Tag: Domestic T20

The June 2024 Social Whirl Part Two, Plus Jazz In the Crypt With Emma Rawicz & Dave Preston, Mid June

It’s been a long week

Lots of pleasant events in my diary in one mid-June week:

  • 18 June – MCC real tennis club night;
  • 19 June – lunch with Stuart Harris after session with accountants;
  • 20 June – real tennis follwed by a bit of Middlesex v Surrey at Lord’s followed by Jazz in the Crypt at St John Smith Square…or should I say Sinfonia Smith Square;
  • 22 June – dinner with Simon & Timothy… & Ella.

Club Night

The last tennis club night of the current season – we’ll resume in September – had seven of us engaging in various doubles battles until the last four of us standing were worn out.

Lunch With Stuart Harris

The next day, I met up with my very first former tennis doubles partner – albeit “lawn” rather than “real” – Stuart Harris. (No relation).The tale of our great seminal tennis tournament victory in 1974 can be seen by clicking here or below.

I Didn’t Just Learn Tennis In The School Easter Holidays Of 1974, I Smashed It

Following a most enjoyable Zoom, we decided to meet up properly for lunch. Fitting that Stuart suggested John Lewis’s 5th floor restaurant, as that location was well suited to Cavendish Square accountants and was also faintly reminiscent of Pratts restaurant at the John Lewis store in Streatham, where my dad used to like to take me for tea on rare, cherished occasions during my childhood.

It was great to catch up with Stuart again after all these years. We had lots to talk about and a couple of hours flew by. Stuart’s jokes have not got better over the decades, whereas mine have. That’s one of my jokes, btw. Why isn’t anybody laughing?

LOrd’s For Tennis & T20

Real tennis was fun. Then I had some time to kill, not least because the T20 match was to be a late kick off due to the football Euros match. I got some reading done on the pavilion sun deck while holding some suitable seats for me and Janie. Janie arrived in such good time for the match that we were able to eat first. Good idea, really, as we’d neither of us had lunch.

Yum

Middlesex did its usual “flatter to deceive” bit, looking good for the first 15 overs of the Surrey innings.

Janie and I were not heavily invested in this match, as we had long-since planned to abandon ship in favour of SJSS and a jazz evening there.

Jazz In The crypt with emma raWicz & Dave preston

Emma Rawicz is seen as one of the brightest young jazz talents around. Saxophone too – Janie’s favourite. She, together with her friend Dave Preston, another bright young thing in the jazz world – guitar in his case – were to do a jazz impromptu set of their latest stuff.

No second innings at Lord’s for us – off to collect Dumbo who drove us across London to St John’s Smith Square.

But wait…

…there are balloons and signs of a party as we arrive. The place is no longer named St John’s Smith Square – it had that very day been rebranded as Sinfonia Smith Square. Get it right.

Thus, instead of the promised St John’s Smith Square crypt jazz concert, we saw a Sinfonia Smith Square crypt jazz concert.

Here’s a link to the Sinfonia Smith Square stub for that concert.

It was very good.

Here is a video of the two of them, plus a pianist on this occasion, playing one of the cool jazz pieces they played for us: Vera:

Emma comes across as a warm-hearted young woman, who spent more time plugging Dave Preston’s latest album, Purple / Black…

…than she spent plugging her own latest material. The album Chroma, seeing as you asked:

We really enjoyed the concert and for sure will now be looking out for Emma and Dave – yes we feel as though we’ve done enough to be on first name terms with them both.

Dinner With Simon, Timothy & Ella at their place

Simon & Timothy have a recent addition to their family: Ella. One of the purposes of our visit was to have dinner and a good chat with Simon & Timothy. But the main purpose, obviously, was to meet Ella and take her the present that we have been accumulating for her since we learnt of her imminent arrival – our spent, balding tennis balls.

“Ella” depicted by a lookalike actress

Naturally we didn’t take photographs of young Ella – Simon and Timothy don’t want her to turn into a vain, lens-loving gal…

…in any case, she’d probably just eat the photos. Apparently Ella will try to eat almost anything. She certainly made a good attempt at one of my elbows while I was eating and made headway with the first of the 15 balls we took for her. That collection of balls is not expected to last long. Janie and I will need to play yet more tennis.

Simon cooked a splendid meal:

  • asparagus soup;
  • roast chicken with roasted vegetables;
  • strawberries and cream.

Very English summer, which, coincidentally, is the way the weather seemed to be turning that weekend. At last.

It was a very enjoyable evening which flashed by all too quickly.

A Busy Working Week With Some Respite At Lord’s, Middlesex v Sussex T20, 8 June 2023

Only one evening out that week – at Lord’s, for the T20 match between Middlesex & Sussex. I had planned to play tennis that afternoon and stick around for the match anyway, but the call from Jez suggesting we meet up sealed the seal.

I had a good game of doubles partnering our apprentice professional Nat. (I’m sure Nat must have learnt something by partnering me…such as “try to avoid partnering Ged in future.”)

“I can see the potential for a Middlesex win way off in the distance…2024 or 2025.”

I secured some good seats in the tavern stand, only to discover that I had plonked us behind Stephen Bough, another tennis player. I think the Tavern Stand might be “tennis player central” as running into tennis players there is becoming a habit.

Jez and his friend David (whom I hadn’t seen at the cricket for years) soon joined and we hunkered down for a good match.

I decided to stretch my legs for a while, given the exertions just an hour or two earlier, taking some decent snaps of where we were sitting from the Warner.

It was a gloriously sunny evening that whizzed by like a hobgoblin on speed..

It was an excellent game, albeit a donkey derby between two teams that had been consistently losing in the tournament. Middlesex contrived to come second yet again.

Here’s the scorecard and other Cricinfo resources.

Still, we had a good time and it was a rare opportunity to catch up with younger working folk at an evening match.

Taking Positives, Mostly Nottinghamshire v Middlesex, T20 Quarter Final, Trent Bridge, 5 September 2019

Trent Bridge looked an absolute picture under lights

Regular Ogblog readers sometimes comment on the relentlessly positive light Ogblog sheds on life.

Some days make that task a little difficult. Take this day, for example. On the face of it, the focal point of the day was a trip to Nottingham and back to see my beloved Middlesex team being utterly thrashed in a quarter final cup tie. Soon after we set off for Nottingham, Janie called me to tell me she’d had her purse snatched with some cash and all of her credit cards stolen/ransacked. Meanwhile and throughout the day, England were having a pretty rotten second day in the Old Trafford Ashes test; a match England cannot lose if it is to retain hope of regaining the Ashes.

So, how do I take positives from such a day? I’ll try to draw up a list.

  • I played a good 90 minutes of real tennis doubles ahead of setting off for Nottingham. Unlike the day of Middlesex’s previous ill-fated quarter-final three years ago, I didn’t injure myself playing – in fact it was a very good game;
  • Also unlike last time, I didn’t need to drive to the match – Middlesex organised a coach trip for this fixture, which spared me a longer drive than I fancied and at least meant that I was in good company throughout the day;
  • We got to Trent Bridge some two hours ahead of the match. We strolled around that lovely ground making a close to full circuit (part outside, part inside) to our Radcliffe Road end hospitality. On the way, I met Mark Butcher and Rob Key who were kicking their heels prior to their commentary duties. King Cricket aficionados will be especially excited about the Rob Key encounter, I suspect;
  • The Trent Bridge hospitality was superb, as always. Several familiar Nottinghamshire faces and quite a substantial contingent from Middlesex. I met new Middlesex board member Edward Lord for the first time and Marilyn Smith, whom Janie and I met at Hove and whose son Ramon used to play tennis as an infant at Boston Manor, brought “little Ramon” with her, which showed that “little Ramon” ain’t so little any more. I had very enjoyable chats with all those people and plenty of others;
  • Clive Radley went back to the coach early, once the result was no longer in doubt, to finish off reading his book, which was about Auschwitz. As Clive and I agreed, that rather puts the idea of “having a bad day” into perspective;
  • Did I mention that Trent Bridge, which looks a picture at all times, looks especially so under lights? Worth saying and depicting again.

A Day Of Random Access Memories And Flash Drives, My Flat And Then Lord’s, 8 August 2019

Of late, I have been immersing myself in writing up the journal and some impression pieces about my visit to Mauritius, which was 40 years ago exactly. Devotees of Ogblog (i.e.subscribers) might well be aware of this; others not so.

Ahead of his latest visit, John Random e-mailed to say several things, including this about one of those journal pieces:

A Jew Hunt in Port Louis reminds me of something not very interesting I must tell you about next Thursday.

A Jew Hunt In Port Louis, Mauritius, 9 August 1979

I had felt quite frustrated about the above piece since I realised that my mother had not only thrown away my article about the resulting great story I discovered once I hunted down the mystery man in Port Louis, but that she had also thrown away my journal notes for 10 and 11 August 1979, as part of the same inadvertently vandalistic act, in the name of “clearing out rubbish”.

Putting that to one side, John and I had a pleasant lunch and did some more fiddling around with his archive of writings. Less progress this session than the previous session, but the previous session had yielded plenty of unexpectedly retrievable data from his old collection. Actually even this day’s session seems to have yielded more than I thought it would.

Then I raised the matter of John’s “Jew Hunt anecdote”.

Oh, it’s nothing really. It’s just that, 20 or so years ago, Jenny and I went to a Mauritian community event in South-East London. There was a bookstall at that event, where I looked at a book called The Mauritian Shekel. It looked really interesting but in the end I didn’t buy it. Your headline, “A Jew Hunt In Port Louis” reminded me of that book.

I nearly left it at that, but my curiosity had been sparked, so I asked John if he remembered what the book was about.

It was a fascinating true story from the time of the Second World War, about a large ship full of Jewish refugees from Central Europe, who had been turned away in Palestine and who were eventually given refuge on Mauritius…

“Hold on!”, I yelled. “THAT’s the story the mystery Jewish man told me in Port Louis. THAT’s the very story I’m desperately trying to recall. The Mauritian Shekel, did you say?”…

…it might not have been cheap, but it was available as a rare second hand book on Amazon:

So the book is on its way and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to reconstruct my missing article/story from it.

At about 17:00, John went off in the direction of the Proms while I went off in the direction of Lord’s. I bagsyed some seats for me and Jez Horne in the Warner Stand, then went for a quick meeting with Katie Berry for a briefing on participation cricket in Middlesex.

Jez messaged me to say he thought he was a little delayed but should only miss an over or so. In the end, he arrived just in time for the start of the match.

It was good to catch up with Jez again. I hope we can catch up again when Janie and I are in Hove and he also intends to join the Z/Yen party at the Hampshire game in a couple of week’s time.

This Middlesex v Surrey match always has some real frisson to it, though, being a local derby. More often than not we Middlesex fans end up disappointed at this fixture, but of late Middlesex have been doing better and tonight demonstrated that improvement.

AB deVilliers and Eoin Morgan were scintillating with the bat; Steve Finn magnificent with the ball.

You can read all about it through this link.

An interesting, productive and enjoyable day.

Tennis At Queen’s Followed By A Bit Of London Cricket Trust Charity Media At Lord’s, 18 July 2019

Those of us who play real tennis at Lord’s are still in exile due to the cricket world cup, despite the fact that the tournament ended on Sunday. I have spent much of my exile at The Queen’s Club (well posh exile) and had arranged another two hour session of doubles, following the five set epic a few weeks ago.

Sort of three hours of doubles for me, as Neil at Queen’s asked me at the last minute to help make up a doubles the evening before, so I was still a little sore from trying to keep up with Bomber, The Saint and The Biscuit (all well above my handicap/pay grade).

For our two hour session, Dominic and Bill (as last time), but this time we were joined by Snitch for the first hour. After Snitch left, we played a real tennis form of Canadian Doubles, with the server/receiver from the doubles pair grabbing the “honour” of doing the hard work as the single player until defeated.

I worked up quite a sweat, especially as the single towards the end. Then picked up the message from Fletch at Middlesex CCC that Kevin Hand wanted to interview me this evening about the London Cricket Trust and AB de Villiers, for BBC Radio London and BBC Essex, so we arranged that between the sweats and the showers.

Soon after I set off in Dumbo for home, I felt a touch of cramp starting in my foot and tried to wriggle my foot while braking for the lights…but instead slipped my foot onto the accelerator, requiring me to switch to emergency stop braking which made one hell of a screech.

Better than half-a-yard…or more or less the nick. Phew.

I signalled an apology to the driver in front, who seemed to be apoplectic with rage, leaping about in his seat and waving his arms. Then I realised that he was car-seat-jiving while listening to loud music. Perhaps he hadn’t even noticed my near miss.

When the lights changed, the jiver/driver in front zoomed off ahead of me, as fast as I have ever seen someone zoom out of Palliser Road. Whether he was just that sort of driver or desperate to get away from me I’ll never know.

Then some work in the sweatshop that is my little office at home on a sunny afternoon.

So I had another shower before heading to Lord’s – not for the start of the match but in good time for my “over 18 of the first innings” appointment with Fletch.

As I got out of the shower, the phone was ringing. Fletch.

Can we meet a little earlier than I said – like over 15?…

…sure, I’m just getting ready to leave…

I’m sorry, it’s because I have other media to do on the pavilion side in the interval after dropping you off…Eoin Morgan…

…should be no problem, Fletch, but I need to get off the phone so I can put on some clothes and leave. I know its radio, but I figure I’ll still need to put on some clothes to get through the street, the gates and to the media centre?…

…yes, I think that would be for the best.

In fact I was making good time and got to the Maida Vale/St John’s Wood borders, where I knew I could park easily, bang on 18:30. So I was in the ground and able to watch cricket for about half-an-hour before wending my way round to the media centre, where I enjoyed the commentator’s view of the last few overs and could hear the radio commentary of course…in the commentary box.

Below is my interview, which runs for about eight minutes if you want to hear it all.

Radio London Radio Essex Interview LCT 18 July 2019

Here is a link to the moment during my interview when Eoin Morgan waved at us in the Media Centre commentary box, tweeted by Kevin Hand.

In the commentary box was the artefact pictured below. It seems that the media centre tea-time spread was adorned by this artefact for each of the world cup matches at Lord’s, with the badges of that day’s competing nations shown on the helmets. Left over from the world cup final on Sunday:

Kevin Hand was apologetic about the shortness of the interview and the fact that he sort-of had to leave me to it while he photographed and tweeted about Eoin Morgan. But Kevin owed me no apology for that; it was great and timely publicity for the London Cricket Trust charity.

In any case, it seems Kevin might want me to do the odd additional slot with him this season. If for no other reason, I think he’s keen to disambiguate Ian Harris and Ged for any listeners who might, understandably, be bemused and/or amused.

Kevin also apologised to me when he discovered that I came in especially for the interview as I hadn’t planned to attend the match. Again no apology needed as I live so close by and in fact I am so glad I was there for the post world cup afterglow. The Middlesex v Essex match was even played on the world cup pitch.

In fact I stayed for just the first few overs of the Middlesex innings before heading home and catching the end of the match on the broadcast.

One final anecdote. When I mentioned during my interview that AB de Villiers had come out to Deptford for us just a few hours after landing from South Africa, Kevin wondered whether we might have tired him out ahead of his first appearance for Middlesex. I think the scorecard and match reports attest that Kevin needn’t have worried.

Bad Hair Afternoon: Tennis Followed By Middlesex v Somerset, 19 July 2018

Since Jez Horne left Z/Yen, he and I have a rather shocking record of planning to meet up for a T20 match at Lord’s on a day that turns out to be rainy.

We expected no such problem in this glorious summer of 2018 and, as luck would have it, Jez was available on one of the few T20 evenings I can manage this season.

I arranged to play tennis at 15:00, giving me plenty of time to sauna, shower, spruce myself up and bagsy some good pavilion seats.

My opponent for the afternoon, Bill Taylor, is one of my favourite adversaries; although I tend to come off second best against him, we nearly always have an epic battle along the way.

We had an exceptionally good first set, which took almost the whole hour. Playing level, the pesky ninth game went to deuce upon deuce upon deuce…

…upon deuce…you get the idea. But in the end Bill prevailed, both in that game and then the set and match.

I took my time over warming down and my ablutions. As I was just preparing to leave the changing room, John Stephenson (MCC Director of Cricket) and Guy Lavender (the new MCC Chief Executive) emerged from one of the squash courts. They were discussing the pavilion dress code and the practicalities around the “jackets allowed off in hot weather” rule.

I was putting the finishing touches on my tie, jacket and general pavilion aesthetic look when, horror of horrors, I realised that I had come out without a comb in my linen suit’s jacket pocket and had used a kit bag that also lacks one of my emergency combs.

My hair probably looked a little like the following photo, taken at the end of a victorious tennis skills night eighteen months ago…

…perhaps a little worse when combined with a jacket and tie.

“Just as well you don’t have a bad hair rule for the pavilion”, I said “I have come out without a comb”.

“No we don’t, but don’t worry, there will be a bad hair rule in time for your next visit”, said Guy with a smile.

It reminded me a little of my interaction with Ian Lovett over Daisy’s embarrassing pavilion socks-for-gloves-donning incident several years ago, explained towards the end of my report on King Cricket here and below:

Middlesex v Australians match report

“My next visit will be on Monday”, I said.

Guy’s smile widened a little forcedly, as if to say, “…and your point is?…”

“I’ll bring a comb,” I conceded. Need to stay on the right side of the new Chief Exec, I thought.

Jez is not exactly the sartorial type…he used to hang out with Barmy Kev for gawd’s sake…so I didn’t need to make any any excuses or explanations to him. He seemed pleased with my choice of “right up front” seat.

As always, it was good to catch up with Jez. He and his burgeoning family have recently relocated to…

…coincidentally given my visit a couple of days earlier…

A Day Out In Sussex: Petworth, Then Hove, 17 July 2018

…Hove.

We chatted about cricket. We chatted a bit about work. We chatted about…

…trigger warning…

…geeky statistics, operational research and machine learning stuff.

We both brought nibbles of the “old style Z/Yen gathering” variety with us – in my case parcel-type bites from M&S, in Jez’s case from Sainsbury. I had brought a mini bottle (250 ml) of Sancerre for myself – that should last the evening on a warm night; Jez managed a few bottles of quality beer. I remember Badger and Theakstons Old Peculiar as two of the labels.

We watched Middlesex start well with the bat, seem to get bogged down, finish better, then watched Somerset do all that with quite a bit more purpose than Middlesex.

Pain junkies (Middlesex) and glory seekers (Somerset) click here for all the details.

Still, we had a very pleasant evening together, parting company at Marylebone.

Z/Yen Team Outing To See Middlesex Hammered By Hampshire At Lord’s, 3 August 2017

Lord’s Resplendent Early Evening, Photograph by Alexandra Karathodorou

For several years, the traditional fixture for the annual Z/Yen visit to Lord’s has been a Middlesex v Surrey match, ever since the Z/Yen Awayday during which Garry Sobers watched the Z/Yen team play cricket – click here for that story; most years the T20 game.

But this year, several key people were unavailable for the Middlesex v Surrey T20 fixture whereas, unusually, most people were available on 3 August for the Middlesex v Hampshire game.

Our Z/Yen contingent contained representatives from across the globe, ranging from “home of cricket” places such as India and Middlesex, through moderately-cricketing places such as Nepal to places where cricket is a rarity, such as the USA, Greece, Germany and Surrey. (I couldn’t help myself).

On this occasion, pretty much everyone got behind Middlesex (why not) although Linda, with her Southampton F.C. connection, felt torn between the two sides.

But we had to forgive Linda, because she had brought the food. Loads of it. Following the success of Xueyi’s Chinese picnic choices last year, Linda had returned to Xueyi’s recommended place and mostly stocked up with delicious Chinese nibbles.

Linda Likes Her Food Choices, Photograph By Alexandra Karathodorou

There was a good crowd at the match and a very jolly atmosphere. Unlike last year’s good close match, Middlesex, a depleted side by this stage of the tournament this year, didn’t put up much of a fight – click here for scorecard.

Possibly the most interesting moment on the field of play was towards the end, when a fox invaded the pitch. How it got through Lord’s security without a ticket and (worse) entered a hallowed part of Lord’s inappropriately attired is anybody’s guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oZEeLJ7ELI

Z/Yen At Lord’s Under Lights, Photograph By Alexandra Karathodorou

But in many ways these outings are as much about being convivial team picnic outings as they are about the cricket. The weather smiled on us; a mixture of sun and clouds, but no rain. The Lord’s experience is always charming and special – and because we chose to come a bit later in the season than usual, Z/Yen people got to see Lord’s properly under lights when it got dark, which is differently special.

Sussex Sojourn Part Two: Monk’s House, Berwick Church and Cricket At 1st Central County Ground Hove, 28 July 2017

It’s a small miracle that I could still sit…

Janie was inspired to see some more of the Blooomsbury trail Day Two, although we hadn’t planned it, following our very pleasurable afternoon at Charleston Day One. Specifically, Monk’s House (Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Sussex home), found its way onto Janie’s radar.

Actually, when we rose at the Hotel Una that morning, I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to do anything that day; the mattress had been so soft and uncomfortable that my back and neck felt well crocked. Possibly the worst hostelry mattress I have encountered since my 2006 nightmare experience in a half way house posing as a hotel on The Bristol Road, Edgbaston.

Janie was not well pleased with the deep-stained bed linen either, so got to task with the sweet staff, who swapped our mattress over and adorned the better mattress with clean linen ahead of our second night.

I heaped praise on my former geography teacher, Mike Jones, for helping us to find the Hotel Una a couple of years ago, so now he needs to share the blame for the Una’s apparent decline since then. A reputable former geography teacher should be able to predict the timing of a hostelry’s decline and forewarn you, no?

Monk’s House doesn’t open until lunchtime, which unfortunately coincided with the weather forecast’s prediction of heavy showers in Sussex. Still, showers can be dodged on a visit to a house and garden, so we resolved to follow the test match in the morning and go off towards Lewes as soon as lunch was called at The Oval.

Monk’s House is very different from Charleston. It must have been a far more orderly place back in the day and is now a National Trust run place. However, unlike Charleston, we were allowed to take pictures inside…

Is that a baroq-ulele I see in the tapestry?

…but understandably there are rules, such as “no food and drink inside” and “don’t touch things or place stuff on things”.

One couple who entered just after us seemed hell bent on breaking every one of the rules within 30 seconds of arrival, sending the charming but bossy volunteer/guide lady into fits of polite reprimand.

Leonard Woolf looks on disapprovingly

On chatting with that same lady later, Janie and I were also reprimanded, but in our case for going to Charleston without visiting the Berwick Church, which the lady swore was the very best example of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant’s work. “You simply MUST go”, she said.

“Is that an instruction?”, I asked.  “Yes, absolutely”, she said, “even if you say on TripAdvisor that I am the most terrible bossy-boots…I’m telling you, you really MUST see that Church”.

Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf’s house-minder? Me. I thought we’d better conform and go to church. Initially I  thought maybe tomorrow on the way home, but actually Monk’s House is quite small, so I started quietly plotting a reasonably rapid exit from Monk’s, after seeing the garden; we should still have plenty of time to go back out Charleston way to the church and then back to Brighton/Hove for the cricket match.

Virginia Woolf’s Writing Lodge in the Garden at Monk’s House

The Woolfs (Wolves?) played bowls regularly in their garden, apparently

Leonard Woolf remembered in the garden

Monk’s House as seen from the garden

We did a good job of dodging the showers while in the Monk’s Garden and worried less about those as we headed off to Berwick Church – click here for the church website, pictures of and information on all the murals.

I must say, the charming but bossy guide lady at Monk’s House was absolutely right – the Berwick Church murals are wonderful and well worth seeing.

Just a few examples

In particular, I thought Duncan Grant’s work in this church is extraordinarily powerful and well done.

Well worth the visit

All the photographs for this trip, including those shown in the blog pieces and many more besides, can be found on the Flickr album here.

We got back to the hotel in good time to get ready to go out to the cricket. The weather improved and we were both chuffed to bits to discover that Toby Roland-Jones had taken three wickets in his first spell on test match debut at the Oval, while we were driving…and then a fourth which we saw on the TV when we got back to the hotel.

The weather improved enough for us to brave the walk from the hotel to the Hove cricket ground; a very pleasant walk it was too.

The Hove Pavilion Board Room

The Sussex CCC hospitality was warm, friendly and informal; ideal for a T20 match. To make matters better, the match even started on time:

But the weather forecast was iffy to say the least and after a while the brollies went up…Middlesex were not doing so well at that point.

Not the late July weather we had been hoping for

At least we can stay dry in here

The match resumed for a while and Middlesex’s fortunes improved after the resumption, with fours and sixes punctuated with flames,which Janie took great pains to capture on camera:

But then the rain returned and remained until the match was abandoned. Here is a link to the scorecard. Then it stopped raining again so Janie and I could walk back to the hotel.

We hadn’t seen much cricket, but we had enjoyed a very convivial evening in good company.

We were both in very good spirits; we’d had two very enjoyable days sojourning in Sussex.

An Enjoyable Excursion Into Domestic Cricket Neutrality, Surrey v Essex, T20, Oval, 19 July 2017

The Oval At Nightfall

In early May I received an e-mail from John White, out of the blue:

I have been invited to the Oval on 19th July and have been asked if I would like to bring a friend!  It could only be you Ian.  Are you free?  We will be the guest of WE Communications and we get to go in the members area.

My first thought was that this must be the test match, but when I looked up the date I discovered that it was an evening domestic T20 match between Surrey and Essex.

It occurred to me that I haven’t been to a domestic cricket match as a neutral (i.e. without my county, Middlesex, playing), since I was a kid. Those experiences, as a kid, were all at The Oval, as it happens. This scorecard – click here – might be an example of one of those – I need to check the old diaries but for sure I saw once saw Barry Richards dominate the bowling there, while all others made it look like hard work.

Indeed all my early experience of seeing professional cricket was at the Oval – here is one especially odd set of experiences at the Oval from 40 years ago, including an encounter with Bob Willis on the tube after play, which I have already Ogblogged.

John’s e-mail was not terribly informative and (after accepting the invitation with relish) I didn’t give the event a great deal of thought again until it was imminent.

As it happens, on the day, I was working from home, interrupted only by a marathon session of tennis mid morning at Lord’s.

On reflection, I should have pipped John an e-mail about the extent to which this might be formal entertaining, mode of dress, etc., but instead I picked up Marcus’s e-mail, Googled WE Communications and decided for myself that this must be corporate entertaining of some scale and that I’d better turn up suited and booted. I even put my little case of business cards in my jacket pocket.

As it turned out, the evening was in fact a very informal set up with Marcus (who is a Surrey member), his colleague Josh (who is in fact a fellow MCC yellow-carder), me and John. All the others were in “dress-down, evening out” attire.

It was a very enjoyable evening. Really good company; people who know and enjoy their cricket while at the same time keeping the conversation suitably varied and interesting on many topics.

I really liked that feeling of neutrality at the match. I was watching cricket, simply hoping to see a good match, without any emotional equity in the result. It was strangely refreshing. In particular I think the neutrality worked for me because I was in good company.

After the game, although John was demob happy, he was keen to start his long journey home and I was keen to get home quite early as I had a long working day ahead the next day.

The evening was great fun; I’m sure we’ll do something like that again next season – perhaps at Lord’s, so that Marcus can experience that slightly oblivious feeling of cricket watching neutrality.

One In The Eye For Me and Middlesex, Lord’s & Wantage Road, 9 August 2016

Having played at least 40 hours of real tennis, I decided that I need a couple more lessons now just to try and come to terms with some basics such as playing off the back wall and volleying from the back of the court.

I arranged one of those lessons for 12:00 on this day. The weekend before, Chris Swallow phoned me and asked if I minded staying on to make up the numbers for the “senior doubles” hour, after my lesson. This seemed to me to be a good way of consolidating my learning.

I planned, therefore, to get all my work out of the way early and head straight from Lord’s to Wantage Road for the T20 quarter final between Northamptonshire and Middlesex.

Real Tennis

The real tennis lesson with Chris went fine. We concentrated on playing off the back wall, which I think I can now do with more confidence.

After the lesson, Chris went off to find one of the senior gentlemen for the doubles while two of us knocked up and then started playing some singles while we waited. The senior gentleman was nearly half an hour late due to some traffic problems. We played the senior doubles until 14:00, then Chris said that he needed to stop but that the court was free for a further 30 minutes if we wanted to play on.

So, as the clock ticked into the start of a third continuous hour on court (I realise in retrospect that this is not a good idea), the three of us who remained started playing a form of rotating (Australian) Canadian Doubles, which works quite well for real tennis. On one occasion, I served a sitter to the more senior gentleman who sent the ball back towards the far (forehand) corner.

Keen to show off my new “off the back wall” skills, I hurtled towards the ball and then realised (a little too late) that the ball would land far too close to the corner for me to do anything other than break myself and/or my racket. On pulling out of the shot in a muddle, I caught my own face with the racket between my eyebrow and my eye.

The senior gentleman in question seemed far more concerned to ascertain whether he had won the point or laid a chase before finding out whether I was OK. Quite a lot of blood, but in truth a small wound. We soldiered on until the next match arrived at half-past.

Mercifully for you, dear reader, I didn’t take a selfie of my injury, neither at the time nor the next day when the bruise/shiner went through a particularly vivid multi-coloured set of hues.

After my 150 minutes on court, I decompressed for a few minutes and ascertained that the swelling was so slight and far enough away from the eye as to leave my vision entirely unimpeded. I therefore soldiered on as planned to Northampton for the cricket match.

T20 Cricket – Northamptonshire v Middlesex Quarter-Final

I found myself in the appropriate hospitality suite well before the match, after navigating the Northamptonshire CCC stewards. Most of them seemed temporary and unable to help much/at all, whereas the regular ones (if you could find them) were incredibly helpful. Sadly the regulars were indiscernible from the temporary ones, unless you knew who to look for.

Quite a few of the Middlesex regulars were there, of course. I learnt that this was to be the first ever T20 match between our two counties. I met a few really pleasant and  interesting people. Northamptonshire put on a very tasty spread for us all. Much of the time I sat next to Keith Mein (Middlesex Committee) and Roy Virgin (former Northamptonshire player).

Middlesex seemed to be coming second for most of the evening and so the match turned out in the end – see scorecard here.

I was hoping for an easy drive home, but that wasn’t to be. Unscheduled roadworks between a couple of the junctions near Luton/Dunstable (aren’t there nearly always unscheduled roadworks there?) timed perfectly to maximise my discomfort, led to a tailback and diversions that the sat nav could only warn me about in retrospect. More than two-and-a-half hours after setting off from Northampton I got home.

It was a day for 150 minute marathons. Not my best day of the summer.