Tag: Middlesex

Stats The Way (Aha Aha) I Like It, MTWD Piece, 14 January 2009

Another winter piece for the Middlesex Till We Die (MTWD) website.

This one was supposed to go up the week before, but Andrew Strauss messed up my editorial plans for that week by selfishly being appointed England captain.

Still, I’m sure the piece was just as effective on 14 January as it would have been on 7 January:

Stats The Way (Aha Aha) I Like It – click here.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex till we die – Stats The Way (Aha Aha) I Like It

 

Andrew Strauss Of Middlesex – England Captain, MTWD Piece, 7 January 2009

I recognised Andrew Strauss’s appointment as England cricket captain with a rapid editorial piece for the Middlesex Till We Die (MTWD) website.

Andrew Strauss Of Middlesex – England Captain – click here.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex till we die – Andrew Strauss of Middlesex, England Captain

MTWD Keeps Up With The Times, MTWD and Times Newspaper Piece, 6 December 2008

I’d forgotten about this piece until I stumbled across it while going through my MTWD articles. Patrick Kidd of The Times asked me to write the piece for their on-line thingie.

Here’s the MTWD article about it – click here.

Just in case SportNetwork lose the above piece in the meantime, I’ve uploaded it here on Ogblog, so this link will work.

The link to The Times article no longer works – perhaps because of the pay wall (although I’d expect that to at least ask you to pay) or perhaps The Times used similar techies to the SportNetwork crowd.

Anyway, here is the text I submitted – I don’t suppose Patrick edited it much.

Ged Ladd, from the Middlesex supporters’ website “Middlesex Till We Die” http://www.cricketnetwork.co.uk/boards/list/s66.htm?67 presents an Ashes Top Ten of heroes who have not only played in Ashes Tests but have also played first class cricket for Middlesex.

 

  1. Andrew Stoddart. Andrew Stoddart played 16 tests against Australia, captaining half of them, in five series between 1887/8 and 1897/8; his highlight being 173 in Melbourne in a winning 3-2 cause in 1894/5, starting a great tradition of Middlesex players captaining Ashes series victories home and away.  A stupendous sportsman, he played both rugby and cricket for England; he also famously once scored 485 in 370 minutes for Hampstead against Stoics after a sleep-free night on the razz.  Sadly, he found the game of middle-aged mundanity harder than elite sport; in 1915 he took his own life, perhaps due to debts and ill health.

 

  1. Sir Pelham (Plum) Warner. Plum Warner was a distinguished Middlesex and England Captain who captained England to a 3-2 series win in Australia in 1903/4. Like several of the Middlesex and England captains, his personal record in tests was less distinguished than his captaincy record, but Plum Warner did more than enough to get a stand at Lord’s named after him; the one between the Pavilion and the Grandstand.

 

  1. Patsy Hendren. Elias Henry Hendren scored over 57,000 first class runs between 1907 and 1938, including 51 tests, 28 of which were against Australia at a very respectable twixt-wars average of just under 40, including 3 tons and 10 fifties. His one test wicket was against the Aussies.  An Ashes hero and a Middlesex Collosus; any man with 170 first class hundreds to his name is something special.

 

  1. Gubby Allen. George Oswald Browning Allen is another Middlsex and England captain with a Lord’s stand named after him (the small one between the Pavilion and the Tavern Stand). Genuine all-rounder Gubby Allen quietly took 21 vital wickets in the Bodyline series. He also captained England in an Ashes series, but (unusually for a Middlesex and England captain) it was the losing (2-3) tour of Australia following the Bodyline series.

 

  1. Denis Compton. The Brylcream Boy himself not only scored 39,000 first class runs and played 78 tests (phenomenal numbers for a player whose career spanned the war), but he also regularly appeared as a winger for Arsenal. He averaged just under 43 in the 28 tests he played against the Aussies (compared with an overall test average just over 50) and is the third of our Middlesex Ashes heroes to have a Lord’s stand named after him; between the Grandstand and the Edrich Stand (Bill Edrich just missed the cut for our heroes list).

 

  1. Jeff Thomson. One half of the “Lillian Thomson” pairing which terrorised England’s batsmen on several occasions, Thomo took 100 England scalps at just over 24 in his 21 test outings against England. Given his personal success, he was on the losing side surprisingly often for a top-ranking Aussie; the next three Middlesex and England Ashes heroes were a large part of the reason for his failures.

 

  1. Mike Brearley. A master of the art of captaincy, Brearley captained England to three Ashes series wins in the 1970s and 1980s; his only low point being a 0-3 series defeat in the “non-Ashes, aluminium bat” tour. His personal batting effort, averaging just over 22 in 19 Ashes matches, is almost beside the point in the context of that unique degree of Ashes captaincy success.  Self-effacing and currently president of the MCC, it seems unlikely that a Lord’s stand will be named after him for the foreseeable future.

 

  1. Mike Gatting. Twenty-seven tests against the old enemy at an average of 37+, he scored 4 tons and 12 fifties against Australia. One of Middlesex’s finest, he will long be remembered as the victim of Shane Warne’s “ball of the 20th century” and also (hopefully not for too much longer) as the last England captain to bring the urn back from a winning Ashes tour, 1986/7.

 

  1. John Embury. A 64 test veteran, that’s a massive test haul for an English off-spinner. 25 of those tests were against Australia; he took 78 scalps in those tests at under 35s.  Effectively a bowling all-rounder, he also managed a Brearley-busting average of 28 in his Ashes outings; undoubtedly a man who lifted his perforamances for the big occasions, none more so than the battles against Australia.

 

  1. Glen McGrath. England’s utter nemesis for donkey’s years (ask Atherton, for example), his 30 test outings against England yielding 157 wickets at just over 20 including 10 fivefers tells just part of the story. His ankle-busting encounter with a stray practice ball just before the start of play at Edgbaston in 2005 was probably the single most significant Ashes series-turning event in history.

 

If the editor were to allow me the indulgence of an eleventh man, wicket-keeper John Murray would make an excellent addition to the above ten to make up a complete team.  It’s a little batsman heavy but a bit of medium pace from Gatt in his prime plus some of The Brylcream Boy’s dobblers would provide some makeshift bowling on the rare occasions it would be needed with that strong four-man attack.

 

I’d like to thank Seaxe Man at MTWD whose excellent three-part series of articles on Middlesex’s England Captains, “Did You Know?”, provided much inspiration for several of the above pen-portraits:

http://www.cricketnetwork.co.uk/main/s66/st89359.htm

http://www.cricketnetwork.co.uk/main/s66/st89910.htm

http://www.cricketnetwork.co.uk/main/s66/st90380.htm

 

Middlesex CCC End of Season Forum, Lord’s, 2 October 2008

I don’t remember a great deal about this forum, to be honest, but Barmy Kev’s MTWD report of same – click here – fills in most of the gaps for me.

Kev is silent on the party afterwards, but I’m pretty sure that, in those days, the forum was in the Thomas Lord Suite whereas the party was in the Allen Stand’s Middlesex Room.

Given Kev’s rapid report and silence about partying afterwards, I’ll guess this wasn’t one of the occasions when the libations continued afterwards in the Tavern or the Robert Browning.

Middlesex v Gloucestershire at Lord’s, Day 3, 5 September 2008

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.

Here is the King Cricket version of the story, which was published in October 2008.

Just in case anything ever happens to King Cricket, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex v Gloucestershire County Championship match report

Here is the MTWD version of the story, co-“authored” with Barmy Kev, published that very evening, 5 September 2008 – click here.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex till we die – Kadeer Today, Gone Tomorrow, Day 3 Middx v Glos

If you really want to know what actually happened in the match (yes, there was sort-of a cricket match), here is a link to the on-line scorecard.

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.

Dinner With John White at Hereford Road, Preceded and Followed by a spot of cricket at Lord’s, 3 September 2008, plus a snippet on 4 September 2008

Wednesday 3 September 2008

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.

The restaurant got and still gets good reviews:

As for the cricket, I did return the next day…

Thursday 4 September 2008

…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.

As for the Friday and the remainder of the match – I wrote that up at length at the time for both MTWD and King Cricket – all linked up and explained through the following Ogblog piece – click here. Rain-affected draw for those uninterested in clicking through to read the slapstick exploits of Ged and Charley “The Gent” Malloy, yet interested in an ancient match result.

A Good Month For The Worms, 2 August, 4 August, 9 August, 24 August 2008

Lots of Worm activity (i.e. Janie’s “Wormleighton” family and friends) during August 2008 if my diary is to be believed, but no photographic evidence. For more detail on some of these activities, we might need to ransack the attic and retrieve Janie’s diaries.

Saturday 2 August – Phillie.

My diary also has “Anth” crossed out, so I think the original idea was for Anthea and Mitchell to visit when Phillie was with us, but I think they came the following week and Phillie alone stayed with us at the maisonette and had dinner. Tony was away on business if I recall correctly/

Monday 4 August – Middlesex v Somerset floodlit.

I took Paul (Belmonte) that evening and gave him the pavilion experience for some of the game and also I recall watching a fair bit from the Upper Edrich Stand. I think this was only the second floodlit game at Lord’s; at least only my second experience of it.  Here is a link to the scorecard.

Saturday 9 August – Anth

Not sure what we did but quite possibly Anthea and Mitchell came over for dinner. I think my diary would have more detail if it had been a bigger adventure than that.

Sunday 24 August – Worms

The Monday was a bank holiday of course. This will almost certainly be Hil and Chris; I think we might have all have gathered at their place in Bristol – i.e. including Phillie, Tony and Charlie. I think this was the year that Janie and I went down just for the day – a late lunch barbecue – then drove home. Quite a success I seem to recall.

Correction/update: It is clear from Janie’s diary that she and I stayed at the Hotel Du Vin in Bristol that time – possibly our first stay in that place.  We stayed in Berringer and at that time they parked us at the hotel. Still a success though, as described.

Barmy Kev Grapples With The Authorities While I Do Some Judging, Middlesex v Leicestershire Days 2 & 3, 22 August 2008

I tended to get strange e-mails from Barmy Kev in those days, while I was editing Middlesex Till We Die (MTWD):

“Can’t get me poll up”…

…being one that caught my eye as I tried to do forensics on my strange diary scribbles and the even stranger MTWD match reporting for some of this match.

Then I found the Barmy e-mail I was actually looking for:

We seem to be just about OK with reporting for 5 days…
…I will attend 1st session Thurs morning.  A strange irony, luckily I realised over weekend my passport has just expired.  I have arranged emergency passport re-issued at Victoria Thurs morning which takes 4 hours. While waiting I’ll be at Lords.  May ask some Leics players if I can help them out while I’m there.
It is very unlikely I’ll be attending another game this season.

The joke about Leicestershire players was born of the feeling at that time that a couple of counties were relying very heavily on the Kolpak ruling to import a great many players rather than grow their own. Frankly, at that time, Middlesex were not doing much better in the home grown v imports department, but at least had been sowing the seeds of a much improved youth system.

Anyway, it seems that Barmy Kev sort-of produced a report and I sort-of filled in the gaps and here is a link to that sort-of report – credited to Kev feat. Ged. 

My diary suggests that I wasn’t at the ground on the Thursday but was there on the Friday… …I think I managed to rejig things a little and get to the ground for some of the day both of those days.

My main task at the tail end of that week was going through the Payroll Giving Awards; an event for which I was chairing the panel of judges at that time. Lord’s was an ideal venue for going through the thick file of applications and that match perfectly timed for the task. I just didn’t want match reporting duties as well.

Unlike the Thursday, on the Friday it seems we had an embarrassment of riches in the reporting department; Daria and Seaxe Man. It seems I had tried to relieve Seaxe Man of the duties but that he had missed the message, so I published two very different takes about the same dull day of cricket – click here.

Derbyshire v Middlesex In Spirit But Not In Person For Half A Day – MTWD Match Report, 12 August 2008

Monkey-face – writer.

Sometimes we found it hard to recruit reporters for every day; especially for away fixtures such as, with all due respect, Derbyshire.

So on this occasion, we “recruited” Hippity and Monkey-Face to report for half a day – click here.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex till we die – Bunny and Monkey Spend a Half Day in Derby

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…

…there was no happy ending to this match for Middlesex supporters a few days later – click here for scorecard.

2008 Twenty20 Cup Finals Day, Observed From Sandall Close, 26 July 2008

I remember everything, I remember nothing. In some ways, the senses were heightened, in other ways, numbed.

Cup finals day comprises two semi-finals and a final.

This link, to the Wikipedia entry for the day, sets out decent reviews of the two semi-finals.

Before looking at that piece, I couldn’t have told you that the Kent v Essex game was the first of the semi-finals, but on reflection of course it was.

Daisy and I had played tennis that morning and I hunkered down with the TV soon after our return from Boston Manor.

For MTWD, I set up an interactive report, the idea being that those at the ground and those watching from home would chip in with comments that would eventually comprise a sort-of modern era report. It sort of worked for a while – here is a link – but soon descended into a comments thread.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex till we die – Twenty20 Semi-Finals Interactive Report

In those days my set up at Sandall Close was a bit rudimentary – Daisy’s dapper Sony VAIO with a plug in thingie to her NTL doodah – or was it already called Virgin by then? Anyway, it was trailing wires and a bit Heath Robinson-like.

The semi-final went Middlesex’s way in a fairly convincing fashion. Daisy and I found that hard to believe, but excitedly realised that we had a final on our hands.

I vaguely remember texting Ed Smith between the matches, which was not a very good idea. I have no recollection of what Daisy and I ate, nor when we ate it, but I’m pretty sure we ate.

The final was a very exciting affair. Here is the Cricinfo scorecard.

I think I watched most of the final in the bedroom and I clearly recall Daisy being unable to watch towards the end of the match.

The agony of the close finish soon switched to untrammelled joy at the tournament victory. The comments on that “semi-final interactive report”, which in the end covered comments on the whole day, summarise many of the MTWD sentiments.

Our MTWD match reporter for the day was Daria, who wrote a really excellent piece which we published on the Monday – click here.

What a day. It’s weird that such a day yields so few new insights, but I suppose the reactions/sensations at the time, encapsulated in the MTWD links above, really do tell the story.