Tag: Lord’s

Middlesex v Leicestershire, List A Match, Lord’s, 9 August 2004

Janie and I formed part of a very sparse crowd for this National League match, which was meant to be 45 overs-a-side, in 2004.

The crowd was especially sparse because the game, which had been scheduled for the Sunday, was moved to a reserve day on the Monday because Leicestershire found themselves in the final (and indeed winners) of the almost new Twenty20 tournament that year.

But Janie and I had booked a day off that Monday anyway and the weather was deceptively good earlier in the day.

I remember only a few details about this match; Janie remembers less. I do recall sitting at the front of the Tavern Stand, with Darren Stevens fielding right in front of us.

Slightly later image, here with Glenn Hoddle of all people, from: https://www.londoncounty.co.uk/blog/2010/06/19/in-praise-of-darren-stevens/

Daisy (Janie) wanted to know about Leicestershire’s celebrations and party after their cup-winning success a couple of days earlier.

For a while, Darren Stevens played Daisy’s questions with a characteristically straight bat. But Daisy’s line of questioning and her persuasive manner can bamboozle even the most seasoned batsman. Eventually he failed to pick her metaphorical doosra, which was expressed roughly in the form…

Oh go on, you can tell me, I won’t tell anyone…

…at which point he spilled a few beans about the celebrations and party – now long-since forgotten by us, even if that victorious night remains memorable to him.  The details he passed on will have been mere crumbs.

Still, when the rain came to interrupt Middlesex’s rather poor innings before it might well have in any case been brought to a premature end, Janie and I took refuge in the Middlesex Room.

There we and a few other refugees from the rain joined “the Middlesex gossips”, as I used to describe the regulars who tended to reside in that room.

I vaguely remember Auntie Janet expressing an interest in Mark Cleary, although Ottis Gibson and Claude Henderson had been the pick of the Leicestershire bowlers that day. I think this day might have been the only time I saw Charlie Dagnall bowl.

As it became clear that the weather was clearing up and that the Leicestershire innings would go ahead, reduced to 20 overs due to rain, the mood among the Middlesex fans became quite pessimistic.

“It’ll be a Twenty20 innings for them and they are the Twenty20 champions; we don’t stand a chance”, was the prevailing view. We (Middlesex) were offering a pretty depleted bowling attack that day too, due to injuries, wear and tear restings etc.

But Daisy’s view was laden with inside information:

I’m not so sure – they had one heck of a party to celebrate their cup win  on Saturday, which by the sound of it went deep into yesterday…

This is what happened in that match, in the end.

Four points to Middlesex.

In the end, Middlesex topped that division that season and gained promotion – but without that win we’d have only come third and not been promoted.

We were there, folks, we were there…

England v Pakistan Test Match With Janie & The Duchess, Day Two, Lord’s, 18 May 2001

This was the first of several occasions I treated The Duchess, Daisy’s (Janie’s) mum, as well as Janie, to a day at the Lord’s test match.

My diary tells me that I booked The Tavern Concourse for this day, which suggests to me that this match – basically part of a warm up mini series ahead of that summer’s Ashes – had not sold well to the members, so an opportunity arose for the hoi polloi (as I then was – not even a member of Middlesex yet) to snap up some decent seats. Ironically, these days, as a member, I tend to choose to sit in that “despised” members area precisely because it tends populated by cricket loving members & friends, many of whom are also my tennis pals.

Returning to May 2001, I no doubt had made The Duchess envious with talk of my new-found test cricket pals and exploits the previous season…

The Heavy Rollers Double-Up For The First Two Days Of The England v West Indies Edgbaston Test Match, 15 & 16 June 2000
England v West Indies, 5th Test, Oval, 31 August 2000 but not 4 September 2000

…which she had enjoyed, with me and Janie from the other side of Marylebone at the end of the Lord’s test:

Following The Lord’s Test Match In The Car, Then Bach At The Wigmore Hall With The Duchess, 1 July 2000

Anyway, I scored three tickets for the Friday of the England v Pakistan test of 2001, little knowing that Day Two would in effect become Day One, as the first day was a washout.

In 2001, washouts at Lord’s could still easily spill into the second day, as this was before the laying of the wonderful modern drainage system, which I think was done some 18 months later.

But we were in luck. The weather improved, Lord’s properly dried out, and we got a full day of cricket.

Phew.

Because it would have been my fault had we not got much or any cricket.

Not only that, but we saw England do rather well, albeit going slowly, losing only four wickets in the day. We saw Michael Atherton, Marcus Trescothick, Nasser Hussein, Michael Vaughan and Graham Thorpe all score runs. Thorpe’s innings was the highlight. We even saw Ryan Sidebottom score four as nightwatchman.

The Duchess no doubt told us many times over that Howard had been a MEMBER of the MCC at Lord’s and that she would have hung out with him the pavilion if only they had allowed in women. Instead, she hung out with him in the Tavern at Lord’s – this stand where we are sitting used to be the actual front of The Tavern you know…and of course she would always be with Howard in the pavilion at the Oval, where they would frequently have a drink with people like Dennis [Compton], Ted [Dexter], Peter [May], Ken [Barrington], Tony [Locke], Jim [Laker], The Bedser Twins, Keith [Miller], Ray [Lindwall], Neil [Harvey] and of course dear, dear Richie…

…I hope I’m not boring you all, dear readers.

“…and another thing…”

Janie’s LA Cabs receipt from that day is, for reasons unknown, still in her diary. £25 to pick up The Duchess, then pick up us, and take us all to Lord’s.

Here’s the scorecard from that match, which England won convincingly.

Zimbabwe v Australia At Lord’s, World Cup Match, 9 June 1999

This was the first time that Janie (Daisy) ever visited Lord’s.

It was my second ever, and last, visit to Lord’s in the 20th century. It was also the only time I actually bought tickets for Lord’s that century, having been taken as a guest on my sole previous visit there:

My First Visit To Lord’s, England v Pakistan Day Two, 26 July 1996

Unaccustomed as I was to buying tickets for Lord’s back then…oh boy have I made up for it since…and probably a bit slow of the mark for the World Cup to boot, I ended up getting Lower Compton seats some rows back. All has changed since (he says, 25 years later), but back then the Lower Compton was a wind tunnel affair through which you got a somewhat restricted view and in particular had no clear view on a scoreboard.

Who knew that it can be really cold in London at a cricket match in June? Who failed to learn from this 1999 experience?

Middlesex v Australians, Lord’s, 19 June 2010

Once I became better acquainted with Lord’s for a while I would book the Lower Compton front row, which avoided the wind tunnel and tended to have a decent view. But never again did I make the mistake of buying tickets in the middle or rear of that stand. The new Lower Compton is SO much better.

Returning to 1999, we nevertheless had a great day, despite the ordinary seats. It is so difficult not to have a good day at Lord’s. It was even, somewhat surprisingly, a good match, with Neil Johnson & Murray Goodwin keeping Zimbabwe in the hunt for most of the match. All the Cricinfo resources for this match can be found here.

My First Visit To Lord’s, England v Pakistan Day Two, 26 July 1996

Picture taken from the Compton Stand at a Test some 20 years later.

There are only cryptic messages in my diary, but I do remember this day well:

Cookie Lords

Charlie Barnett 98 before lunch

Olly

Heather Rabbatts

Cookie in this instance is James Cooke, who was doing a bit of associate work with us, mostly introductions. As it turned out, the most fruitful introduction Cookie made (from my personal/selfish point of view) was introducing me to Lord’s.

Believe it or not this was my first visit to Lord’s. Little did I know then how much of my time I would end up spending in that wonderful place.

Why Cookie mentioned and I wrote down that factoid about Charlie Barnett, is a mystery. Perhaps Cookie had met or was related to Charlie Barnett?

I wrote down the names Olly and Heather Rabbatts in different coloured ink from the other notes – I’m guessing I wrote the latter two while at Lord’s with Cookie. I cannot remember who Olly is/was. I do recall that Cookie wanted to introduce us to Heather, whom he knew. She was a high flyer who at that time had recently become Chief Executive at Lambeth.

It was an informal invitation – just the two of us, me and Cookie sitting in the Compton Stand. That stand was still quite new then and did not yet have the sweep/link to the Grandstand, as the new Grandstand was still a year away.

England were not a good side in the mid 1990s and looked out of their depth batting against that fine Pakistan bowling line up, which included Wasim, Waqar and Mushtaq.

Here is a link to the scorecard from the match.

I remember Cookie providing a splendid picnic – I guess that was to be the prototype for my informal hospitality picnics in the coming decades.

I’m sure I thanked Cookie at the time but there is no way I could have thanked him sufficiently for planting that Lord’s seed in my psyche. So 20+ years and hundreds of visits later, I’d like to thank Cookie again for the introduction to Lord’s.