One additional point that I missed from the King Cricket piece, in the interests of brevity, is to describe where I was sitting and where Michael Vaughan was fielding that day at The Walker Ground, Southgate.
I was seated at the opposite end to The Waterfall Road end; The Barnet & Southgate College end, I should imagine it is called. Michael Vaughan was fielding at Fine Leg or “Fine Barnet” as that position is known at that ground.
Aggers: It’s going to be a close run thing deciding the “fine barnet of the match” today; it’s got to be down to either Alec Stewart or Michael Vaughan. Frankly they’ve both put in stunning performances, both superb exponents of the late cut…
Michael Mainelli and I had formed a tradition – I think 2006 was the third instance of it – that I would take Michael as my guest to a day of county cricket early season, before the crowds get larger and (most importantly) before the days get hotter.
Some like it hot, but Michael REALLY doesn’t like it hot.
So, Day 3, Friday, first county championship match of the season seemed just the ticket. In many ways it was. Middlesex v Kent. Good fixture. April.
The match was well advanced by the start of Day 3 but not too well advanced.
As tradition would have it…this sort of thing IS a tradition by the third time, possibly even by the second time…we watched the first session from the pavilion. Then, at lunch, as tradition would also have it, we perambulated on the outfield (smaller crowd than Middlesex’s glorious September 2016 match depicted above), then retired to Harry Morgan to grab some takeaway New York deli-style food – probably a chopped liver sandwich to share plus a salt beef sandwich each plus some pickled cucumbers.
We took our feast back to Lord’s in time to munch, drink some fine red wine and watch the second session of cricket from the Compton Stand.
The Compton Stand offered a rather binary choice; absolutely exposed to the elements in the upper tier, or caged in away from the elements in the lower tier. As I write in September 2019, that stand is being demolished, together with its smaller twin, the Edrich, to be replaced by more modern facilities.
Anyway, in April we opted for the upper and the sunshine while we ate our hot food, rather than the wind-tunnel cooling effect of the shady, cagey lower tier.
We finished our grub around about the time that Nick Compton’s fine innings for Middlesex entered the nervous nineties. I explained to Michael that the lad had been on Middlesex’s books for some years but this was, hopefully, to be his breakthrough season. He had just scored a big hundred in a University warm-up match but this might be his first County Championship hundred.
Shouldn’t we move now to a shady spot? Perhaps the pavilion again or the Warner?
I asked Michael, noticing a few beads of sweat and a slight reddening of the face. It was proper sunshine that day and by mid afternoon it was really quite warm.
Let’s wait and see Compton get his hundred. We should see Compton get his first hundred from the Compton Stand,
Michael replied; a cricket aficionado in the making.
Michael’s early effort in 1998; a Z/Yen & Barnardo’s & The Children’s Society match
We could go down to the lower tier and get some shade…that’s still the Compton Stand…
I suggested.
No, said Michael, we shouldn’t move. He’s in the nineties.
Now anyone who knows Michael surely knows that he is one of the least superstitious people you are ever likely to meet. He’s logical. He’s rational.
But cricket seems to get all of us…yes, even Michael, with quirky superstitions. Perhaps all sport does this to some extent, but cricket has superstition in spades.
And of course Michael had enough exposure to cricket through our charity matches and stuff to really understand that a century is a big achievement and a maiden century a really big thing…
…Nick Compton also knew the importance of making a ton, of course…
…so Nick’s nervous 90s went on for rather a long time…it seemed like a very, very long time…
…while Michael got hotter and hotter; ruddier and ruddier. I asked him a couple more times if he wanted to move, but Michael was glued to the cricket and absolutely intent on not jinxing Nick Compton’s century quest.
Within moments of Nick achieving his hundred, Michael was up and we were away in the direction of the shade. I think we went back to the pavilion for the rest of that very pleasant spring day.
The key takeaway (for those unwilling to click) is that I did not think anything like as highly of this book. I did enjoy Ed’s third book, What Sport Tells Us About Life, but that is another story.
My second commission from MTWD was to review each of Ed Smith’s first two books. Ed had been signed by Middlesex in the autumn of 2004.
I had been meaning to read Playing Hard Ball for some time anyway, so the commission was a good excuse to read that one.
I got to know Ed quite well that summer of 2008, when he was injured and sitting around the pavilion a lot second half of the season. Coincidentally, he and his then girlfriend (now his wife) Becky lived just around the corner from me in W2. I would run into him/them occasionally in the neighbourhood for a few years after that injury forced his early retirement from the game.
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…
