In the high hills of Yunnan Province, in South-West China, on the lower reaches of the Tibetan plateau, you don’t expect much in the way of cricket experience, least of all playing the game, but when you travel, stuff happens.
I reported this extraordinary event on the King Cricket website, where I write occasional pieces under my nom de plume, Ged Ladd. Janie and I have called each other Ged and Daisy since the mid 1990s.
Big Papa Zambezi Jeff Tye presenting me with my Heavy Roller shirt– thanks to Charley The Gent Malloy for the image – grabbed from his vid.
I have been encouraged to write up this particular Heavy Rollers visit now, in December 2021, as King Cricket and his partner in crime Dan Liebke have arrived at this test match in their podcast series, The Ridiculous Ashes. This test is Series Three, Episode Three – click here or below:
I haven’t listened to that podcast yet – my plan is to write up The Heavy Rollers experience and then listen.
For reasons I don’t quite understand, I have no photographs from 2009 in the “Charley The Gent” collection – just a video of Big Papa Zambezi Jeff Tye handing out the Heavy Rollers shirts on the morning of the first day:
It might just be that the photos from that year never reached me and therefore are omitted from what I thought was a canonical collection. If Charley furnishes me with photos in the fulness of time, have no fear, they will find there way to this piece.
My log records that it was a bumper year for Heavy Rollers, attendance-wise. Ashes years tended to be like that. Here is the Heavy Roll call (did you see what I did there?):
Big “Papa Zambezi” Jeff Tye;
Nigel “Father Barry”;
Charley The Gent Malloy;
The Boy Malloy;
Harsha Ghoble;
Biff;
Tufty Geoff Young;
David “Peel” Steed;
Dan “Peel” Steed;
Ged Ladd.
Others might well be able to chip in with additional memories, but my recollections of this one are slight and a bit idiosyncratic.
The Night Before – 29 July 2009
On arrival the night before (29th July), I recall that there was a bit of a scramble for the “better rooms” at Harborne Hall, although by that year (our second at the venue) I had concluded that the larger rooms at the top of the old building had some disadvantages to them such that my own preference was for a well-located slightly smaller room. I thus avoided the potentially contentious debate by deferring to my elders while still getting what I wanted.
I’m fairly sure it was this year, 2009, when I ran into my friend Maz (Marianne Tudor-Craig) at Harborne Hall, which, at that time, was still a VSO training & conference venue and Maz was still a VSO-nik at that time. It was strange seeing her in that setting while I was having a cricket break with my mates.
Day One – 30 July 2009
Obviously the single most important event of the day is captured on video for all to see – here’s the link again if you missed it above:
The rest of Day One was a bit of an anti-climax, certainly cricket-wise, as it rained for much of the day. I’m pretty sure that The Steeds would have smuggled in some wine boxes disguised as picnic-bag chillers and a fine picnic to go with it too.
I recall that nephew Paul “Belmonte” was at the ground that day and joined us for a while during one of the many rain breaks.
I also recall that, at one point, I was so “mentally unoccupied” while wandering around in a rain break that I allowed a young blond Npower saleswoman persuade me to change energy suppliers on a promise of, I blush to admit it, £200 off my energy bills for switching. Npower retained my business for several years after that.
In the absence of a 2009 photo in our maroon-coloured shirts, here is a picture of eight of us (only Biff and Tufty Geoff missing) from the previous year in the same place (Priory Stand front row) in our dark-coloured shirts:
Day Two – 31 July 2009 – Ridiculous Moment Of The Match
Forget whatever Alex “King Cricket” Bowden and Dan Liebke tell you in Series 3, Episode 3 of The Ridiculous Ashes, the most ridiculous moment of the match was around our seats at the start of Day Two.
By this stage of our proceedings, Charley “The Gent” was curating a fair bit of the Day Two picnic. As is Chas’s way, he was busying himself sorting out the contents of several bags of goodies at the start of play.
Despite several of us saying to Chas that the day’s play was about to begin, Chas was looking down in his bags when Graham Onions took a wicket with the first ball of the day.
Chas was disappointed missing that ball, but then returned to busying himself with his bags.
Despite several of us warning Chas that Onions was running up to bowl his second delivery, Chas continued busying himself, eyes down inside the bags…
…missing the fall of Michael Hussey for a primary – the second ball of the day.
Naturally Chas then gave the game his undivided attention for the attempted hat-trick ball and several subsequent deliveries of the ordinary variety.
We got plenty of play to see on the second day, although the mood of excitement was lessened because the weather forecast for Day Three was shocking, so (even during the exciting Day Two) there was a sense that the match was inevitably destined to be a draw.
I do hope I can supplement this piece with memories from other Heavy Rollers.
Where did we eat the night before the match? And the evening after Day One? I don’t think we played at all that year, but maybe we did. Hopefully the hive mind of the Heavy Rollers will help.
For several years now I have written occasional pieces about cricket for the King Cricket website, under my nom de plume, Ged Ladd. Janie and I have called each other Ged and Daisy since the mid 1990s.
The King Cricket website has very strict rules about match reports: “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.”
This particular day was a rather important one; this was the day that England defeated Australia at Lord’s for the first time for 75 years, but none of that is apparent in my King Cricket Match Report, click here.
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.
This was the second piece of mine published on King Cricket.
It supports one of King Cricket’s themes – cricket equipment in unusual places.
The centrepiece of the article is a photograph I took of a monk at Rumtek Monastery in Sikhim who was wielding a cricket bat in our direction when Janie and I visited the place in 2005.
I believe this momentous day was my first ever match report for King Cricket. At the time, I was still editing the Middlesex Till We Die (MTWD) website, so I also co-wrote a match report for that one.
I had been campaigning quite hard for some time for MTWD match reports to be impressionistic and alternative, rather than traditional narrative reports of the game. In the early days of MTWD, providing narrative reports was a useful “free service” for fans as it wasn’t so easy to find match reports on-line. But by 2008, there was little need or demand for an amateur version of rapid narrative reportage on-line, although several of the reporters seemed wedded to “ball-by-ball match reports” (as Barmy Kev tended to describe them).
Meanwhile, I’d discovered the King Cricket site and loved his match report 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.” However, King Cricket sought match reports as fillers to be used weeks or months after the event; yet would not (as a commercial site, could not) simply recycle material that had been published elsewhere first.
This pair of match reports is, therefore, probably the only example of me writing pretty much the same story in different words for both sites. From then on, I continued with occasional pieces (as well as editing) with MTWD for another couple of seasons while writing wholly different occasional stuff for King Cricket.
In King Cricket and MTWD match reports, Ged and Daisy are nicknames/noms de plume for me and Janie. Friends (such as Charley “The Gent” Malloy) are always referred to pseudonymously. If my diary is to be believed, Charley was a substitute as my guest for that day, as the day is marked in my diary as a stumpfmerde, which means the original idea was to visit Lord’s that day with “Timothy Tiberelli”. Something important must have come up for Timothy.
One of the regular/irregular meet ups between me and John White. John had not yet been to Lord’s to see proper (i.e. red ball, white clothing) cricket, nor had he yet done the pavilion thing.
As it was my turn to choose the eating venue, I hatched a plan for the meal to be at Hereford Road (which I was sure would be to John’s taste) and for both of us to finish work early for a change, starting our late afternoon at Lord’s. My e-mail to John a couple of days before:
We’re meeting early at Lord’s if you are still on for that – I have 4:30/4:45 in my diary. I have booked Hereford Road for dinner – excellent restaurant between Lord’s and my place – owned and cheffed by the former chef from St John.
So John joined me at Lord’s for an hour or so of cricket and the informal tour of the pavilion, then the restaurant, both of which he seems to have enjoyed – John’s subsequent e-mail words:
As always a lovely evening. It was very kind of you to let me into Lord’s. Although nobody is really that interested I have been endlessly describing the various bars, characters and atmosphere of the place. I don’t know if you won? Orient managed a 2-0 win away at Walsall on Saturday if you’re interested.
…but again only for the last couple of hours, primarily as a convivial meeting place with Steve Tasker to go through some UNISON business; probably thinking through project budgets for 2009. I’m sure we got to see a bit of cricket and enjoy a beer at the end of the day as well.
With grateful thanks to Alan Cooke for this photo.
I think this test match might well have been my first sighting of live cricket that season, given the scheduling at Lord’s and the timing of our trip to France in late April.
The weather was less than special for that match. I recall having been disappointed to get some rather ordinary-sounding seats (Grandstand I think) in the county members’ ballot, only eventually to be pleased for the cover given the weather.
We got best part of two sessions of cricket on the Thursday, which was better than we had expected given the forecast on the day itself. We witnessed Brendon McCullum batting better than anyone else and Jimmy Anderson bowling better than anyone else.
I made up one of my bagel-based picnics for that Thursday – I know that because Cookie mentioned them in his thank you note:
In particular, I enjoyed the bagels (a decision at last) and the Lords ambience. Hope you get a decent amount of play with your second Lords sitting.
By second sitting, Alan meant that he knew that Janie (Daisy) and I were due to go on the Saturday. Unfortunately, Saturday it pretty much rained all day. I don’t think we even left the flat, secure in the knowledge that any break in the rain would be very temporary, so I’m pretty sure Daisy and I witnessed the half hour or so of play that day on the TV, ate the picnic food in the comfort of the apartment and found other ways to amuse ourselves. One of those rare occasions I got my money back for a day of cricket that didn’t happen.
It seems that Chas was luckier and got to see play on the Sunday. He sent me this photo to prove that he had been there:
Vaughan caressing the ball to the boundary, taken by Charles Bartlett
The usual Heavy Rollers gig is Edgbaston, of course, but this year there was to be no test match in Brum.
Indeed, there has been much musing and debate since June 2007 as to whether this outing comprises a Heavy Rollers event or not.
In short, it does as far as I am concerned.
The evening before the match started, we were supposed to have a net at Old Trafford. Charles had arranged it all. The Old Trafford lot had been reluctant at first, priority for test match teams, can’t have oiks in the same nets as international players, blah blah. But when Chas explained that it was our tradition to net at Edgbaston the night before the match (based on a sample of one previous occasion, the year before, negotiated through similar reluctance), someone at Old Trafford was daft enough to relent and take our booking…but was then too polite to tell anyone to keep the place was open for us.
Result – disappointment the night before – only consolation being an amazing meal at Yang Sing (yes, my idea, yes, I know what I am doing, Chinese food-wise) for the four of us who had ventured that far north. Given the fuss-pot group involved: Nick, Harish, Charles and “me-no-fuss-pot” , the Yang Sing team worked wonders with a feast with plenty of food for all to enjoy.
The first day at the test was a day to watch England batting pretty well. Chas was still fidgeting about the net; I suggested that our best chance of real redress (i.e. a net) was to try and get them to allow us a net the next morning before the start of play. So we went to see the indoor school people and managed to find a suitably apologetic and sympathetic lady. She agreed that we had been seriously inconvenienced, to the extent that merely getting our money back was not adequate; she also managed to arrange for us to have our net at 9:00 am, before play the next day. She even arranged for us to have a parking space at Old Trafford when the inevitable question came up. Yes, Chas could then leave the car at Old Trafford all day. Quite a result.
So in the end, we were able to drive into old Trafford for Day two of the test early in the morning, as if we owned the place. Into the nets and let the fun commence. Around the time I came to have my bat, a small posse of West Indian stars turned up in the adjoining net. I especially remember Ravi Rampaul bowling to Shiv Chanderpaul. I also remember having to encourage the heavy roller guys to bowl at me rather than rubbernecking at the adjoining nets.
Whether Shiv Chanderpaul rubbernecked to observe my technique I couldn’t say, as naturally I was concentrating hard on my batting – watching the ball all the time, all the way. But Shiv did make a 50 that day, so I suspect he picked up a few ideas through observation in those nets.
The day got weirder once we were in our seats. Someone behind us spent more or less the whole day on his feet in a Borat mankini. He and his mates were also doing some strange business, passing around a whole cooked chicken while singing its praises. And of course the inevitable Old Trafford beer snakes etc., as was the case Day One.
I also ran into Mike Redfern and a bunch of his mates from the Red Bat Cricket Collective. I noticed the Red Bat shirts walking past us and stopped the guys, asking them if they were by any chance still in touch with Mike. “We sure are – he’s sitting over there with us”, was the reply. Really nice to see him again.
Of course we went home at the end of Day Two (driving off into the sunset straight from the ground), but the test remained weird after we left Manchester, with a streaker incident the next day. Strangely, that incident was recently (at the time of writing, December 2015) reminisced about on King Cricket – here.
