Our now traditional Z/Yen outing to see the Middlesex v Surrey T20 fixture at Lord’s.
We had a few late dropouts this year which allowed us the opportunity to treat some other people; Mark Duff, Sebastian Yeandle, Clive Hyman and Niclas Ljungberg to name a few.
We did the usual “everyone chip in to a picnic” thing; I was in the office that afternoon, so went round the supermarket with Linda to ensure we had good food coverage.
I recall that Sebastian was keen to see round the pavilion, so came suited and booted for that purpose – I took him round during the break between innings and showed him some cricket from the Long Room at the start of Surrey’s reply. We saw several wickets fall but, because of our Long Room location, we didn’t see Nick Gubbins ignominious tumble, failing to celebrate a catch – click here.
Niclas Ljungberg is but one of a long line of people from non-cricket playing countries whom we have tried and mostly failed to get into cricket.
Niclas, with typical Swedish politeness yet directness, wrote the following in his thank you note:
Many thanks for hosting the picnic at Lord’s yesterday, and for the enjoyable combination of plenty good food and introductory sports education.
Mark for some reason still seems to think this is a superior form of athletic activity to cross country skiing, I guess he just hasn’t quite seen the Northern light yet.
For those, like me, of the Middlesex persuasion, the important bit was that the ground was heaving with people and they saw Middlesex play really well on this occasion – click here for the scorecard.