This was one of the more memorable cricket matches between Z/Yen and The Children’s Society, not least because it was one of the very few that Z/Yen won.
Also memorable because we have a lot of artefacts from the match:
a wonderful stick of photographs taken on my camera – click here or the picture above. I’d love to credit the photographer(s) but no-one so far has been able to recall who actually took the pictures. I think Janie (Daisy) might be the culprit, as for sure she was there but isn’t in any of the pictures. With confession will come redemption, credit and possibly yet more good things. Janie should probably get a medal anyway for turning up at one of our silly cricket matches on her birthday;
the scorebook pages – scans shown at the end of this piece;
a sensibly short piece from the Now and Z/Yen blog, replicated in its entirety below.
Z/Yen gets even hotter at games
If Ian Harris can claim that even one good thing has ever come out of Z/Yen’s annual cricket match, (an event which boasted it’s 10th anniversary this year), it must be the resulting courtship and recent marriage of our Fran Birch with Eugene Kinghorn. Three years ago, Eugene played for The Children’s Society while Fran played for Z/Yen. One thing led to another after the (cricket) match and those two were matched (married) a few weeks ago.
This year we returned to the scene of the crime, Holland Park, with Eugene of course now playing in Z/Yen colours (qualified by marriage, cricket was always thus).
Suffice it to say that Z/Yen won the fixture this year, with several Z/Yen people exceeding all expectations (even Ian, I kid you not). But you couldn’t have written the script for the ending – Eugene and Fran batting together, knocking off the winning runs.
Scene of the crime seems like a suitable phrase for this match; Charles Bartlett being eyed with suspicion by the local constabulary:
I recall taking wickets (ripping my fingers to shreds trying to spin the new ball)…
…and scoring some runs opening the batting with Peter Cox…
Bartlett to Cox…sounds like apples and pears to me!
…which sent the crowd into an absolute frenzy…
…OK – in truth I think the frenzy was more likely to have been when Eugene and Fran were knocking off the winning runs and earning “match of the match” awards.
And here is the scorecard in full for true connoisseurs:
No photos from that event, but this picture was taken on Janie’s first digital camera around that time in 2006.
Z/Yen had pretty much doubled its space in St Helen’s Place that year and we wanted to show it off to the partners and make full use of that space as part of that year’s seasonal event.
Lanes Restaurant was an excellent place. We didn’t quite have a private room – I seem to recall a curtained-off section rather than an actual separate room. Still, this afforded us enough privacy to eat, drink and make merry.
That venue soon afterwards became the London Steakhouse Company, which it remains at the time of writing (2024).
Michael wrote an ode to our office location – a rare example of Michael writing the seasonal song: “Oh Little Court of St Helen’s”, which I aped in subsequent years as “Oh Little Street Of Basinghall”.
OH LITTLE COURT OF ST HELEN’S
(Sung to the tune of “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem”)
Oh little court of St Helen’s
How swish we see thee lie!
Beneath thy deep and wealthy sleep
Z/Yen’s offices abide
And in these dark deep shadows
The everlasting blight
Consultancy adds to your years
When packed as tight as mice
How crowded-ly, how crowded-ly
Z/Yen dishes out advice
Beside the frozen servers
And other bust device
Paper’s overflowing
But Linda’s looking nice
And if we get our Seventh Heav’n
We’ll soon trash Number Five.
The joke about “seven” and “five” related to the address, 5-7 St Helen’s Place. Whereas our original (smaller) offices had been accessed through the door of No 7, this new expanded space was at the No 5 end of the building. Simples.
The 2005 event was very special. Jeremy had suggested that we do “something Soho” and Janie had been very keen to try the Marco-Pierre White/Damian Hurst arty-combo restaurant, Quo Vadis. When Linda and I discovered that the palce had a private room the right size for Z/Yen (it wasn’t a club back then), the plans were well and truly hatched.
Drinks before dinner were in De Hems, in Macclesfield Street, across the road from one of my favourite Chinese haunts, Lee Ho Fook No 2 (actually the original Soho Lee Ho Fook)…
The art work and the food in Quo Vadis was excellent, as was the atmosphere among the team, as the business was doing increasingly well and the fun events were becoming increasingly good fun.
The song that year was a genuinely joint effort between me and Michael, as evidenced by the document exchange between us and the tell-tale “v1.1” in the title of the version we used.
Jeremy The Red-Toed Banker
(sung to the tune of “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer”)
This was a super event; both the restaurant and the preceding gallery visit. Click here to see, on The Internet Archive, the book that accompanied the fascinating Eyes Lies & Illusions exhibition.
The People’s Palace wasn’t quite a private room, it was more a cordoned-off area, which i think detracted a little from that “private party, let your hair down” atmosphere we tended to aim for.
Not that it stopped people from enjoying themselves. It was a very popular event that year.
I think Michael provided the song that year – it’s hard to tell with his as I don’t have them date and time stamped, nor copyrighted with a specific year.
TOIL AND PLAY
(Sung to the tune of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”)
By 2004, the Z/Yen v The Children’s Society cricket match had become a well-established fixture in the social calendar.
In the few years preceding this 2004 match, we had settled on Regents Park as the venue of choice, but Regents Park was unavailable that year, so we thought we’d try Holland Park’s non-turf pitch for a convenient change.
Two extraordinary things happened on this day in 2004. The handful of relics remaining of the event leave only tiny clues about those things, but in this Ogblog I shall deploy my forensic skills and reveal those memorable happenings.
The annual Z/Yen versus The Children’s Society cricket match was held in Holland Park around the longest day, 22 June. And it must have seemed like a long evening to the largest ever crowd of friends and spectators, huddling under the trees in the cool drizzle. Perhaps it was the bottles and pin of superb beer sponsored by Youngs brewery (via George, Giles Wright’s brother) that kept the crowd motivated and audible throughout.
Z/Yen batted first and accumulated 91 for 4. More or less everyone got a bat with several players, even Ian Harris, retiring not out. Restricting things to 15 overs per side saved the game from the impending rain, as well as the use of some handy Astroturf. Z/Yen bowled well – John Davies (Helen’s husband) getting man-of-the-match for his efforts – restricting The Children’s Society to 73 for 6, despite some late heroics by Harish Gohil and Richard Britain-Kelly. So for only the second time ever, Z/Yen has regained the Rashes (risk/reward ashes) trophy.
In a desperate attempt to rebuild the devastated relations with this important client, Ian Harris helped The Children’s Society to win (for the first time ever) its annual Tufty Stackpole match a few weeks later. Ian’s help was mostly vicarious of course (p-lease), lending The Children’s Society Z/Yen’s star ringer Mat for the 45 overs-a-side Sunday marathon.
Yes, the original write up records one of the key features of these quintessentially beer-match-style cricket matches. Giles Wright’s brother George being an essential ringer for our Z/Yen team, not least because he was the head of marketing at Youngs Brewery and would insist on donating lashings of beer for the event. No wonder we started to draw sizeable crowds during that era.
I also have the scorebook for this match:
Play Of The Day
The casual reader glancing at the above relics would not settle upon the name James Pitcher and imagine that the play of the day might have anything to do with him. Did not bat. Did not bowl.
James was a reluctant member of the team. That’s not to say that he was an unwilling participant in events, far from it. But James was convinced that everyone else in the team deserved their place in cricketing terms more than he did. So when time was running out and I offered him my place in the batting line up, James deferred. He also stated firmly that he could not and should not bowl.
Importantly, James also implied that he couldn’t really field that well either, but he could run, so we agreed that the outfield would be best for him.
When my friend/nemesis Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett came out to join Eugene Kinghorn at the crease, the match was still well poised, but the Children’s Society knew they needed to get on with it; they were falling behind the required run rate.
Charles drove his first scoring shot (it might even have been his very first ball, you know) extremely well, straight down to long on, quite near to the location where James was peacefully grazing in the long grass.
Eugene, gazelle-like compared with most of us, set off at Charles’s call of two and I’m pretty sure again yelled “yes, one more” on the turn, as he would be running to the danger (non-striker’s) end.
But James didn’t throw to the non-striker’s end. Why would he? How could he? James, the non-cricketer, simply ran as fast as he could, picked up the ball and hurled it (he’s not named Pitcher for nothing) vaguely in the direction of the action.
Had James thrown to the non-striker’s end, Eugene would have been home easily even if James had hit those stumps directly.
Instead, James’s throw somehow managed to hurtle an additional 22 yards past the non-striker’s stumps and directly hit the stumps at the striker’s end, with Charley still running a few yards short of the line. Run out.
It was an incredibly long throw for a direct hit. As James has subsequently agreed, we could set him that throw as a deliberate exercise and he might hit the stumps one time in a couple of hundred attempts.
I am reliably informed that Chas still has nightmares about this dismissal.
Pitcher by name… (this photo from the 2007 match)
Match Of The Day
But even that incredible dismissal was not the most extraordinary thing to occur that evening. In fact, both the score book and contemporaneous match reports are silent on the momentous occurrence.
I mentioned earlier Eugene Kinghorn as Charley’s batting partner during the unfortunate run out incident…the run out described above in some detail…the one that Charley still has nightmares about…
…anyway, Eugene formed another partnership that evening…
…with Fran Birch, one of the Z/Yen players.
By the time we all returned to “the scene of the crime” – three years later we again needed to decamp to Holland Park, those two had got married, Eugene was no longer working for The Children’s Society and he thus ended up playing for Z/Yen.
These are the lengths some Z/Yen folk are prepared to go to in order to strengthen the Z/Yen cricket team.
Joking apart, I really do believe that Eugene and Fran’s initial meeting at one of our silly cricket matches is one of the very most wonderful things to have come out of all of those events.
Linda gives Fran and Eugene the “match of the match” award, Holland Park, 2007
As luck (and a little bit of tactical captaincy on my part) would have it, Eugene and Fran even ended up partnering each other at the crease to knock off the winning runs in the 2007 game. Funny old game, cricket.
I remember this Z/Yen Christmas event being an especially good meal. We were depleted in numbers that year for some reason – I think one or two illnesses – so Kim & Micky joined us as guests rather than allow paid-for dinners go to waste.
I wrote up the event for the Now & Z/Yen newsletter, which survives on-line despite several deportations in the intervening 25 years – click here.
Just in case a future deportation upsets the above link, here is a scrape of that page. And just in case you don’t like clicking, here is the raw text I wrote in 1998 that became the relevant paragraph on that page:
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing [xmassy picture] The annual Z/Yen Christmas stuffing took place at Caldesi, our favourite Tuscan restaurant. Z/Yen staff bravely fought their way through six courses, including Jane Beazley’s birthday cake, as well as through one badly mangled Christmas carol, to the tune of “D-Mark! Z/Yen Angels Sing”. Contrary to our seasonal hopes, the heavens did not flood the party with D-Marks (current currency of choice in the run-up to the Euro, as recommended by one self-interested wife), nor were angels or singing much in evidence. A great time was had by all and huge relief sighed by the restaurant staff when they realised that Z/Yen people were not going to conduct quantum physics experiments on their fibre optic Christmas tree.
The Now & Z/Yen write up also refers to Michael’s attempt at a seasonal lyric – this 1998 one was his first for Z/Yen. Let’s just hypothesise that Michael is better at quantum physics than he is at song lyrics. Evidence below:
D-MARKS! Z/YEN ANGELS SING (Sung to the tune of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” or “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” in the Mariah Carey style)
“D-Marks!”, Z/Yen angels sing
Glory to the Euro thing
Peace in Europe, markets wild
Blair and Schroder reconciled
Joyful all recessions rise Join the Bank of England’s sighs With Zeee/Yen consultants claim Markets are in may-eh-hem
“D-Marks!”, Z/Yen angels sing Glory to the Euro thing
Glo….oh….oh…oh…oh….ohria
In consultants’ fee-eees Glo….oh….oh…oh…oh….ohria
In consultants’ fee-eee-eees
Z/Yen by highest fees adored
Z/Yen for those who can afford
Late in time, does Ian come
Often late, the favoured one
Z/Yen, so fresh the clients see
Hail, the astronomical fees
Pleased as gods with men to dwell
Z/Yen as blasphemous as hell
“D-Marks!”, Z/Yen angels sing Glory to the Euro thing
…again to play with Barnardo’s, but this time also with The Children’s Society.
I know that Ian Theodoreson and Bob Harvey gave us and their Barnardo’s charges every encouragement to make these evenings happen, but I have a feeling that neither of them made it to either evening.
Anyway, it was a very jolly evening and a great chance for people to get to know each other as well as mess around a bit playing cricket.
Not only did Barnardo’s still supply a bunch of dudes who knew what they were doing – see photo above…
…The Children’s Society was also blessed with some half-decent cricketers, including Chief Executive and glove man Ian Sparks:
Ian Sparks on gloves, Harish Gohil at bat; presumably this was warming up pre contestCharles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett – starting as he meant to go on
I can’t remember in detail the playing conditions we came up with for this particular evening, but sort-of having three teams in an after work round robin in August was never going to work brilliantly as matches. I have a feeling we played sort-of eight a side with additional supply fielders from the sides that weren’t batting.
No slide rule – but the Barnardo’s score book and my own trusty light meterReservoir Dogs but without the ultraviolence? Kevin Parker (striding, front left), Rupert Stubbs (hatted, central), Michael Mainelli (arms folded in disgust, right).Spot the ball (obviously going uppishly to backward square leg, that’s me batting)Mainelli looks relieved to have been dismissed.
I still think the whole idea had started with Kevin Parker and some of the Barnardo’s team he was working with – I wonder if I can extract a confession from him.
Quintessential Harris shot, late 1990s: the uppish leg-side hoick
Between 1984 and 1998 I pretty much didn’t play cricket at all. Perhaps the odd knock around when I was in my mid twenties, then there were the dog years of the early 1990s following my catastrophic back injury in the summer of 1990. After that, my cricket “career” was limited to a bit of watching and the odd umpiring stint…
…until the summer of 1998.
That summer, Z/Yen was still doing work with Barnardo’s and had also by then got heavily involved with The Children’s Society. Thus it transpired that our main client contacts, especially at the latter, were keen cricketers.
But the initial challenge came from Barnardo’s and I think it was Kevin Parker who initially picked up the challenge.
So like buses, no cricket for years and then two matches came along in a row. The first of them was just Z/Yen and Barnardo’s.
Z/Yen – a tiny company with about 10 employees in those days. Barnardo’s employed several thousand people, a great many of whom worked at the Barkingside campus.
Barnardo’s had quite a lot of people who knew what they were doing for a cricket match…
One of the Barnardo’s IT team, if I recall correctly
…whereas Z/Yen didn’t. I press-ganged a few likely folk and we tried our best against adversity, but adversity…by which I mean Barnardo’s…were destined to win.
By the time we got to this first match, I think that the plans for a second match, which ended up including people from The Children’s Society, were already in place, so I think we all saw this first one as a bit of a warm up.
But Micky’s one and only experience of cricket had very little to do with warm up. Micky is from Belgium and fancied having a go. He’s that sort of “have a go” chap. Back in 1998, he wasn’t exactly displacing a queue of Z/Yen people who wanted to play…
…let’s be honest about this, we were struggling to get a team together; hence the cunning plan to bring in The Children’s Society enthusiasts for the next one.
…I thought Micky might be safest patrolling the boundary.
But Micky did no warming up or keeping warm exercise ahead of the ball coming vaguely in his direction about 20-30 minutes into the match. He set off enthusiastically around the outfield only to pull up with a hamstring tear some 10 yards shy of the ball.
So when it was Z/Yen’s turn to bat, we not only had to explain the way batting works to Micky, we also had to provide him with a runner and explain how that arcane aspect of the laws of cricket works too.
Not ideal.
Yet still a good time was being had by all.
My other very clear memory is my own experience batting in partnership with a gentleman named Nigel. He was Karen Moore’s partner or husband, so qualified to play for Z/Yen on those grounds. He might otherwise have seemed like a ringer.
Nigel was no cricketer but he was a fitness instructor and had a Mr Motivator manner and clearly was a talented all-round sportsman.
I was scratching away, barely able to put bat on ball…
…well I hadn’t played for 14 years or so…
…until Nigel came to the crease, only to start whacking the ball using just hand-eye and natural talent.
Come on Ian, you can do it…
…Nigel hollered encouragingly and convincingly from the non-strikers end. And strangely, feeding off Nigel’s ill-founded confidence in me and the freedom that added to my game, I started to score some runs and contribute well to our partnership.
OK, we couldn’t turn the game around, but we had a decent knock – perhaps I put on 10-12 – which I remember making me feel well chuffed.
I think the match took place near Barkingside – I think Fairlop – perhaps Old Parkonians – my diary is silent on detail.
Postscript: my memory has served me well. I wrote this up for Now & Z/Yen at the time thusly:
Z/Yen defied all the spread bets by coming a close second in a cricket competition in late July, against Barnardo’s, at Fairlop. Z/Yen highlights included Jane Beazley taking a wicket, Michael Mainelli scoring 16 runs “baseball style”, Michel Einhorn pulling a hamstring and a stunning undefeated partnership of 36 runs in three overs between Ian Harris and Nigel Moore.
None of these stunts were enough to prevent Barnardo’s from deservedly winning by 23 runs. Unlike our good friends at Barnardo’s, Z/Yen took the obvious precaution of bringing some children along with us, only one of whom succeeded in getting a black eye trying to retrieve the ball. It was an amazing summer evening, which showed the weather characteristics of spring, autumn and winter during the two hours of play. The weather improved once we retired to the sports centre for beer and cake. Watch out for the next similar event; it was a smashing evening.
The full stack of pictures (from both matches) might help savvy locals to work it out:
Then we went to see Scissor Happy at The Duchess Theatre. I wrote the following in my theatre log:
Works outing for Z/Yen – went very well.
Michael Moore’s drunken interventions were especially memorable.
Michael was the husband of one of our employees – Rachel. He was significantly older than her, indeed older than the rest of us. At first his audience interventions went down well with cast and audience, but he got carried away and for a while seemed to think that he WAS the show.
I remember several of our number being embarrassed about this – not least Rachel – although I also recall hearing on exit other audience members debating whether that funny old geezer was a plant from the show or really a member of the audience.
The Fung Shing meal was excellent in out private room. At that time Fung Shing was, in my opinion, the best restaurant in Chinatown. Writing 25 years later, it is another long-since defunct place, sadly.
Returning to Scissor Happy, though – I wonder what made us chose that play? Some sort of lowest common denominator thinking? Or perhaps it came recommended by someone…certainly not me! Not my sort of play at all.
Nor Nicholas de Jongh’s, who described it as “piffle” in the Standard:
A government ban on the sale of beef-on-the-bone, in late 1997, was very unpopular. The worry was “Mad Cow Disease” or variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, although the connection and risks seemed very low to many of us.
In truth, it was written more as a personal rant and internal Z/Yen team joke for Christmas that year than anything that I thought might really generate press, but strangely the Daily Telegraph picked up on it, called me for a chat about it and then published this piece – extracted onto the then nascent Z/Yen web site here...
If Ian Harris can claim that even one good thing has ever come out of Z/Yen’s annual cricket match, (an event which boasted it’s 10th anniversary this year), it must be the resulting courtship and recent marriage of our Fran Birch with Eugene Kinghorn. Three years ago, Eugene played for The Children’s Society while Fran played for Z/Yen. One thing led to another after the (cricket) match and those two were matched (married) a few weeks ago.
The annual Z/Yen versus The Children’s Society cricket match was held in Holland Park around the longest day, 22 June. And it must have seemed like a long evening to the largest ever crowd of friends and spectators, huddling under the trees in the cool drizzle. Perhaps it was the bottles and pin of superb beer sponsored by Youngs brewery (via George, Giles Wright’s brother) that kept the crowd motivated and audible throughout.
Z/Yen batted first and accumulated 91 for 4. More or less everyone got a bat with several players, even Ian Harris, retiring not out. Restricting things to 15 overs per side saved the game from the impending rain, as well as the use of some handy Astroturf. Z/Yen bowled well – John Davies (Helen’s husband) getting man-of-the-match for his efforts – restricting The Children’s Society to 73 for 6, despite some late heroics by Harish Gohil and Richard Britain-Kelly. So for only the second time ever, Z/Yen has regained the Rashes (risk/reward ashes) trophy.
