For several years now I have written occasional pieces about cricket for the King Cricket website, under my nom de plume, Ged Ladd. Janie and I have called each other Ged and Daisy since the mid 1990s.
The King Cricket website has very strict rules about match reports: “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.”
This particular day was a rather important one; this was the day that England defeated Australia at Lord’s for the first time for 75 years, but none of that is apparent in my King Cricket Match Report, click here.
We have Charles Bartlett to thank for the most wonderful relic from this trip: a superb stack of pictures – 80 of them – click here to see them all. I’ll pepper this piece with just a few.
30 July 2008
This was one of those rare occasions that the test started on a Wednesday and so we actually travelled up on the first day and watched days 2 and 3.
Thus we gathered for pre match cricket in David Steed’s local park in Stirchley.
Adam was not impressed with his batting performance
Never mind Adam’s body language above, that muck-about game on David’s local green went well for Adam and did not go at all well for me, as evidenced by this page of my jotter.
Nigel “Father Barry” (and son) did well, as did a local lad, Craig, who wandered along and asked if he could play with us.
Harish (Harsha Ghoble) also had a good go, although I do recall bowling him on one occasion with one of my moon balls which descended vertically onto the stumps. “How are you supposed to play a ball like that?”, complained Harish. Nigel then dispatched my next, similar ball for six. “Like that”, said Nigel.
I also recall lots of bites on my legs afterwards. Yet I was (uniquely amongst those in the following photo) wearing long trousers.
As darkness fell…
…then on to David and Anita’s place for a super barby:
Super barby at Steed Towers
31 July 2008
Chas and perhaps some of the others must have gone for a good walk the next morning, in the grounds around Harborne House…
Signs of some walking around Harborne House…
…while Harish and I, great athletes both, exerted ourselves with some morning sports activity:
For those looking in black and white, Ian’s the one dressed in red…Some signs of mis-spent youth there; not least Ian’s ability to play a little better after a couple of bevvies.Then the annual Heavy Roller shirt ceremony……for some reason Chas got a unique, pink one. As I’m the Middlesex supporter among us, “it should have been me”……then off we go to Edgbaston.All action it was. Could this have been the year that someone started a row with Nigel 20 minutes before the start of play asking him to sit down?
We had the honour of witnessing “that” over from Flintoff to Kallis:
The crowd was just a little bit involved.
We’re all standing now (apart from Hippity and Monkey-Face)!I think we went to Zizzis that night – correct me if I’m wrong, folks
1 August 2008
We did it all again! But Chas didn’t take pictures that day.
I made my own way home by train, as oft I do. Unusually, though, Nigel and Chas stayed on an extra day, having decided to brave the Eric Hollies Stand.
Aftermath – Chas and Nigel in the Eric Hollies
There are plenty of pictures in that photo album, but I’d really like one or both of the lads to write a short side piece describing their very different day “on the other side”…
…the dark side……with brigades of Amy Winehouses……and extra police protection. Had the fuzz been tipped off that Chas and Nige were coming?
I don’t know what it is about England v South Africa test matches at Lord’s, but I tend to have very poor recall of visits to them. I had the same problem in 2012 – click here. Perhaps it is to do with the flat tracks and England’s inability to win such fixtures.
On the Friday I went with Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett. He had just left Charityshare/Children’s Society and I had been unable to attend his leaving do. This was an opportunity to mark the occasion and have a proper chat, which we did.
England progressed from a good position to an excellent position during that Friday. It was the day that Ian Bell scored his heartbreaking 199, just missing out on the double-hundred.
This is a link to King Cricket’s piece on that innings of 199 by Ian Bell – I was only occasionally reading/chiming in on that site at that time, so not even a squeak of “I was there” from me. I enjoyed rocking backwards and forwards within the King Cricket site to read the other pieces posted during that match, with some excellent headlines and utter irrelevance to the match:
But I digress. I think Chas and I sat in the Mound Stand, but that is one aspect of the memory lapse. Another is the words “Kim and Micky” in my diary for the evening; I really don’t remember spending a whole day the cricket and then a whole evening with them. Perhaps Janie’s diary will reveal more on that aspect.
Chas’s note after the match makes it plain what his priorities were:
Good luck for you and Janie at Lords tomorrow, you may even see England win!
Thanks for the fantastic day on Friday it was really appreciated.
Can you remind me of the white wine as we are going to France on Monday and Dot has expressed an interest in getting some if we can see it!
Prior to the Friday, I had sorted out an anthology of links and match reports for Chas, as he had asked for it. Here’s a link to the thing uploaded; it is coming in very handy for Ogblog purposes:
My reply to Chas’s wine question and other points on the Saturday:
Thanks for your thanks – it was good to see you and we certainly got a very good day. Janie and I should also be in for a good day, although I have a sneaking suspicion that he Saffers might bat a bit better today, so I’ll be pleasantly surprised if we win today but not at all surprised if the match goes well into Monday.
The white win is from New Zealand, not France, so you might struggle to find it over there (or indeed here). It’s a Villa Maria special one named Taylor’s Pass, Pinot Gris.
My only real recollection of the Sunday is Janie getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of action that day. Yup, I’ve just checked and that is pretty much the sum total of Janie’s recollection as well.
It was the flattest of flat Lord’s flatties, which tends to irritate Janie at the best of times. Janie probably took it out on me a bit. That’s the Female of the Species for you. On this occasion, with England staring potential victory in the eye, it was an especially frustrating match. That’s cricket for you.
With grateful thanks to Alan Cooke for this photo.
I think this test match might well have been my first sighting of live cricket that season, given the scheduling at Lord’s and the timing of our trip to France in late April.
The weather was less than special for that match. I recall having been disappointed to get some rather ordinary-sounding seats (Grandstand I think) in the county members’ ballot, only eventually to be pleased for the cover given the weather.
We got best part of two sessions of cricket on the Thursday, which was better than we had expected given the forecast on the day itself. We witnessed Brendon McCullum batting better than anyone else and Jimmy Anderson bowling better than anyone else.
I made up one of my bagel-based picnics for that Thursday – I know that because Cookie mentioned them in his thank you note:
In particular, I enjoyed the bagels (a decision at last) and the Lords ambience. Hope you get a decent amount of play with your second Lords sitting.
By second sitting, Alan meant that he knew that Janie (Daisy) and I were due to go on the Saturday. Unfortunately, Saturday it pretty much rained all day. I don’t think we even left the flat, secure in the knowledge that any break in the rain would be very temporary, so I’m pretty sure Daisy and I witnessed the half hour or so of play that day on the TV, ate the picnic food in the comfort of the apartment and found other ways to amuse ourselves. One of those rare occasions I got my money back for a day of cricket that didn’t happen.
It seems that Chas was luckier and got to see play on the Sunday. He sent me this photo to prove that he had been there:
Vaughan caressing the ball to the boundary, taken by Charles Bartlett
I remember very little about this day. It was between dad’s passing away on the Monday and the funeral, all scheduled and arranged for the following Monday.
I considered not going, but mum and Janie both saw no sense in me moping around at home instead – there was nothing left to arrange. My original plan had been to go Beer Festing with the Z/Yen crowd the night before, but I am sure I pulled out of that event that year; there had been and would be other years.
But with the Oval so close to mum and dad’s house, it would be an easy hop over to mum’s after stumps, which is exactly what I did.
The guests that day were Harish Gohil (Charles was down to join us but ducked out, I think because he had needed to take so much time off for other reasons that summer), David Highton (formerly of Broadcasting Support Services), Shums Cassim (who was trying to get SpecialZm going), Stuart Caplin (a very charming gentleman from St James’s Place – Shums choice of guest).
I think I made my excuses a little early to beat the crush and get to mum’s at a reasonable hour. I guess I travelled to the house from the Oval using the tube and then a minicab from Balham – not the pocket-money-preserving tuppence bus fare of my childhood.
Janie came to the house and I recall mum was in a very dark mood by that evening. We tried to distract her and lighten the mood a little (which I think is what you are supposed to do in these circumstances) and then got told off for inappropriate levity.
Sunday at the Lord’s test with Daisy. My recollection of this particular day is not special.
I think we sat in the Upper Edrich for this day, as we had for the ODI against the West Indies a few weeks earlier. I think this was the day we found ourselves sitting next to Michael Billington and his good lady, with whom we chatted for a while.
The scorecard reveals what happened in the match. The day started with England in a strong position, then England tried to abdicate that strong position, until a superb partnership between KP and Matt Prior restored England’s position of strength. Wonderful days of test cricket at Lord’s should always be thus.
Daisy and I took the following day off work but did not venture back to Lord’s. Had we done so, we would have witnessed a nail-biting ending live – instead we witnessed it from the comfort of home.
The usual Heavy Rollers gig is Edgbaston, of course, but this year there was to be no test match in Brum.
Indeed, there has been much musing and debate since June 2007 as to whether this outing comprises a Heavy Rollers event or not.
In short, it does as far as I am concerned.
The evening before the match started, we were supposed to have a net at Old Trafford. Charles had arranged it all. The Old Trafford lot had been reluctant at first, priority for test match teams, can’t have oiks in the same nets as international players, blah blah. But when Chas explained that it was our tradition to net at Edgbaston the night before the match (based on a sample of one previous occasion, the year before, negotiated through similar reluctance), someone at Old Trafford was daft enough to relent and take our booking…but was then too polite to tell anyone to keep the place was open for us.
Result – disappointment the night before – only consolation being an amazing meal at Yang Sing (yes, my idea, yes, I know what I am doing, Chinese food-wise) for the four of us who had ventured that far north. Given the fuss-pot group involved: Nick, Harish, Charles and “me-no-fuss-pot” , the Yang Sing team worked wonders with a feast with plenty of food for all to enjoy.
The first day at the test was a day to watch England batting pretty well. Chas was still fidgeting about the net; I suggested that our best chance of real redress (i.e. a net) was to try and get them to allow us a net the next morning before the start of play. So we went to see the indoor school people and managed to find a suitably apologetic and sympathetic lady. She agreed that we had been seriously inconvenienced, to the extent that merely getting our money back was not adequate; she also managed to arrange for us to have our net at 9:00 am, before play the next day. She even arranged for us to have a parking space at Old Trafford when the inevitable question came up. Yes, Chas could then leave the car at Old Trafford all day. Quite a result.
So in the end, we were able to drive into old Trafford for Day two of the test early in the morning, as if we owned the place. Into the nets and let the fun commence. Around the time I came to have my bat, a small posse of West Indian stars turned up in the adjoining net. I especially remember Ravi Rampaul bowling to Shiv Chanderpaul. I also remember having to encourage the heavy roller guys to bowl at me rather than rubbernecking at the adjoining nets.
Whether Shiv Chanderpaul rubbernecked to observe my technique I couldn’t say, as naturally I was concentrating hard on my batting – watching the ball all the time, all the way. But Shiv did make a 50 that day, so I suspect he picked up a few ideas through observation in those nets.
The day got weirder once we were in our seats. Someone behind us spent more or less the whole day on his feet in a Borat mankini. He and his mates were also doing some strange business, passing around a whole cooked chicken while singing its praises. And of course the inevitable Old Trafford beer snakes etc., as was the case Day One.
I also ran into Mike Redfern and a bunch of his mates from the Red Bat Cricket Collective. I noticed the Red Bat shirts walking past us and stopped the guys, asking them if they were by any chance still in touch with Mike. “We sure are – he’s sitting over there with us”, was the reply. Really nice to see him again.
Of course we went home at the end of Day Two (driving off into the sunset straight from the ground), but the test remained weird after we left Manchester, with a streaker incident the next day. Strangely, that incident was recently (at the time of writing, December 2015) reminisced about on King Cricket – here.
Went to this day at the test with Jeremy Smith, who headed up the Z/Yen business that was sold to Aon earlier that year. Jeremy and his team were still working out of our offices at that time.
The weather was none too good for the start of that match. They only got about half a day’s play the previous day, but we almost got a full quota. England had been batting well and carried on doing so. We saw Collingwood, Bell and Prior score tons. This was back in the day, when people still said that Bell only scored tons when they didn’t really matter.
It was a batting pitch though – Lord’s was mostly those for a few years, I think it was because the new turf and drainage settled down and the pitches sort of died – some of the other grounds have suffered similarly a few years after putting in the modern drainage.
We had a very enjoyable day. I recall Jeremy saying how, despite the pleasantness of actually attending, he feels that you can follow a cricket match more readily on the TV than at the ground. Possibly so; certainly back then before the ubiquitous big screens.
The Beechwood Hotel Garden and Roller. With thanks to Charles Bartlett for this picture.
How did our regular Edgbaston (and occasionally other grounds) visiting group, the Heavy Rollers, end up staying at possibly the worst hotel of all time? After all, we comprise a bunch of reasonably discerning, sensible people.
The very worst hotels only happen to stupid people, right? Wrong.
But this event does needs some context and explanation in our defence before the exposition.
Context
For several years, our excursion was based around the Wadderton Conference Centre, which was the Children’s Society place in rural Worcestershire, just outside Birmingham. David Steed, who was one of our number in the Heavy Rollers, ran the place and lived on site. The Children’s Society was pleased for a bit of income from guests in the quiet summer period and it was mighty convenient and pleasant for us, with a suitable garden for pre-match cricket antics.
But Wadderton had closed down permanently in the 2004/2005 winter.
In 2005 we spent one splendid night, before the match, at Tye Towers. We then spent on night at Harbourne Hall – VSO’s equivalent place to The Children’s Society’s Wadderton – a place to which we returned subsequently several times before it declined.
But for some reason people, after that first stay, wanted an alternative. It was perhaps perceived as too far from the ground (although it was much closer than Wadderton). Perhaps people felt it reminded them too much of Wadderton without “being” Wadderton.
David Steed, living locally, said he’d sort something out.
Now David Steed, bless him, ran Wadderton wonderfully and was subsequently a superb host at his Birmingham house. But he possibly wasn’t the best judge of a hotel. Cheap and near the ground seemed sufficient criteria for him. His e-mail a few weeks before the match:
Accommodation is confirmed as previously written about and subsequent telephone chat at Beechwood Hotel on the Bristol Road approx. 200 yards from the main entrance at Edgbaston…
…No deposits required and as we have spoken – do people want to come early enough on the Wednesday to perform on our local green followed by supper at ours with a meal out locally or in Brum on the Thurs. night. Any thoughts ?
That “subsequent telephone chat” was not with me. Anyone dare to confess?
Of course, in a more modern era we might have looked at TripAdvisor or one of its competitor/predecessor sites to check the Beechwood Hotel, but back then those web sites didn’t exist, or barely existed.
Nigel recalls that the main light in Adam’s room didn’t work because the light bulb had blown. When Adam approached Tom for a replacement light bulb, he was told to fill in a form to apply for a replacement – the replacement was thus not forthcoming during our stay.
Although David had promised us that the rooms came
“each with private bathroom”…
…I seem to recall having to toddle down the corridor to get to said bathroom. “Private”, I suppose, does not necessarily mean “en suite” in this Beechwood world. I also recall some very inappropriate jokes about Zyklon B from my companions during conversations about those ghastly showers.
But the most bizarre conversations were with Tom, who tended to sidle up to us in the bar/common parts areas of the hotel and bend our ears with tales of his roller-coaster and/or imagined past. I made some fragmented notes:
“I was a millionaire at 21…a multi-millionaire at 24…lost it all at 33. I’ve been out with Miss Jamaica, Miss Bromsgrove, the lot. I had an Aston Martin – would cost about £125,000 today. Do fast cars while you’re young, young man, you won’t fancy it once you are your dad’s age. I made a million when a million was real money. When a million was really a million…”
The company that owned the property was only struck off a few months ago at the time of writing, December 2015, so I imagine the property is now in the hands of the Mortgage provider, Nat West, who surely could find some property developer somewhere who might adapt the premises into some jolly useful affordable housing in leafy Edgbaston.
Two Nights and Two Days of Cricket
Why were we there? Oh yes, cricket.
We had a net at Edgbaston itself on the Wednesday evening. I’m not entirely sure how our evening panned out, but – having now also seen an e-mail from Nigel sent to us ahead of the trip – I suspect that the net was late afternoon – Nigel’s e-mail suggests 17:00 start – and that the game on David’s local green was therefore a that same evening at, say, 19:00.
Anyway, the muck-about game on David’s local green, the night before the test match started, did not go well for me, as evidenced by this page of my jotter.
Nigel “Father Barry” and son did well, as did a local lad, Craig, who wandered along and asked if he could play with us.
Harish (Harsha Ghoble) also had a good go, although I do recall bowling him on one occasion with one of my moon balls which descended vertically onto the stumps. “How are you supposed to play a ball like that?”, complained Harish. Nigel then dispatched my next, similar ball for six. “Like that”, said Nigel.
I also recall lots of bites on my legs afterwards, although whether those were from the green or the hotel is a matter of some conjecture. Perhaps a bit of both.
Postscript March 2017 – the scorecard relic and narrative about the park muckabout game is a false memory from 2006 – that happened in 2008 and the text is transposed to that piece, together with a link to Charles Bartlett’s wonderful 2008 photographs that helped me to disambiguate. It seemed a ridiculous idea, that we had a net AND a muckabout in the park the same evening…it was ridiculous – didn’t happen.
The dinner at David’s on the Wednesday evening was typically delicious and (equally typically) the wine flowed plentifully. We had a great evening, that Wednesday before the game.
Heavy Rollers 2006 With thanks to Charles Bartlett for this picture.
Light Rollers 2006 With thanks to Charles Bartlett for this picture.
I’m not 100% sure where we ate on the Thursday night, but I think it was that year we went to a local Indian place near Steed Towers. Others might recall better. I think I was in “Beechwood Hotel shock” by then. It really was not a place for the faint-hearted.
Or, as Charley the Gent Malloy would put it, “that hotel was no place for a wuss.”
When reviewing the 2005 Ashes series, the great commentator, Richie Benaud, would relate tales from letters he had received from senior people, captains of industry even, describing hiding behind the sofa unable to watch the denouement of some of the tighter matches, such was the level of emotion invested in these incredible multiple-day sporting events that we call test matches in cricket.
The Edgbaston test, which several of us fortunate folk known as the Heavy Rollers experienced live in part, was such a match. While our live experience, which started so brilliantly for us the night before…
…was over as a live experience for us at stumps on Day Two, of course it continued for us as a television and radio experience for the next couple of days.
Before that, someone (often it was Nigel), will have helped me get at least part of the way, if not all the way, to Birmingham New Street for my train and I probably got to Janie’s place around 9:30/10:00 at night for a shower and then some deep sleep.
No doubt Janie and I played tennis in the morning, ahead of hunkering down with the radio and/or television for most of the Saturday.
It was a seesaw of a cricketing day if ever there was one. England looked to have surrendered their second innings for too little, then Australia similarly found it difficult to avoid frequent dismissals.
But Janie and I could not stay at home all day and watch cricket – we had tickets for a dinner and show at The Kings Head, Islington: Who’s The Daddy, a satirical farce. Not the sort of show that Janie would normally want to see, except that this show was largely about a larger than life journalist/editor named Boris Johnson and his affair with fellow Spectator journalist Petronella Wyatt. Without reaching to breach any professional confidences here, Janie had professional reasons (as well as idle curiosity) to see this show.
Janie and I set off for Islington quite early, with England in a good but not yet totally secure position. Michael Clarke & Shane Warne were at the crease together albeit seven down but accumulating runs. I think the only reason that the match was still going on at that hour was because England had taken the extra half hour to try and finish the match, but that idea didn’t seem to be working. I’m pretty sure Janie did the driving, thank goodness. We were listening intently. We parked up near the theatre and sat listening to the last couple of overs. Then Steve Harmison bowled THAT ball to remove Clarke on the stroke of stumps.
That Steve Harmison ball at the end of Day Three is at c22’30”.
Janie and I were in celebratory mode as we entered The Kings Head. Australia still more than 100 behind, just two wickets left…what could possibly go wrong?
No matter, we were in a great mood. England were on the verge of a vital win…
…or were they?
I’m pretty sure we played tennis again, early, on the Sunday morning. Then we hunkered down in the near-expectation that England would quickly take a couple of wickets and we could relax for the rest of the day.
It didn’t quite work out that way
I must say that I personally never got to the “hiding behind the sofa” stage, but there was a lot of oohing and aahing, that’s for sure. I started off watching in the living room, then migrated to the bedroom so I could put my feet up and await what I thought was the inevitable win…then I wasn’t so sure…then I starting to think it was an inevitable “yet again” loss on the way.
Janie kept insisting that it would all come good in the end, but once the lead had been reduced to 20-30 runs, she couldn’t sit still nor could she bear to watch.
By the time the England victory came, I was, by then, absolutely convinced that England were about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
But in the end we celebrated, Janie reminding me that she had been insisting that it would come good for England all along. Yeh, right.
I had , in a moment of extreme lucidity disguised as madness, procured, the previous autumn, six tickets for Day Five of The Oval test, just in case England were able to take the 2005 Ashes series to the wire. I had kept very quiet about this purchase, just in case the social workers of The Children Society, on learning of this purchase, conspired with a couple of doctors and had me put away for gross insanity.
A coupe of hours after the Edgbaston victory, it felt like the right moment to fess up to this purchase. I called Chas, who was in one of those “trembling voiced Chas” states, but he did make some informed comments on the outcome of the match and immediately said yes to the idea of joining me and Daisy at Day Five of the Oval test, should the series come to that.
I told Chas that I intended to call Nigel next.
Chas told me that it might be best to leave it another couple of hours or more. “I called him a few minutes ago and he still could barely speak”, explained Chas.
Nigel in full flow
Nigel doesn’t lose his voice lightly.
I did speak with Nigel later that day, who was still somewhat of a quiver. It is a shame he wasn’t able to join us at the Oval, but still that Oval story will make for another excellent Ogblog piece, not least because it will be awash with Charles Bartlett’s colourful pictures.
