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In February 2021 I took a stroll and listened to The Ridiculous Ashes podcast while so doing. I wrote up the “event” in the style of a King Cricket match report.
In June 2021 King Cricket published that piece:
If anything ever goes awry with the King Cricket site, you can find that piece here instead.
Photo from September 2016, when the despised Lower Compton was empty
Almost everything that needed to be said about this wonderful day was included in my King Cricket match report at the time:
(If anything should ever go awry with the above links, click here instead).
Except, of course, that King Cricket match reports cannot talk about the cricket itself.
Whereas King Cricket himself is allowed to waffle on, with his mates, for hours, in excruciating detail about the ridiculous aspect of cricket matches – and three cheers for that ability, because The Ridiculous Ashes is a fun listen.
Here is a link to The Ridiculous Ashes podcast for this match.
The following link is to the recent King Cricket posting about this match which includes some text and vids about the most ridiculous bits:
If that is too much clicking for you but you are desperate for some vids, here is Geoff Lemon’s seminal vlog rant about Shane Watson from the Lord’s East Gate (now renamed the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Gate. One of the things I love about it is the passers by noticing and/or feigning not to notice this ranting Aussie holding forth. I recognise several of the faces as Lord’s regulars:
Or, if seeing Chris Rogers’s freak dismissal is more your bag, the following vid will feed your desirous eyeballs:
I remember being especially taken with THAT ball from Graeme Swann, not least because I did once take a hat trick with balls that were not too dissimilar to that one…except that at least two of mine were definitely hitting the stumps:
If you actually want to know about the actual score in the match (by which I mean Lord’s Ashes Test 2013, not Alleyn’s 9 July 1975) and the sort of details that official professional sites publish about matches of this kind, then click here.
The thing that stands out the most about all this for me, in reflective Ogblog mode, is the enormity of the picnic that I took for just me and Daisy (Janie) for one day at Lord’s. I’m sure King Cricket won’t mind me scraping my own words:
Naturally, I had prepared the picnic. We made early headway into assorted delights of my picnic bag – some mini croissants from the artisanal bakery that kindly opened a couple of years ago no more than 50 yards from my front door. Then on to the smoked trout bagels I had lovingly made, with my own special recipe horseradish butter and lemon. The fishy delight needed white wine; I brought a very interesting little Austrian Riesling. Some readers might already know that Ged and Daisy abstain from all forms of Australian wine for the duration of Ashes series. I thought the choice of Austrian was a little edgy, but safe enough.
After the smoked trout, smoked eel bagels – embellished in similar fashion to the trout. Daisy found the eel a little rich for her taste. Bags of pork scratchings and some portions of soft fruit kept the afternoon interesting enough in the food department…
…home made shortbread (not home made by me, you understand)…
…later, the ham sandwiches on tomato bread encouraged us to launch into the bottle of red – a jolly little Tuscan number.
Blooming heck!
Big Papa Zambezi Jeff Tye presenting me with my Heavy Roller shirt – thanks to Charley The Gent Malloy for the image – grabbed from his vid.
I have been encouraged to write up this particular Heavy Rollers visit now, in December 2021, as King Cricket and his partner in crime Dan Liebke have arrived at this test match in their podcast series, The Ridiculous Ashes. This test is Series Three, Episode Three – click here or below:
I haven’t listened to that podcast yet – my plan is to write up The Heavy Rollers experience and then listen.
For reasons I don’t quite understand, I have no photographs from 2009 in the “Charley The Gent” collection – just a video of Big Papa Zambezi Jeff Tye handing out the Heavy Rollers shirts on the morning of the first day:
It might just be that the photos from that year never reached me and therefore are omitted from what I thought was a canonical collection. If Charley furnishes me with photos in the fulness of time, have no fear, they will find there way to this piece.
My log records that it was a bumper year for Heavy Rollers, attendance-wise. Ashes years tended to be like that. Here is the Heavy Roll call (did you see what I did there?):
Others might well be able to chip in with additional memories, but my recollections of this one are slight and a bit idiosyncratic.
On arrival the night before (29th July), I recall that there was a bit of a scramble for the “better rooms” at Harborne Hall, although by that year (our second at the venue) I had concluded that the larger rooms at the top of the old building had some disadvantages to them such that my own preference was for a well-located slightly smaller room. I thus avoided the potentially contentious debate by deferring to my elders while still getting what I wanted.
I’m fairly sure it was this year, 2009, when I ran into my friend Maz (Marianne Tudor-Craig) at Harborne Hall, which, at that time, was still a VSO training & conference venue and Maz was still a VSO-nik at that time. It was strange seeing her in that setting while I was having a cricket break with my mates.
Obviously the single most important event of the day is captured on video for all to see – here’s the link again if you missed it above:
The rest of Day One was a bit of an anti-climax, certainly cricket-wise, as it rained for much of the day. I’m pretty sure that The Steeds would have smuggled in some wine boxes disguised as picnic-bag chillers and a fine picnic to go with it too.
I recall that nephew Paul “Belmonte” was at the ground that day and joined us for a while during one of the many rain breaks.
I also recall that, at one point, I was so “mentally unoccupied” while wandering around in a rain break that I allowed a young blond Npower saleswoman persuade me to change energy suppliers on a promise of, I blush to admit it, £200 off my energy bills for switching. Npower retained my business for several years after that.
In the absence of a 2009 photo in our maroon-coloured shirts, here is a picture of eight of us (only Biff and Tufty Geoff missing) from the previous year in the same place (Priory Stand front row) in our dark-coloured shirts:
Forget whatever Alex “King Cricket” Bowden and Dan Liebke tell you in Series 3, Episode 3 of The Ridiculous Ashes, the most ridiculous moment of the match was around our seats at the start of Day Two.
By this stage of our proceedings, Charley “The Gent” was curating a fair bit of the Day Two picnic. As is Chas’s way, he was busying himself sorting out the contents of several bags of goodies at the start of play.
Despite several of us saying to Chas that the day’s play was about to begin, Chas was looking down in his bags when Graham Onions took a wicket with the first ball of the day.
Chas was disappointed missing that ball, but then returned to busying himself with his bags.
Despite several of us warning Chas that Onions was running up to bowl his second delivery, Chas continued busying himself, eyes down inside the bags…
…missing the fall of Michael Hussey for a primary – the second ball of the day.
Naturally Chas then gave the game his undivided attention for the attempted hat-trick ball and several subsequent deliveries of the ordinary variety.
We got plenty of play to see on the second day, although the mood of excitement was lessened because the weather forecast for Day Three was shocking, so (even during the exciting Day Two) there was a sense that the match was inevitably destined to be a draw.
Here is a link to the scorecard.
I do hope I can supplement this piece with memories from other Heavy Rollers.
Where did we eat the night before the match? And the evening after Day One? I don’t think we played at all that year, but maybe we did. Hopefully the hive mind of the Heavy Rollers will help.
