely when would that be.
We got to the ground early to secure good seats although not many people turned up on a dank day to see a much shortened day of cricket.
Simon Doule looking a little glumJimmy looking surprisingly chirpy at the thought of batting. Always an outside chance
As it turned out, England batted with such purpose the match was completed within 25 overs.
Game Over
Janie thought the action was tremendous value for money…which it was…not least because the ECB deemed it to be a full refund day.
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.
Not much else to say, really, other than the fact that the rain that we dodged resulted in flash flooding and all sorts in West London, so I think we did the right thing to abandon the ground when we did.
