Tag: ODI

Three Cricket Watching Visits To Lord’s In A Week, 14 to 21 July 2022

These days I’m far more likely to visit Lord’s to play real tennis than I am to watch cricket; or at least to play real tennis AND watch cricket. But this rare week had me at Lord’s three times to watch cricket without playing tennis.

England v India ODI 14 July 2022

The first of the visits was for the one day international (ODI) between England and India. I don’t much go to ODIs these days (World Cup in England year excepted of course) but I had planned to take Ian Theodoreson to the test match in 2020 (until Covid scuppered such plans) and the most suitable date for a rescheduling was this particular ODI.

Ian has had a tendency to choose what turns out to be one of the hottest days of the year for his visits to Lord’s with me. He did so four years ago...

Two Sweltering Days At Lord’s, The First With Ian Theodoreson, The Second With Rohan Candappa – Part One: With Ian T, 23 July 2018

…and also four years before that…

Straight Outta the Upper Compton – a match report

…which might be connected with the choice of dates in mid to late July.

Anyway, this 2022 visit was Ian’s first in one of the wheelchair enclosures, a factor that at least allowed the opportunity for me to meet and host Sally Theodoreson for the first time, which was an absolute pleasure, plus an opportunity for the MCC to demonstrate one of the things it seems able to do very well indeed , which is to look after wheelchair visitors.

Actually, as it turned out, this day was far from the hottest day of the year – Janie and I had that “pleasure” to come at Lord’s a few days later, but still we were grateful to the stewards finding us some shade from which to view the match.

I made the substantive picnic – being smoked trout bagels, ham and cheese sandwiches, dry salads in cups plus plentiful fruits, not least some giant strawberries that were as big on flavour as they were in size. Sally and Ian brought the other items that make a picnic sing – savoury & sweet nibbles plus a very glug-able Shiraz wine.

England did rather well that day, against their run of surprisingly poor form in white ball cricket so far this season.

A very enjoyable day, albeit a very long one for Ian and Sally, motoring up from Somerset and back on the day.

The Hottest Day Ever, Middlesex v Sussex Day One, 19 July 2022

Daisy awaiting the start of play, on the sundeck, having bagsed a parasol – yey!

We had planned to meet up with Fran and Simon at Lord’s that day, after first visiting (ironically, give Fran’s now former profession) the dental hygienist first thing. In the end, Fran and Simon gracefully withdrew from the plans and we resolved to give the match a try, but we were very much aware that the forecast was for the hottest day since records began. We suspected that we’d only stay until lunch.

Actually it was pretty pleasant up on that deck during the first session, although everyone was wondering why Tim Murtagh had chosen to bowl on the hottest day ever, so some of the Middlesex regulars were getting a bit hot under the collar.

Don’t I look cool considering it was the hottest day EVER?

I wanted to show Janie the view from the top of the new Upper Compton, so we wandered around that way, bumping into one of my tennis pals, Russ, with whom we chatted for a while as the temperature rose.

We didn’t stay up top for long – the view was great and the shade welcome but the breeze was almost non-existent by 2:00 and it was getting seriously hot.

We went home to swelter in the discomfort of our own home for the rest of the day, still wondering what Middlesex had been playing at choosing to bowl.

Young Men At Lord’s, Middlesex v Sussex Day Three, 21 July 2022

There are just two places remaining on the planet where people address me as “young man”: Lord’s and Wigmore Hall – naturally I spend a fair amount of time at both places.

But in some company the phrase seems even more sarcastic than usual. For example, my third visit to Lord’s in a week, when I met up with young Jez Horne, who came to work as a summer intern at Z/Yen in the summer of 2005 and stayed for nearly 10 years…and Jez’s six-year-old son Nathaniel.

As it happens, I originally met Jez through Middlesex cricket. In fact, now I come to think of it, I conducted his internship recruitment interview while playing catch on the outfield at Southgate in the interval between innings of a Middlesex v Gloucestershire Sunday League match, 17 years ago.

Jez did a lot of serious numbers work with Z/Yen – scoring the charity cricket matches was the least of it

Returning to 2022, Jez and I agreed to meet up on this day while Jez was introducing six-year-old Nathaniel to the joys of Lord’s. It was a very enjoyable experience for me to witness a young child’s wide-eyed wonder at all the different viewing points and places we could show him there. Nathaniel had previously visited Radlett and Hove, which are both lovely grounds, but not, until that day, had he seen Lord’s.

Our circuit started in the Warner Stand, took in a photo-opportunity or two in the Grandstand, then we watched from the very top of the Compton Stand (from whence Nathaniel was sure the land below was flat and not a hill, as I kept asserting), then the lower Compton Stand (at which point Nathaniel changed sides and agreed wholeheartedly that the cricket field is indeed a slope) and then, before tea, the Upper Allen Stand.

We met plenty of people on our trek, including Barmy Kev, Russ (who was again wending his way home after tennis) and Fletch, who shared some thoughts on the “bowl first” decision with us.

Just before leaving home, I had found a small Virgin Active gimcrack beanie ball on a shelf, which I thought might come in handy…and it did.

Just before tea, as I started to wonder whether the little fella was ever going to run out of energy, we tried playing catch with him using that beanie ball. He struggled at first but within just a few short minutes he was getting the hang of it and catching far more than he was missing.

Come tea, Nathaniel wanted to see “Grandpa’s Garden”, as I tend to call the Harris Garden. (Well, Grandpa Harris WAS a gentleman of Marylebone, albeit not THE Lord Harris of Marylebone Cricket Club fame). In the garden, Nathaniel devised a game of catching and tag that might, to the untrained eye, seem to have the rule complexity of real tennis combined with the rule-adjustability of Mornington Crescent. The use of a hat to catch the ball would have met with particular disapproval had an MCC stickler for the laws of cricket witnessed the game.

Soon after tea, that energy lull finally occurred, so I said goodbye to the actual young men and reverted to being a “relatively young man” in the pavilion watching the remainder of the day’s play.

In there, somewhere

I had been due to play tennis early evening, but after messing up my right arm the day before on the modern tennis court, I had to gracefully withdraw, so spent a few minutes after stumps watching my would be fellow combatants play, before ambling home feeling very content.

The Day England Won The Cricket World Cup, England v New Zealand, 14 July 2019

We didn’t go.

Watching from the comfort of Noddyland rather than at Lord’s was probably for the best.

I’m not sure the noise and the stress of it would have been good for us if we’d been at Lord’s.

The sheer edge-of-seatness of it all wasn’t very good for us in the comfort of Noddyland.

By the end of it, not only was the World Cup match a tie-break thriller but so was the Wimbledon Final between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic.

Here is a link to the Cricinfo scorecard and copious materials about this epic match.

Here is an ICC official highlights package of the denouement:

Janie and I were wrecks by the end of that. Very happy wrecks.

A Day Of World Cup Cricket, Pakistan v Bangladesh, At Lord’s, 5 July 2019

I wanted to see a world cup match from the wonderful vantage point of the Lord’s pavilion. I figured that this particular match would be a decent opportunity so to do and I was right; I scored a pavilion ticket on application.

Of course, the only thing about international matches and the pavilion is that only members are allowed. Strictly no guests. That’s why most of us choose not to go to the pavilion on a major match day even when we can – because we normally choose to go with partners, friends etc.

By coincidence, I had a conversation about this matter on the Tuesday, with John Thirlwell, with whom I play real tennis, normally at Lord’s but on this occasion, while we are in exile for the world cup, at Queen’s.

John Thirlwell to the left of me, this picture from a battle at Queen’s in 2018

John had similarly, uncharacteristically, bagged a pavilion place for the Pakistan v Bangladesh game. We hatched a plan to watch the match together.

This proved to be a great plan from my point of view, as John:

The rump ire strikes back – Middlesex v Durham match report

John kindly sent me a message describing the location of the seats and the precise look of the bagsying materials. I got to said seats about 25 minutes before the start of play – John got back from his breakfast about 5 minutes after I arrived.

I got this stunning picture of the anthems and the ground from our splendid seats

I very much enjoyed watching cricket with John, who is knowledgeable about the game and/but wears his cricket knowledge lightly. We also chatted a bit with the gentleman next to us, who is a member who now lives in New Zealand but is, coincidentally, like us, a real tennis tragic. Not much chance of feeding his real tennis addiction in Wellington. He was a little peeved that he couldn’t feed that addiction at Lord’s on this visit – he usually does when he comes over for cricket.

Despite the cushions, I have learnt my lesson and made sure to take several walks rather than sit through the whole match. In any case, those walks were a real treat because there was such a festival atmosphere around the ground. Noisy, but in a very good-spirited way, with the Pakistan and Bangladesh fans competing to make celebratory noise.

In particular, on my walk during the innings break, the heave of people taking advantage of the many Asian food stands in the food village and picnicing on the lawns was a wonderful mixture of sights, sounds and smells. I could only try to capture some of the sights:

During the Bangladesh innings, John came for one of the ground circuits with me, which I think he also enjoyed. On our way out of the pavilion, we spied a sample of a new-style pavilion bench made of a padded material that ought to reduce or even eliminate the worst excesses of rump ire.

Change…don’t want it…

…said John. I chimed in…

what’ll we do for aggravation if we have comfortable seats? The grumpy MCC member will lose his entire raison d’être on a comfy chair.

They’ll need to do a heck of a lot of persuading to get that idea through the members at a general meeting.

More seriously, I was very critical of the extraneous marketing drivel and noise in the England v Australia match – click here or below:

England v Australia, World Cup Round Robin Match, Lord’s, 25 June 2019

I’m pleased to report that the ICC seemed to have ironed out some of the worst excesses for this match, although I still found many of the marketing messages inappropriate and unhelpful within the ground, however much it might make sense for those advertisers to have their colours shown on the TV screens around the world. But at least we could see the score on the scoreboards most of the time during this match.

I was also really impressed by the MCC’s decision to allow 250 schoolkids to witness this match from the pavilion, as it had been under-subscribed. This was a wonderful opportunity for those schools and seemed to motivate MCC staff and members – at least certainly those I spoke to about it.

Here is a link to the Cricinfo resource for this match.

It wasn’t the best or most exciting match I have ever seen, but it was a great advert for the game and for the ability of a place like Lord’s to stage a glorious day out for all manner of people who don’t normally get a chance to enjoy the Lord’s experience. I thought it was a great success and was so glad to have been there on this day.

Thanks once again, John, for your company, the choice of seats and the pain-diminishing cushions.

England v Australia, World Cup Round Robin Match, Lord’s, 25 June 2019

**SPOILER ALERT** This piece does not end well if you are an England cricket fan.

The day seemed to start well enough. OK, our cab seemed to take an age to get to us, but basically we got through security at Lord’s and to our seats with a good 10 minutes to spare – enough time to “enjoy” the reverence of the national anthems and stuff.

Aussie anthem first; then the UK one. I’m no fan of either tune, frankly…
…but I can look suitably reverent.

Daisy was trigger happy at first with her iPhone camera…

Ball caught in mid air roughly half way down the track

…but soon tired of doing that.

Daisy had many bugbears about today, most of which I shared. The first was the high volume music whenever a boundary was scored. Irritating not least because the Aussies were batting and scoring boundaries.

But her main bugbear was the fact that the scoreboards were showing advertising messages for the vast majority of the time; just occasionally showing the score and/or a replay. Indeed, sometimes even the replays were cut off at the vital moment to return to some banal advertising message.

Some beer I have never heard of – on principle I now won’t try it

That beer ad was one of the less banal messages – some were simply the names of firms we had never heard of; we couldn’t even work out what they might do for a living.

Then even louder noise for drinks intervals, injury breaks and/or when a wicket fell. The cricket bat-shaped electric guitar is amusing at first but after a while the riffs are simply ear-drum piercing.

Worse, the cameras zooming around the crowd as a proxy for yet more advertising – such as the cab-firm turned food delivery company giving away a hamper of food to someone in the crowd who waves appropriately.

Worst of all, the utterly vapid on-ground commentators-come-crowd-chatters trying to describe the match position and/or ask people in the crowd what they think.

Daisy described the inane chatter as unbelievably amateurish and intrusive to the cricket. The nadir was a vacuous conversation about a crowd-member’s loud shirt which had to be cut off in mid stream because the bowler was about to deliver the ball.

We walked several circuits on which, as usual, we ran into a great many people we know. That’s what happens when doing the circuit at Lord’s.

I saw several of my real tennis pals and one or two other folk I know from outside cricket/Lord’s.

Madz Prangley (well known in various guises to several cricket web sites, someone who is oft-seen at Lord’s) told me off for ignoring her Facebook friend request some time ago. That might have had something to do with the fact that I didn’t, until today, know her real name. The matter has already been corrected.

Daisy took a shine to the look of the Harris Garden set up for corporate hospitality:

The stewards politely explained that it was for invited guests only.

Daisy tried to explain that we ARE Mr & Mrs Harris, so the place, basically, is our garden.

We got no closer than this.

We had a splendid lunch anyway, despite being turned down ever so gently by the Harris Garden steward. Daisy had made some smoked salmon and prawn sandwiches (that’s hedging your bets, isn’t it?) as the centrepiece. We also had a nice drop of Gewurtztraminer to wash that down.

I did one circuit on my own, during which I ran into Alan Curtis who said he was desperately looking for someone…but apparently not for me. That’s OK, Alan. Really, that’s OK. I hope you found someone.

But by the time I was circuiting solo and running into Alan, it was clear that England were coming second in this match.

Charley The Gent sent me an e-mail message to inform me that Essex had beaten Somerset. I hesitate to use the term bragging, as Chas would not approve of that term, but the e-mail read…

Great win for Essex over current leaders – Somerset!

…before setting out the summary final score of the match. As it happens, the gentleman sitting next to us in the Mound Stand was an Essex fan who was delighted with the news, despite England’s travails. He and I then discussed Essex, outground cricket and matters of that kind for a while.

Chas then said he had turned off the TV as he couldn’t bear to look any more. Daisy told me to instruct Charley not to be a wuss and to keep the faith. Chas promised to try.

But in the end – once England were 8 down – even Daisy and I couldn’t keep the faith, so we nipped out through the East Gate and ordered our cab before the throng might make such cab-ordering an impossibility.

Our driver, Alex, turned out to be a local lad full of good recommendations for restaurants around Ealing, which helped lift our rather diminished spirits.

Just in case anyone reading this missed my Mock-Jacobean lament for the 400th anniversary of my old school the other week – explained here, below is a video of a suitably sedate performance that sums up our mood at the end of the day:

My riffs are well subtle compared with those of the cricket bat guitarist, eh?

Daisy is now done with World Cup live action and says she is delighted to be following the rest of the World Cup from the comfort and relative peace of her own home. I understand her point. The “thumping bollocks” atmosphere of a T20 match can be a bit much for three-to-fours hours of a T20. For the eight-plus hours of an ODI it is insanely too much.

Me? I’ll be doing it all again at Lord’s in 10 days time when Pakistan take on Bangladesh. And unless England pull up their socks big time, that match might be the one that decides who takes that final semi-final spot and eliminates England.

Oh dear.

Fragments Of Cricket And Tennis, Radlett, Lord’s & Oval, 1 to 10 May 2019

I saw several bits of cricket matches in the first 10 days of May, squeezed between lots of work, real tennis and other activities.

Wednesday 1 May 2019: Radlett & Lord’s

Originally, I had planned to block out that day for cricket, but I needed to fit a client meeting in mid to late morning, so had all-but abandoned the idea of seeing cricket that day.

Then I got a message from Fran to say that she and Simon were packing their sun cream, tee-shirts, thick winter coats, galoshes and brollies with every intention of going to the match come what may.

It also turned out to be a week for me being press-ganged into extra real tennis at Lord’s, so after I had stayed on court for an extra hour the day before to get some doubles experience, one of the pros asked if I could be a late stand-in at 20:00 on 1 May for a tough singles.

So the combination of the Fran message, the timing of that tennis press-ganging, together with some favourable weather and an interesting match position…

…persuaded me to jump into Dumbo to join Fran and Simon for a few hours at Radlett, where Middlesex were hosting Somerset, before driving home via Lord’s.

This was Dumbo’s first visit to Radlett since the 2016 visit, reported (surprisingly recently) on King Cricket:..

A Middlesex Second XI v Lancashire Second XI match report (from 2016)

…although I did spend a splendid day with Fran, Simon and Charley The Gent at Radlett last season:

An Unusual Day In Radlett And At The Oval, During Which Middlesex Came Second Twice, 17 May 2018

So, I got home from my client meeting, had a quick bite to eat while watching the closing overs of the Middlesex innings on the Chromecast/TV and then jumped into Dumbo who “rode like the wind” to Radlett. We arrived just after 15:00.

Dumbo wasn’t very impressed with the large public field in which he had to park – his previous visit, to a second team match, enabled him a parking space with a bit of a view.

I, on the other hand, was pretty impressed by the scale of the enterprise and how well organised the outground team seemed to be on a match day. Very friendly and helpful.

Having learnt from our rather chilly experience in the shade last time, Fran and Simon had grabbed some excellent seats on the sunny side. It was one of those “layers of clothes” days, on which I ended up in rolled up shirtsleeves when the sun came out and then donning my thick jacket, scarf and hat by the end of the match after the sun had gone in.

It was really pleasant to sit watching cricket with Fran and Simon again – they are very knowledgeable cricket followers; there was plenty to discuss in the matter of county and international cricket since we’d last met. Oh, plus catching up on our other news of course.

Middlesex took its time to take the last wicket and I had almost decided to give up on waiting to be sure to get out of the car park and back down to Lord’s in good time, but the trusty satnav kept insisting that the journey wouldn’t take long against the main flow of rush hour traffic.

So I did stick it out to the final ball and we did find it surprisingly easy and relatively quick to get out of the car field – the stewards operating very efficiently to keep the funnelling out of the ground decorous.

So Dumbo and I got to Lord’s nice and early. Moreover, as a special treat for Dumbo, it transpired that there were no functions on that evening so he was allowed to park in the Allen Stand gap and look out onto the field of play.

Don’t tell Dumbo that there was no cricket on; I’m not sure he noticed.

Dumbo and I returned to Lord’s for tennis on the Friday morning (3rd) when, very unusually, Dumbo was again allowed to park in the Allen Stand gap, as a result of works vehicles blocking the way to his regular Car Park No 6 spot. Actually the above photo was taken on the Friday morning.

The next day, 4th, I played a representative tennis match for the MCC at Middlesex University, reported here and below.

Who Ate All The Pies? A Convivial Match Between Middlesex University Real Tennis Club (MURTC) & The MCC, 4 May 2019

Wednesday 8th May 2019: Lord’s & Oval

I had long-since pre-arranged a tennis lesson on this morning, so rumours that I was having the equivalent of a “naughty boy net” after our somewhat bruising visit to Middlesex University at the weekend are simply not true. Fake news. Perhaps I shouldn’t have spread those rumours myself in the first place.

Anyway, I found myself at two major cricket grounds on the same day for the first time ever, I think, as a result of being asked to attend a somewhat last-minute ad hoc London Cricket Trust meeting with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), for which the only convenient venue was the Oval, where England were supposed to be playing a one-day-international against Pakistan.

It was a horribly rainy day and I thought it unlikely that there would be any cricket at all, but heck, I wasn’t really there for cricket, I was there for a meeting. Still, the way to get us in to the ground on a big match day was to provide us with comps, so I did have an OCS stand ticket for a rather good balcony seat.

Strangely, as there were no rooms available for the meeting, we ended up on the top level of the OCS stand having the meeting on outdoor (albeit covered area) tables and chairs. Even more strangely, the rain stopped and some play was possible for just over an hour, which coincided almost exactly with the hour we spent meeting.

Some people in the meeting must have been making very profound points, because as soon as they had finished their sentence the crowd oohed and aahed – especially if the speaker was talking during one of Jofra Archer’s overs. I didn’t manage to time any of my pearls of wisdom to coincide with an ejaculation of crowd noise, sadly. Perhaps my pearls of wisdom are not so spectacular after all.

After the meeting, AccuWeather told me that there might be 15 minutes or so before the next short but heavy rain storm, so I thought I might as well make full use of my comp for three or four overs before heading home.

A rare glimpse of sunshine on a very wet day
As seen from the OCS Stand 2nd tier balcony

I did well, thanks to AccuWeather, as I managed to get home between showers too.


Friday 10th May 2019: Lord’s…Just Lord’s

Just one cricket ground that day? What was the matter with me?

Still, one ground, two purposes; real tennis and cricket. I had arranged to play real tennis on the Friday afternoon long since, with no expectation that Middlesex might have a home draw at Lord’s in a knockout tournament. After all, it is several decades since Middlesex has had one of those, so it hardly falls into the “expectation” category.

I watched the start of the Middlesex v Lancashire match on the TV at home, while having lunch. My plan, which worked well, was to head off for Lord’s in Dumbo at around 14:30, enabling me to put Dumbo onto a four-hour meter near the ground and then not have to worry about him for the rest of the afternoon/evening. Plan worked.

So I watched about 30-40 minutes of cricket before getting changed for tennis. Janie (Daisy) informed me that she’d probably arrive while I was playing tennis, which she did.

Daisy tried very hard to distract my opponent, Stuart, with sledging and left-field questions, but seemed better able to distract my concentration than Stuart’s. All the more so when she was joined in the dedans gallery by Dominic and Pamela…followed soon enough by John Thirlwell. The more they tried to help me with their crowd noise, the more they seemed to help Stuart.

Actually it was a very good, close game of tennis, which I lost very narrowly and felt I’d done well to stay that close, given how well Stuart was playing.

Meanwhile, by the time I got changed, Middlesex were in all sorts of trouble and it looked as though our evening watching cricket might be severely foreshortened.

Still, Janie hunkered down with some wine and nibbles up on the top deck…

…then soon after John Thirlwell joined us.

“And how are you today?”
“Better than half-a-yard”

James Harris (no relation) got Middlesex infeasibly close to the 300+ target having been 24-5 at one point, but (as I had suspected throughout the innings) it wasn’t quite enough to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Still, it was a very pleasant couple of hours of cricket watching and chat. Janie and I rounded off the evening by picking up some of our favourite Chinese grub from Four Seasons, Queensway on the way home.

More Runs Than England, One Day International England v Pakistan at Lord’s 27 August 2016

In the third match of this one day series, England scored more runs in their innings than any side had ever scored before in a one day international…ever.

But in the week leading up to that historic match, it felt as though I had more runs than England’s record runs. You know what I mean. It started with, I thought, indigestion in the early hours of the previous Tuesday and built from there. I’ll spare you the details, dear reader.

Not a good idea ahead of a bank holiday/birthday weekend; especially one where you are due to go to Lord’s on the Saturday.

On the morning of Lord’s itself, around 8:00, at the flat, Janie and I more or less gave up the idea of venturing to Lord’s at all. But I didn’t feel poorly over the next hour or so, therefore we hatched a plan to get a limited form of the picnic ready at a gentle pace, watch the first hour or so on the TV at the flat and see how I feel.

Indeed, by 11:30 I felt that England were very well placed and that we’d be able to cab it and just stroll in to Lord’s without queues or stress. I was grateful to myself for having impulse bought those front row seats I spotted on the on-line system, as the rover/membership pass route might have been a bit awkward in terms of getting half-decent seats at that hour.

To be honest, the match/crowd lacked atmosphere to a greater extent than I can remember at Lord’s for a long time. A sense of inevitability and the cricket being secondary. Very different crowd sitting near us, compared with the test crowd in the same seats. Unfriendly to say the least.

King Cricket readers straying here might, due to KC’s obsession with the champagne corks at Lord’s – for context click here – be interested in my cork report. Just one lone cork sitting on the patch of grass in front of us where, just a few months before, there had been a veritable sea of corks. The MCC instructs its members and customers not to project their corks onto the pitch; those members and customers obey. That’s what stewardship of the laws and spirit of cricket can achieve. Makes me feel proud that Lord’s is my local.

We met up with The Friends for a while in the Coronation Garden towards the end of the innings interval, which was a very pleasant interlude for us. They asked us to join them for the second half of the match – they had a spare rover for Janie, but we thought better of it, especially as I wasn’t sure that I could cope with much more and I sensed that Janie wasn’t desperate to stay much longer.

So, we went back to our seats, watched for another hour or so, convinced ourselves that the Root/Morgan partnership was a winning one and so chose to leave once Morgan was out.

It does only take 10-12 minutes to get home by cab, so we watched the end of the game from the comfort of the flat. The result can be seen on the scorecard – here.

Despite eating little and drinking nothing but water, I still felt pretty rough the next day, which is a bit of a bummer on your birthday but these things happen.

Janie’s healing skills got me better by bank holiday Monday, much of which we spent in the Brent Cross Apple Store trying to heal Janie’s very sickly iPhone. Apple chose to replace said phone, which was a good result, but frankly this was a bank holiday/birthday weekend to forget.

England v South Africa, One Day International, Lord’s, 2 September 2012

Well I have made my excuses for my poor memory of the Lord’s Test Match that year (Olympic summer blah blah)…

…they apply similarly to the ODI a couple of weeks later.

Here’s the scorecard – a happy ending for England this time.

It has the look of one of those “win the toss, bowl, win the match” one day matches that you tend to get at Lord’s in September.

I vaguely remember it being slow going and always feeling that England should be able to time and therefore win the chase, which they did.

But in truth, I think Janie and I had our minds half on our Paralympics day, which was all set for the next day.

Still, there’s no such thing as a bad day watching cricket at Lord’s, so for sure we had a good day.

South Africa v Zimbabwe World Cup Warm Up Match, Chennai Stadium, As Reported On King Cricket, 12 February 2011

This report for King Cricket relates to a small part of our India & Sri Lanka trip, which I shall write up more comprehensively eventually, for which the Ogblog placeholder and links can be found by clicking here or below:

India and Sri Lanka, 29 January to 26 February 2011, placeholder and links

Here is a link to the King Cricket piece, which relates to just one of the many places we visited in Chennai on 12 February:

South Africa v Zimbabwe World Cup warm-up match report

King Cricket published the piece on 18 April 2011. Just in case the above link goes duff, I have also scraped the report to here.

No photo

No photo of tickets either

Frankly, some of the comments are better than my report – it is worth reading for them. King Cricket can be like that.

Middlesex v Australians, Lord’s, 19 June 2010

Looks cold…IS cold!

One of my favourite King Cricket “match reports” this – it is the story of a freezing cold day at Lord’s in mid June with Daisy (Janie) watching Middlesex play a match to help warm up the Australians.

Here is a link to the King Cricket match report.

Just in case anything ever happens to King Cricket, here is a link to the scraped version.

Here is a link to the scorecard and all those geeky details on Cricinfo.

I don’t think we stayed until the end – we went to the National Theatre that evening and I’m pretty sure we went back to the flat first.

Who Wants To Be A Multi-Billionaire? England v South Africa ODI, Lord’s, 31 August 2008

I have two abiding memories of this Sunday at Lord’s with Daisy.

They both relate to the charming South African gentleman and his Zimbabwean friend who sat next to us in the Mound Stand. We chatted with them at length in the earlier part of the day.

In particular, the Zimbabwean gentleman explained the currency chaos prevailing in Zimbabwe at that time; sacks full of bank notes to buy basic items, the authorities producing ever larger, ludicrously large denomination bank notes; worthless before they had even rolled off the printing presses.

I asked the gentleman if I might buy some from him for our Z/Yen edutainment boat trip games. He said he had none with him but sack loads at home. He said his wife would bring some for me when she was next in London  (in a few weeks’ time) and refused to take money for them. He did not even accept the offer of hospitality on the boat in exchange.

To his credit, he followed through with his promise. A few weeks’ later a mysterious woman apparently arrived at our St Helen’s Place offices with a large envelope stuffed with billions upon billions of Zimbabwean dollars:

Try for the fifty billion?

This multitude of notes came in very handy in Z/Yen edutainment games for many years and I really am very grateful to the kind man who took so much trouble to respond to a casual request that came up in chat at cricket.

I also remember feeling slightly sleazy about the matter as, given his refusal to take anything in reciprocation, the transaction felt, in essence, as though I had successfully begged for money – albeit worthless money. Janie and I debated that aspect for a while, as I was at that time in the process of preparing my Gresham Lecture on Commercial Ethics.

But I digress.

The other abiding memory was the disappearance of that South African and Zimbabwean double-act as soon as a heavy storm blew across. It was very heavy rain, but it was scheduled to pass quickly and the new drainage at Lord’s is terrific. I even said to them that I thought the game would restart within an hour of the rain stopping, despite the heaviness of the rain.

The gentlemen both said that they had spent too long over the years waiting for Lord’s to fail to dry, so headed off as soon as the rain relented.

Play did resume within an hour of the rain stopping. It proved to be an exciting match in the end.

Here is a link to the scorecard. 

The multi-billion dollar earning aspect of this day is now immortalised on the King Cricket website – click here or below:

https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/england-v-south-africa-lords-odi-report-from-2008/2017/12/11/

Just in case anything ever happens to King Cricket, a scrape of that piece may be found here.