To Southwark Park – not to queue for a Royal view, but for the London Cricket Trust Awards 2022.
The event was held four weeks later than intended; not deferred for the Royal mourning, but because 6 September, the original date for the event, was a rare “cats and dogs rainy day” in the 2022 London summer.
We now have 62 live cricket facilities in London parks, with 15 more on the schedule to be ready for the start of the 2023 season.
We had a planning meeting in the Southwark Park Pavilion before the public event.
Ed Griffiths and his team had produced a glorious carrot cake for the awards event, emblazoned with 62 flags to represent the 62 sites already implemented.
Ian Moore of the ECB looks happy, but Arfan Akram of Essex looks concerned
I spotted Arfan’s concerned look and realise that the cake was oriented 45 degrees askew from the direction in which the symbolic Middlesex, Essex, Kent, Surrey flags were pointing.
I reoriented the cake, much to everyone’s relief.
We also discussed our plans for expanding the London Cricket Trust universe over the next couple of years, including a fairly major incursion into Crawley, Sussex (at Sussex and the ECB’s request I hasten to add).
Crawley is the 33rd London Borough – remember where you heard it first.
Then to the awards evening and some exhibition cricket on the Southwark Park pitch – a six-a-side match between Southwark Park Cricket Club and Southwark Park Cricket Club – the clever money was on Southwark Park to win.
This particular batsman was a “six or out” sort of character, who heaved a couple of big shots our way and then missed a deceptively straight ball and got cleaned up. The bowler was so surprised by his own achievement, he even looked to the umpire for “the finger” on a clean bowled
Then Ed Griffiths initiated the awards ceremony, in some ways apologising for the lack of “Grosvenor Hotel / Dorchester Hotel” glitz and glamour, while at the same time celebrating our more down to earth style and purpose.
I am delighted to report that the emblematic carrot cake was properly oriented in the refreshments tent by this stage of the evening.
Then the awards.
Chris Whitaker, the Kent Trustee, presented an activation award to Richard O’Sullivan of Teach Cricket, in particular for his work with Bexley Grammar School.
Then Sophie Kent (our Surrey Trustee…just to avoid confusion) presented a Local Authority activation award to the Royal Borough of Kingston-Upon Thames for activating five sites in 2022:
Cricketer-ambassador Bryony Smith picked up the award on Kingston’s behalf
Then Jawar Ali, our Essex Trustee, presented a site award to Grassroots Trust for their work at Seven Kings Park – a site that has gone from strength to strength since we had our first launch there, exactly four years ago:
Finally, it was down to me to award the Local Authority of the Year Award to Enfield, for the superb cluster of four sites implemented in the spring of 2022 in the Edmonton (south-eastern) corner of Enfield – Pymmes Park, Jubilee Park, Ponders End Park and Church Street Rec – neighbourhoods with many people but (until now) almost no public cricket facilities:
Tim Harrison collecting his award from your truly
Given the 14th century origins of Pymmes Park, I did consider bursting into 14th century song, but at the vital moment I felt a wave of pre-minstrel tension, thus sparing the ears of the audience.
The evening was a great opportunity to meet up with those we see regularly as part of our cricket charity work along with some of the (usually) unsung heroes whose hard work actually makes the stuff we plan happen.
62 sites is great news, but we aim at least to double that figure, which will mean lots more work, as well as more enjoyable events like this one, over the next few years.
On 18 May, for example, I visited my friend Rohan Candappa in Crouch End…
Crouch End’s equivalent of the bread line emerges daily outside the Sourdough Shop
… and then went on to meet Sophie Kent, one of the LCT Trustees, to take a look at Hornsey Cricket Club to discuss a prospective indoor cricket facility project (not an LCT one).
Half-close your eyes, wish and imagine…
On 9 June we had a face-to-face LCT meeting at The Oval. Dumbo, my car, was very excited at the opportunity to park within the hallowed grounds of The Oval, adding to his bucket-list collection of “cricket grounds within which I have parked”:
Why shouldn’t Dumbo have a bucket list like everyone else?
But I digress.
Birchmere Park via New Zealand, Hendon & The Woolwich Ferry
I started the day in New Zealand. Not physically of course, but I did Zoom over to Wellington for a short meeting on Z/Yen business.
Then I set off for Hendon, to Middlesex University for a game of real tennis, in which a sixteen-year-old utterly took me to pieces. I had pretty much been able to keep up with him a couple of weeks ago, but his regular play post GCSEs and the rapid improvement available only to people 40 or more years younger than me means that he is at least 10 handicap points better than me now and shall soon sail off into the stratosphere of only wanting to play with serious sporty folk and pros.
It doesn’t get much better than this
Having allowed bags of time to get to Birchmere Park in Thamesmead, I trusted Waze to sat nav me there and was led to expect to arrive more than an hour before the event, via the Woolwich Ferry. Time for a wander around when I get there, I thought.
I had never attempted the Woolwich Ferry before. My only real knowledge of it, from my youth until this day, was traffic announcements on Capital Radio & Radio London saying that only one ferry was operating and that there were hour-long queues as a result.
I didn’t listen to the radio on my journey from North-West to South-East London. Why should I? The sat nav does that traffic guidance job these days…
…except that the sat nav clearly didn’t know that today, as in my radio-listening days of yore, the ferry was operating with just one boat and the queues were some 40 minutes long.
The Woolwich Ferry from a Dumbo perspective
Still, it was another tick on my bucket-list and Dumbo was very excited to travel by boat again, for the first time since his trip to Ireland with us six years ago.
Fortunately I had allowed so much extra time for this journey, even with the long wait for the ferry, I still arrived at Birchmere Park about half-an-hour before the event.
New Zealanders have an expression for their weather – all four seasons in one day – which can apply to English weather too and certainly did apply on this day. In fact, I think I can safely say that I experienced all four seasons in one two-hour journey from Hendon to Thamesmead.
By the time I arrived at Birchmere Park it was unquestionably the rainy season. It was bucketing down.
My trusty weather app suggested that the rain would ease off after about 15 minutes and even suggested that it should stop completely to allow us a 45 minute event in dry weather.
And so it was. The weather smiled on us for our launch. Only the multiple rainbows in my picture present clues to the changeable weather on that afternoon.
As the Trustee of a cricket charity that is putting dozens of non-turf pitches into parks around London, I am glad to point out that only a non-turf pitch would be playable just a few minutes after the sort of deluge we experienced that afternoon.
Can you see the join?
These cricket pitch projects tend to need several organisations to come together. In this case, not only the LCT, the ECB and the local (Greenwich) council, but also Peabody and in particular its Thamesmead Regeneration arm. It was very interesting to meet the various dignitaries and activists from the area. I also sensed genuine interest in progressing more projects of this kind in that corner of Greater London.
I took my stroll around after the main event. Birchmere Park is a charming place with a lake and plenty of bird life on the far side of the park.
The London Cricket Trust is springing back to life this spring. Our mission is to put cricket back into London’s Parks. I am one of the trustees and we have been going about that business for more than three years now.
For reasons I don’t really need to explain, pretty much all of the London Cricket Trust (LCT) activity we had planned for 2020 had to be postponed.
That doesn’t mean that we have been inactive; far from it. A few dozen new pitches went in during 2020 and a few dozen more will go in during 2021; mostly the early part of the year so they can be used this coming summer.
A few weeks ago, out of the blue, we were contacted by Harjot Sidhu, aka London Writing Guy, who wanted an interview for his sports blog. Naturally I said yes.
That picture is making me feel hungry. Anyway, I’m sure you get the point.
Still, we managed to hit it off through the interweb/blogosphere and the result I hope is a useful addition to Harjot’s blog. It is certainly a timely piece about the LCT.
Timely, because the London Cricket Trust website is to be formally launched in just over a week’s time (you may sneak in and have an advanced peak through the links on this piece – I won’t tell anyone if you don’t).
We also have plans for site launches in May and July, which we hope to be able to confirm and announce soon. One of those is due to be at one of the West London sites between my place and Harjot’s, so hopefully we’ll get a chance, belatedly, to meet in person then.
We thought it would be a good idea to have a meal together after the Trustees meeting this time. We have been gathering now since 2017 planning non-turf pitch and net facilities for London’s parks, without ever breaking bread together…until this evening.
The Three Cranes location in the City worked well for me, giving me the opportunity to clear some work at the office (yes, believe it or not I did also do some work in this event-filled week) before the Trustees meeting at the Three Cranes, which was followed by the joyous meal and libations.
This evening was an excellent opportunity to all get to know each other a bit better. Not just we Trustees, but also the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) people who have been working tirelessly on our intiiative (and participation cricket more generally), plus Ed Griffiths and his team who have been doing so much wonderful pro bono work on behalf of the LCT over the years.
One of many good thoughts that emerged from the evening is that we still haven’t actually watched any professional cricket together; we’re hoping to put that right during the 2020 season.
A very enjoyable evening.
Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner & Trophy Match, Spaghetti House Holborn, Thursday 12 December 2019
One NewsRevue alum who, sadly, only just made it a few months beyond the 20th anniverary of that show was Ivan Shakespeare. We “Class Of ’92” types who were NewsRevue contemporaries of Ivan meet on an irregular occasional basis, three or four times a year, to keep in touch with each other, eat, trade jokes, share bizarre quizzes and also to remember Ivan. We’ve been doing that since mid 2000, a few months after Ivan died.
In the seasonal version of our gathering, the stakes increase markedly and we play one of the quizzes for The Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Trophy. I am proud to be the donor of the original Memorial Trophy, which was first contested in 2002, about 18 months after the dinners started.
It’s a bit like The Ashes, but for comedy writers rather than for cricketers.
Much like The Ashes, the trophy is a thing of exquisite gimcrackness; it’s absence of taste simply has to be seen to be believed:
Observant readers will see that I won that trophy once; in 2004Some real names from the world of quizzing on there: Hugh Ryecroft for one, Barry Grossman being another.
The problem is, unlike The Ashes, the trophy is inscribed with the winner’s name each year…
…and the original trophy is running out of sensible places for the embazoning of the winner’s name…
…OK, there never were sensible places for the emblazoning, but now we are even running out of silly places to inscribe.
The solution: a new trophy. Acquired through the sort of tenacity that only Graham Robertson could possibly deploy – an eBay purchase which he needed to make twice because the first eBay vendor of tasteless out-of-date royal gimcrack merchandise took Graham’s money and did a runner.
The assembled alums at our new spiritual venue, The Spaghetti House in Holborn, decreed that Mark Keegan, who won the original trophy three times, should become “steward-for-life” of the original trophy.
Mark Keegan, delighted with his original trophy. Graham Robertson looks on, enviously.Barry Grossman shows off the new trophy……then wears one for the team by winning the new trophy this year
As usual I came quite close but no cigar for me in the trophy stakes since 2004. Barry Grossman scooped the glittering prize this year – with sincere commiserations to Barry – he could have been an also-ran, but instead…
It wasn’t all quizzes and trophies; oh no, no, no, no, no, no no. There was plenty of time for eating, drinking, topical humour and some sense-of-irony-sapping politics on what was, after all, an election night.
Moving swiftly on from the will-to-live-depleting topics back to the humour section, John Random produced another set of personalised Christmas crackers this year, based on the BBC Radio 4 programme In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg.
My cracker contained a note posing the intriguing question:
What do you call a deer with no eyes?
Frankly, I had no idea and would gladly have said, “no idea”, but for the answer provided, which instead said, in Braggian tones:
With me to discuss what you call a deer with no eyes, I have Ian Harris, Professor of Mammalian Opthalmology at Gresham College and author of In Darkness Let me Dwell – and Professor Jonny Hurst from the University of Manchester, author of Champagne Super Over: Oasis In Popular Culture.
There is sort-of a tradition in recent years for at least one person’s order to go horribly wrong at the festive dinner. This year it Barry Grossman who suffered the indignity of being brought his main at starter time and a starter-sized portion of his chosen main at main course time. The nice waiter did his best to sort things out.
Ironically, Barry went on to win the quiz, as did Jonny Hurst in 2017 when it was his turn to be the brunt of the ritual service humiliation – in those days at Cafe Rogues in Holborn not far from the scene of this year’s crime. That year, 2017, John Random’s personalised crackers had been based on the Moral Maze. He likes his thinky-Radio-4 programmes, does our John.
Anyway, the night of 12 December 2019 will surely be remembered as a great night for NewsRevue alums…and Tories…ironically.
Z/Yen Seasonal Lunch, The Old Bailey, Friday 13 December 2019
Z/Yen team gathered in the Alderman & Sheriff’s apartment
In the world of crime fiction, criminals have a regular, unfortunate tendancy; returning to the scene of the crime. Whether that is true in the real world or not I have no idea. Nor do I have the faintest idea what that point might have to do with this section of this piece.
Anyway, just three days after the Z/Yen Alumni function at The Old Bailey, the current Z/Yen team regrouped in that astonishing building for the staff seasonal lunch.
On this occasion we found ourselves in the smaller function room, used daily for the judges pre-luncheon drinks, after enjoying our pre-lunch drinks in Michael and Elisabeth’s apartment. Once again Sean, their footman, proved his skills as a photographer – thanks Sean.
The meal was a very good one; smoked trout fillet, followed by a posh duck dish, followed by an apple tart-like desert.
The wines tasted suspiciously like those excellent wines we’d enjoyed earlier in the week and seemed suspiciously well food-matched for the lunch, thanks to the combined skills of Gordon Clunie and (in all modesty) me.
Linda produced one of her fiendish seasonal quizzes – let’s not even talk about how badly Simon Mills and I did as a so-called team on that one.
Secret Santa visited (I got some baritone ukulele strings) and Santa also brought everyone a small box of super posh chocolates.
Then the traditional Z/Yen seasonal sing song. Being exceptionally woke for a boomer, I again recycled a previous effort this year, cunningly adding a topical reference ensuring that no-one would realise that it was recycled…
…unless they looked at the copyright years and/or version numbers and/or read this piece. Here is the 2019 version of The 12 Days Of Z/Yen Training. Excellent, was the performance, especially the “Five Forces” motif, which brought tears to my eyes each time around.
It is a fascinating musical phenomenon that this particular song works in so many different keys: C, C#, B, D, D#, A, E, G#, G, F & F#…all at the same time…at least, it did that afternoon.
After the formalities, plenty of informalities with some additional quizzing, singing, chatting and libations until it was chucking out time at The Old Bailey.
Chucking out time at The Old Bailey on a Friday afternoon works remarkably quickly and effectively:
You are welcome to stay on downstairs if you wish…but no-one will be here with the keys to your cell until Monday morning…
…everyone scarpers sharpish at that juncture.
Some ventured on for more libations at a local hostelry, but after five events in five days, all I could think about was getting home and lying down for a good few hours.
Why did one of the greatest cricketers of all time, AB de Villiers, pop along to Deptford Park, more or less hot off the plane from South Africa, to help the London Cricket Trust (LCT) put cricket back into London’s parks?
Because AB de Villers is a very decent chap, that’s why.
The LCT is a joint venture between the four counties with a London presence: Essex, Kent, Middlesex & Surrey. I am the Middlesex Trustee.
We chose Seven Kings Park in the Borough of Redbridge as the venue, because we have put a full suite of new facilities into that park. So we needed to wait for all that work to be completed ahead of a full media launch.
The day had finally arrived. I needed to go into the city afterwards and also needed to get Dumbo (my car) in for service:
Dumbo – a pint-sized Chelsea tractor…more like a Chelsea tricycle really
Point is, I went to the gym, drove out west to the house, then to drop Dumbo at the garage and then commuted to Newbury Park…which I imagined might take a heck of a lot longer than it did take. So I got to Newbury Park ludicrously early.
On emerging from the station, I started fiddling with my map-app to work out what to do next; a non-trivial matter in getting from Newbury Park to Seven Kings Park. A pair of suited and booted people, one male, one female, had also emerged and were carefully studying a large (A3) colour map. I guessed that they might be visiting dignitaries on the way to the same event, so I asked them where they were going.
“Regal House” said the man, turning the map one way up and then the other in bemusement. “Can’t make out one end of this road from another.”
I glanced at his upside down map and noticed “Regal House” clearly marked on the map, about 300 yards to our right just along the main road.
“You need to go that way”, I said, pointing, “I think it’s just past that building, there”.
Some 45 years after earning my cub scout map reading badge, the skills are still coming in handy.
Buoyed by my success and the fact that I had already done one good deed for the day, I got my head around the map-app and strode towards Seven Kings Park, arriving a mere, Dicky Bird-like, 45 minutes early.
I wasn’t the first Trustee to arrive; Chris Swadkin had made an even more cautious time allowance for his journey from Kent.
The new Seven Kings Park nets
There had been a distinctly autumnal (indeed, even misty/mizzly/drizzly) feel to the early part of the day, but the sun started to show its face and then came out full glow just in time for our joyous launch.
Soon there was a melange of cricketers, dignitaries, media folk and a small army of schoolchildren for the launch. Ed Griffiths doesn’t organise things by halves.
The speeches were brief, to the point and note perfect. In particular, Jas Athwal, the head of Redbridge Council, spoke with great passion about growing up in that neighbourhood and playing in the Park. His hope is that these facilities help inspire youngsters to play and love cricket as he does. Jas recorded a version of his message in a short video later in the morning:
Jas’s reminiscences of playing in that park as a kid reminded me a little of my own, albeit on the other side of London and albeit Jas did not go into details about the players he tried to emulate…
…actually, now I come to think about it, Jas did mention his heroes. In particular, Jas mentioned Bishen Bedi. I remember trying to emulate Bedi too, in the summer of 1974. I could manage the loop but not the spin and certainly not the inch-perfect accuracy. But I digress.
Leshia Hawkins, who heads up the ECB’s participation and growth team for London, spoke from the heart about the initiative and how helpful it has been for the four London-based counties (Essex, Kent, Middlesex and Surrey) to come together, with the ECB, to progress community cricket in this way.
Forhad Hussain (the Essex Trustee) spoke briefly on behalf of us Trustees, emphasising the collaborative nature of the initiative, while Dawid Malan said a few kind words on behalf of the county players who had turned out to help make the day special.
Since I started drafting this piece, there is now an official London Cricket Trust short video about the launch, which I have embedded below:
Somehow I have found my way into both videos, albeit very briefly. 15 seconds of fame; perhaps less.
When the players, most of the coaches and kids gathered at one end of the new non-turf pitch for the press shoot, we were left with a fairly large gaggle of schoolkids and one coach at the other end, so I took on the wicket-keeping duties.
I tried to crouch, catch and stump like Alan Knott…
…although I probably looked more like a clumsy git trying to do the policemen’s dance in When The Foeman Bares His Steel…
…not least because I was wearing one of my smartest lounge suits rather than cricket clobber.
Still, I was taking the ball surprisingly well and was only denied several stumpings by an over-zealous ECB official (who shall remain nameless) consistently shaking her head rather than raising the finger at square leg. Does she not realise that those schoolkids were not there to gain encouragement, nor were they to enjoy themselves at cricket; surely they were there to have their characters built in the school of hard knocks that only cricket at its cruellest can provide?
Personally, I got completely lost in the fun of actually playing cricket; when I eventually looked around I realised that the dignitaries, cricketers, media folk and my fellow trustees had all gone, leaving just me, the coaches, the kids and the teachers.
I was five minutes late for the Trustees meeting we had scheduled to take place in the pavilion after the launch. Not my style, to be late for such a transparently frivolous reason, but I think I might have been forgiven in these special circumstances.
We’ve had plenty of media coverage with still more promised (at the time of writing, less than a week after the event).
Our most prized bit of media so far comes in the form of social media – specifically a retweet by AB de Villiers to his six-million-plus followers:
It’s hard to express what a special day this was. I can hardly wait until we can do some more of these launches. We’ll be putting in dozens of facilities across London over the next couple of years, so I’ll be putting my hand up and no doubt going to quite a few.
I have entered the MCC real tennis tournaments (handicap variety) for the second time this year – singles and doubles. With great difficulty, four of us had eventually arranged our “Round Of 16” doubles match for the late afternoon of 2 July; a day which Janie and I had arranged to take off work.
As fortunate coincidence would have it, Ed Griffiths had to reschedule the soft launch for our London Cricket Trust for that afternoon, so I was able to accept, subject to being released in time for my match and blagged Janie an invite for that low-key event too.
I shall report more about London Cricket Trust on Ogblog anon – once we have progressed from soft launch to hard launch. Suffice it to say at this stage that it is an innovative charitable venture, bringing together the four London-based counties (Essex, Kent, Middlesex & Surrey), designed to put cricket facilities – mostly in the form of non-turf pitches – into London’s parks and commons.
Ed Griffiths arranged for us to have a short Trustee meeting before the event – in part to prepare our low-key, short shpiels and in part to go through some regular business. For some reason, Janie seemed to find the idea of sitting in the Coronation Garden on a glorious summer day more attractive than sitting in a meeting room observing a Trustee meeting, but promised to return for the event, which she did.
For some reason Janie took this – perhaps to help her navigate her way back to the Tavern Stand Box for the event
The event went well, with representation from each of the four counties involved and from the ECB who are funding the early phase investments and managing the tendering processes for the installation of pitches etc. We should be ready for a formal launch, with several facilities up and running, before the end of this season.
I then hot-footed it across to the tennis court to get ready. My partner to be, Iain Harvey, had previously let me know that he thought that we were on the wrong end of the draw for this tournament (which I took to mean basically him drawing lowly me as his partner) and especially this match up, against Messrs Friend and Muir – a very experienced pair.
On arrival on the day of the match, Iain tried to put me at my ease by saying, “we’ll do well to get one game off these two”. I wondered what Ed Griffiths might make of this motivational technique. Not quite the style I could imagine Ed adopting.
Trying my best, studiously observed by my partner
Actually we did rather better than get one game, although not in the first set. We took the second set 6-5 and even managed to hang on in there to 5-5 in the deciding set, before succumbing in heartbreaking fashion to the deciding game of the deciding set. It was a bit of a thriller and I think all of us were a bit surprised at how competitive the match became in the end.
Of course I was disappointed not to qualify, but it is all a learning experience for me at this early stage of my real tennis “career” and think I exceeded expectations in that match, which is a sign of progress.
Let’s see how far I can go in the singles tournament – I’m still in that one – with the Round Of 16 still to play – and/but I have a fair bit more experience at singles. Not that I shall be going around Lord’s saying “it’s coming home” or anything like that.
Anyway, Janie took some vids. I rather like this one – where I am on the hazard (far) side on the right and emit a bestial roar as I play my shot, while Janie emits a supportive yelp when Iain subsequently wins the point for our team:
My quirky piquet serve didn’t much work against this level of opposition, but on this one occasion it did:
I even hit a winner which Janie captured on film, although it was rather lucky to end up a winner, I admit:
Janie should have taken more vids, because it seems that the only ones she took depicted us winning points…
…which is not really telling the whole story of the match…but it is perhaps telling her story of the match.
