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Rodney Marsh – Shane Warne

March 7, 2022 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Rodney Marsh
1947 – 2022
Shane Warne
1969 – 2022
RIP

A FILE photo shows wicketkeeping great Rod Marsh (left) with Shane Warne.—Reuters

It seems somehow wrong to be writing about something as apparently trivial as sport with the world currently enveloped in darkness. It is, on the other hand, perhaps exactly the right moment to be considering things that can, on occasion, be noble and pure – and represent some of those qualities about our species which can be positive. Either way I cannot ignore the occasion of the sad passing – mere days apart – of two of the legends of a sport that still, to many, represents our human nature in one of its finest forms.

I inherited a passionate love of cricket from my mother (Father – bless him – did not do sport at all) and I thank her most fervently for that. I grew up following the game in the 60s, 70s and 80s and beyond – and then, when quite old enough to know better, took up playing village cricket in my mid forties. I turned out for our local side reasonably regularly right up until our departure for Canada.

Anyone who followed the recent Ashes series ‘down under’ might understandably complain about the current parlous state of English cricket. Though I would not blame anyone for so doing I would just draw attention to the wide variety of previous eras in which we also came off second best at the hands of those who wear the ‘green baggy’. Throughout the 1970s we were not only regularly pulverised  by the memerising pace of the West Indian quicks (fast bowlers) but also routinely humiliated by the unearthly powers of the great Dennis Lillee and the wild and uncontrollable Jeff Thompson. If they were bowling you can bet your bottom dollar that, twenty two (and a fair bit more) yards away would be the Aussie wicket keeper – Rodney Marsh. The familiar statement – “Bowled Lillee – Caught Marsh” – graced all too many scorecards.

As quoted in The Guardian the current Australian Captain – Pat Cummings – said of Marsh.

“I, along with countless other people in Australia, grew up hearing the stories of him as a fearless and tough cricketer, but his swashbuckling batting and his brilliance behind the stumps over more than a decade made him one of the all-time greats of our sport, not just in Australia, but globally, When I think of Rod I think of a generous and larger-than-life character who always had a life-loving, positive and relaxed outlook, and his passing leaves a massive void in the Australian cricket community.”

Cruel fate that the legendary Aussie leg spin bowler, Shane Warne, should pass away just a few days later. Crueler yet that Warne was a relatively young man at 52. Matthew Engel wrote in his Guardian obituary:

“Shane Warne, who has died aged 52 of a suspected heart attack, was almost certainly the greatest spin bowler cricket has ever produced. More than that, he was one of the most outsize personalities of any sport. Everything he did in his game and his life was on a grand scale: he lived fast and, it transpires, died young. Warne singlehandedly revived the discipline of leg-spin, which by the time he burst into Test cricket in the 1990s was almost a lost art. He arrived into an Australia team that had already embarked on a run of eight Ashes series wins and made it overwhelmingly stronger – he was still in the business of terrorising Englishmen when he retired from Test cricket 14 years later”.

I will certainly not be alone in remembering clearly watching on the BBC the occasion on which Warne made his test debut in the UK. With the then English captain, Mike Gatting, at the crease the ball was tossed to Warne for his first spell. The very first ball turned off the pitch nearly at right angles and, having pitched well outside the leg stump, clipped the top of the off stump. Gatting could do nothing but stand and stare in amazement. Truly (as almost immediately dubbed) “The ball of the century“.

It is perhaps the nature of the game almost as much as the way that these two larger than life characters played it that they will be missed in the UK (and beyond!) almost as much as they will be in Australia.

 

 

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Sport report

February 4, 2022 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Regular followers of these observational obiter dicta (a bit of stretch there but let us not be deterred) will be familiar with my routine reports on various sporting occasions that I (or we) deem to be of import.

I do not – frankly – participate in sports myself these days (though much fitness work is yet done) and those who tried to coach me back in my school days would express a total lack of surprise thereat. The following of various noble sports does, however, play an important part in our lives and I like to enthuse about that wherever appropriate.

My last such report to this forum dates from September last and followed hot on the heels of Emma Radacanu’s splendid victory in the US Tennis Open and – of course – of the Olympic games.

Since then – complete radio silence!

There are good reasons for this sad state of affairs.

Over the past three months England have visited Australia for the most recent episode in that epic cricket contest – the Ashes. Opinions were deeply divided as to their prospects. Those in charge of the England campaign claimed (somewhat unconvincingly) that – pandemic apart – England had spent the last two years preparing for this gladiatorial contest and that the omens were for once propitious. Everyone else declared the the English Cricket Board – by prioritising unnecessary short-form tournaments that blocked out the core of the home season – had effectively prevented any of the potential candidates for the test side from gaining relevant match practice in appropriate conditions.

As it turned out ‘everyone else’ was right and England were accordingly humiliated. At the time of writing several of those responsible for this fiasco (though sadly not the chief culprits!) have duly fallen on their swords and we await further developments.

No cause for reportage there!

In the world of rugby the home nations had surprisingly good Autumn International series, with each side beating one or more of their southern hemisphere counterparts; no mean feat! I would have felt inclined perhaps to have reported thereon where it not for the fact that my attention was distracted by the performance(!) of my long supported Premiership side – Bath. Readers may recall that in 2015 – the year that we left the UK to move to Canada – Bath unexpectedly made it through to the Premiership final, which we eagerly attended at the Cabbage Patch. They were, sadly, well beaten by the beastly Saracens, as duly noted within these pages. Unfortunately their fortunes have since declined and this year they have had a terrible start to the season, losing eleven straight league games before finally winning one against the next club up the table – Worcester. The one piece of good fortune – if such it really be – is that because of COVID there is no relegation from the Premiership for the second year running.

Thank goodness!

So – what moves me to write about sport now?

Well – four things…

Firstly, the Winter Olympics have just begun. No-one in the UK really gives a rat’s arse about these games, because we are pants at most of the sports involved – but here in Canada, of course, it is a different kettle of fish entirely.

Secondly, Canada have suddenly – and to many people’s surprise – become rather good at footie and have just qualified for this year’s World Cup. Who woulda thought it?!

Thirdly, last weekend Bath hosted last year’s champions – Harlequins – at the Rec. To everyone’s surprise, they won! Perhaps their fortunes have finally changed for the better (famous last words!).

The final thing is that this weekend sees the start of this year’s Six Nations championship – and all matches will once again be played in front of (doubtless) full houses. Hooray for that, say I!

This Saturday sees Scotland host the ‘auld enemy’ at Murrayfield for the Calcutta Cup. Whisper it quietly, but it does look as though this might be the closest competition for some years…

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Free to air

February 11, 2021 in Life as we know it | Permalink

I promised that I would cover a second sporting matter in addition to the encomium regarding Scotland’s excellent  Six Nations achievement of last weekend that featured so prominently in my last post… and as I am (where possible) a man of my word – here it is…

When The Girl and I first became what is charmingly called ‘an item’ some decade and a half ago, one of the many things to which I determined to introduce her – as a means of binding our futures more closely together through mutual understanding and appreciation – was the supreme sport of cricket. Long time readers of these meanderings will be well aware of my enduring love for the game – as well as my complete mediocrity as a practitioner thereof.

I will not impose on the gentle reader at this point either an attempt to explain the game’s mysterious appeal, nor to exhaustive catalog our history with its regard. I will mention – however – the now legendary 2005 Ashes series between England and Australia… that being the year that England finally regained the Ashes after nearly two barren decades of trying. They did so – further – against one of the greatest of all Aussie sides.

Clearly this outstanding achievement – which was played out over five gripping five day test matches – was the perfect opportunity to introduce The Girl to the delights of the game. This was made all the more easy by the fact that – in those days – test cricket in the UK was given routine live coverage – for the whole of every one of those twenty five days – by the BBC. We would arrive home from work, switch on the TV and be immediately gripped by the sheer drama with which those encounters were completed. The Girl – who is a huge sports fan anyway – became a convert.

The timing was fortuitous, for the very next year the England Cricket Board (ECB) – in grevious pursuit of filthy lucre – sold it’s soul to the rebarbative Murdoch and the broadcast rights to Sky TV. Live coverage of international cricket disappeared from television over night for those unwilling to render their shilling to the appalling antipodean.

This state of affairs has remained the case ever since. Shockingly live coverage of the English national game cannot be seen on free-to-air TV by the youngsters who might some day play a part in its future.

Or at least – that was the case until this year. Finally, Sky grew tired of featuring the game and Channel 4 picked up – at the last moment – the broadcasting rights for England’s winter series in India. As things have only been put in place at the very last minute it all looks a little low-tech, but we can once again follow every ball in time-honoured fashion (even here in Canada).

Delightfully, the England team responded brilliantly to this development in the first test (which finished earlier this week) by playing a blinder and beating India in India for the first time in yonks. India are one of the very top sides and at home (this being a country that regards the game almost as a religion) they are virtually unbeatable.

Well done England!

 

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Owzat!

July 15, 2019 in Life in England | Permalink

References in this journal of late to the great game of cricket have been conspicuous by their absence. There are two reasons for this…

The first is that – though cricket is indeed played in this most English of Canadian backwaters – it is not that readily consumed by the casual follower of the game, either as a participant or simply as one who likes to watch the odd encounter. Finding out what is happening and where takes some effort and the organisations concerned seem (to me at any rate) somewhat cliquish and unwelcoming. As a result I have seen very little cricket here.

Secondly, back in the old country the game’s governing body – the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) – following the brilliant Ashes victory in 2005 decided to do their level best to put people off following the national sport by selling the TV rights to Murdoch’s Sky channel, thus ensuring that there be no free to air coverage. The ultimate effect of this massively mistaken policy was that the recent Women’s Football World Cup garnered (for the first time) huge and enthusiastic TV audiences (around 11.7 million in the UK for the England/US semi-final) whilst those for the the concurrent Cricket World Cup languished at around the half a million mark.

When England made it through to the final – facing a New Zealand side who had somewhat unexpectedly beaten India in the semi-finals – Sky finally relented and agreed to Channel 4 showing live coverage of the event. As a result the viewing figures for the final reached 4.5 million – which numbers speak for themselves.

As for the game itself – it was a total doozy! Two very evenly matched sides battling on a pitch on which it was difficult to score at a high rate ensured that a nail-biting finish would be the order of the day. One outrageous piece of good fortune in the final over – with the ball deflecting to the boundary from the bat of the diving Ben Stokes, trying desperately to make his ground – gifted the chasing England side an unexpected four runs and enabled them to tie the scores from the last ball of the match. The ‘Super Over’ contest that followed was also tied – a statistic to delight the cricket-stat enthusiasts everywhere (of which there are yet many) and England won on a technicality (most boundaries scored).

This is to take nothing at all away from the England side who have been trying to win the World Cup for as long as I have been following the game and have finally done it.

Well done! Congratulations all round. Let’s hope that this victory draws people back to the game.

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Life in the afternoon

February 14, 2016 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Afternoon in Naples - Cezanne“A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.”

Carl Jung

In the final part of my brief series on the subject of home-sickness posted in the run up to Christmas last year I concluded that the malaise to which I had briefly fallen prey that November had been caused in the main by feelings of a loss of significance – a lack of purpose – and of the concomitant confusion concerning my place in the world. I further opined that the topic of ‘significance’ was itself… er… significant and that I would needs return to it in some future disquisition.

Now seems as good a time as any so to do.

As noted in the aforementioned post my emigration to Canada was not the only important event with which I was occupied last summer. I had also reached the end a forty year career in education. I consider myself to have been massively fortunate to have had the opportunity to work in two of the UK’s leading public schools (public in the English sense here) and I felt toward the end that in my primary career in IT (primary in the sense that it was that for which I was most highly rewarded) I had gone about as far as I could go. I had acquired something of a reputation amongst those peers whose opinions I most respected and had little need to prove myself further.

The English public school is an ancient and complex beast – particularly those amongst their number that focus on boarding. These institutions have fashioned an uniquely self-contained and multi-layered culture which incorporates not only the academic, the sporting and the artistic, but also their own individual ethos and mythology. Some go so far as to insinuate into the English language their own vocabulary.

Those who work for these august bodies can choose to hold themselves aloof from such aeon-aged Weltanschauung – or they can cheerfully subscribe thereto. It will surprise no-one that I opted for the latter course, throwing myself into as much of School life as was feasible for one who lived several hours’ drive hence.

I was also for a decade a resident (being joined there in ‘mid-term’ by the Kickass Canada Girl) of a small village in South Buckinghamshire – the sort of rural idyll in which everyone knows everyone else’s business in rather too much detail. I by no means ranked amongst the luminaries (and there were a fair few of them!) but most of them knew who I was.

I served the village for a number of years as secretary to its cricket club. To those for whom the notion of ‘village cricket’ stirs thoughts of amiable amateurishness – or perhaps summons up images redolent of bucolic quaintness – I should point out that within the appellation itself the words ‘village’ and ‘cricket’ get equal billing. Whatever the standard of the play and the good nature and friendliness of the participants, membership of such a club does expose one to all of the pressures and pomposities attendant to rural politics and personalities.

This whole slightly convoluted explication is by way of an illustration as to how the structures that I had (mostly) sub-consciously adopted to support my life in the UK had successfully furnished me with a sense of belonging – a sense of purpose. I knew my place. Nothing out of the ordinary in that, of course… we all do pretty much the same. Reaching the end of a working life can, however, lead to a dislocation from this sense of place as, of course, does moving to a strange country. Doing both at the same time virtually guarantees it and having to start afresh to rediscover one’s sense of worth from scratch can be intimidating. In my case one of the side-effects was my brief bout of home-sickness.

As might be determined from those pre-Christmas posts my response to the malaise was to indulge – as is ever my wont – in a little navel-gazing. Interestingly the topics to which I have alluded above were not the ones that featured most strongly in the resultant retrospection.

Those that were – however – must wait for next time.

 

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Cultivating our garden

October 25, 2015 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidOne of the incidental side effects of adhering to Voltaire’s immortal dictum – as given voice by the eponymous Candide in his final utterance – is that the Kickass Canada Girl and I do indeed now have a garden to cultivate.

I make no bones about it – unlike my father and my grandmother I really am no gardener. I have in the more distant past taken a share of the responsibility for what was quite a large garden, but for much the last two decades the stately properties in parts of which the Girl and I have lived have had the advantage of splendid communal gardens – maintained by splendid communal gardeners.

We now find ourselves the fortunate owners of a very lovely and quite mature ‘yard’ – as Canadians have it (and I invite you to consider that “We must cultivate our yards!” really doesn’t quite have the same ring to it).

One good thing about taking on such a responsibility at this particular time of the year is that there is perhaps slightly less to be done than there would be in other seasons. This is handy as it gives us the opportunity to watch and see what happens rather having to pile in – all guns blazing.

Grass – on the other hand – waits for no man and thus it was that I found myself last week – having borrowed a mower from our dear friends (who, you may recall, have a landscape design business) – for the first time tending to our acres (actually just under half an acre).

Mowing a lawn is a splendidly manly occupation (man in control of powerful machine, working in harmony to bend nature to his will!) and I found myself enjoying the chore considerably. It quite took me back –  though not to my previous gardening days for it had then been quickly established that the steeply sloping lawns of that garden were beyond my meagre capabilities and a pro was engaged to carry out the task instead!

Rather I was put in mind of my cricket club days. I was for a period the honourable secretary at the sort of village club where there was no professional groundsman and everyone was invited to muck in to help out with the ground maintenance. As ever volunteers were few and far between and those of us who did throw our hats into the ring consequently spent considerable amounts of time tending to the greensward. I didn’t mind that much as I found following a mower up and down a cricket square to have quite a therapeutic value.

Some who follow this blog will – during the summer months – doubtless continue to be similarly engaged. I will now instead rather be spending my time cultivating what might one day merely make a decent enough croquet lawn.

What is it about the English and their lawns?

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End of an era?

September 15, 2014 in Life in England, Moving to Canada | Permalink

Saturday last saw the final match of the season for the itinerant band of cricketing misfits for whom I still – on occasion – turn out. The fixture took place in a gloriously bosky setting in the Surrey hills, at a venue which – though I have long known of it – I have never previously visited.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidThe ground at Holmbury St. Mary is the highest in the south of England and is reached by means of an unmade and deeply rutted track that might feel more familiar to residents of the Canadian wilds than it does to the natives here.

The track up Holmbury Hill is – however – considered a great improvement from the early days of the club, when all concerned had to trek up a narrow path carrying all of the required gear and equipment – not to mention foodstuffs and water, of which there was at the time no supply on site. At the end of the day – of course – everything had also to be laboriously carried by the weary contestants back down the hill to the village.

It struck me – as I journeyed hence – that the occasion might actually represent for me rather more than just the end of another season. It is quite likely that I will not get to play any cricket at all next year, since I anticipate that the preparations for our move to Canada – not to mention the event itself – will occupy much of our time and efforts during the temperate months.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidBy the time we are suitably established in BC I will be sixty two years old and somewhat long in the tooth for this sort of carry on. I have written previously concerning the cricketing scene in Victoria – the which would seem to be in good health – but I doubt that it will prove a broad enough church to provide a haven for a geriatric veteran of dubious ability such as myself.

If indeed that turns out to be the case then my cricketing days are over and I will have played my last match.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidI came late to the game – having effectively given up on it (as a participant – not as an enthusiast!) subsequent to my notably undistinguished career at school. I took it up again in my mid 40s at a time when I was re-evaluating many things in my life and have played consistently since. Though never achieving my fondly held ambition of scoring a fifty I have nonetheless derived a great deal of pleasure from the game – not least from some of the characters that I have encountered and from the wonderful mise en scènes in which the sporting drama is frequently enacted.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPerhaps – now that so many more things in our lives are changing – it might indeed be time to call it a day. Who can tell?

If this does turn out to be the case then this particular game was sadly not (the sylvan setting aside) one which by which I would have hoped my egress would be marked. We had not played the opposing side before (themselves also a wandering side) and it turned out to be a dramatic mismatch.  Having humiliated us in short order – and presumably not feeling that they had had their money’s worth – they insisted that we stay on for a further 20/20 game… so that they could crush us all over again!

I – for one – did not stay on for the beers!

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid

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Morality play

June 14, 2014 in Life as we know it | Permalink

unequal-147925_640“No person, I think, ever saw a herd of buffalo, of which a few were fat and the great majority lean. No person ever saw a flock of birds, of which two or three were swimming in grease, and the others all skin and bone.”

Henry George

A few years back – in the days when I still regularly turned out for my local village cricket team – I underwent the following experience the which might just stand as an allegory – albeit not a particularly elegant one. I will endeavor not to blind too much with cricketing jargon – though I feel sure that the gentle reader will in any case get the point.

The village team – being composed chiefly of a blend of those of advancing years and those still wet behind the ears – plays only friendly fixtures, with the earnest intention of avoiding the over-competitiveness of league cricket. On occasion the opposition will drop out at a fairly late stage for the usual reasons – can’t raise a team… had a better offer… etc, etc – and the squad finds itself at a loose end on some sunny Sunday. There exists – fortunately – a sort of ‘fixture exchange’ mechanism by which teams that find themselves in such a position can pick up an alternative game at even quite a late stage – with some other club that has been similarly let down.

This had indeed occured on the occasion that is the subject of this parable. We thus found ourselves travelling a considerable distance to a ground with which we were not familiar, to take on a Sunday social side that we did not know.

Following our arrival it became rapidly apparent that the opposing side – although broadly akin to our own – had been augmented for our benefit by a couple of first-team players from the club’s Saturday league side – eager for a bit of practice. These guys were definitely a cut above.

We were put in to bat first and slowly and untidily attempted to accumulate a score. The problem was that we also lost wickets at regular intervals and by the time we were all out after around 30 overs we had amassed (something of an exaggeration in this case!) the pitiful total of 118 runs.

This was clearly not going to be enough, but we took to the field determined that our ragged bowling attack should give as good an account of itself as possible.

In such situations in village cricket the team batting second has a choice. The preferred option is to try to make a game of it – and to keep everybody happy in the process. This is done by promoting some of the lesser players up the batting order, secure in the knowledge that not only will more of those who have turned out get a crack with the bat, but that the match will doubtless still be won comfortably in any case.

In this instance however – and to the obvious displeasure of the remainder of their colleagues – the two league players decided instead that they would open proceedings themselves. In the ensuing carnage they knocked off the 119 runs required to win within 6 overs! This is a rate of nearly 20 runs an over – such as would be considered extraordinary even in the modern professional 20/20 game which trades on just this sort of outrageous pugilism. We spent a highly unpleasant 45 minutes clambering over barbed wire fences, struggling through bramble thickets and braving the nettle beds to retrieve the ball from the adjacent fields whence it had yet again been propelled. All the while our tormentors leant on their bats and engaged in smug conversation.

Consider this…

At the culmination of this abbreviated fixture we drove away sulkily, swearing by all the cricketing gods that we would never again play this bunch of lowlifes, and cursing that we had travelled all this way just to have our day ruined. Nine of the opposition players doubtless huddled irritably in their bar, ruminating on the fact that not only had their day’s enjoyment been hijacked by two of their own, but that there was also now no-one to stand them a round of drinks after the game – as is the custom.

And what of the terrible two? Well – any smug satisfaction that they might have gained from demonstrating their superiority must surely have been tempered by the knowledge that, a) given the difference in ability they had only done what was inevitable anyway, and b) we had not provided a sufficient test to have given them useful practice. Comes to mind the memory of the chess-swot at school who – because no-one else would play him – took to offering me a queen and two rooks start, and then still beating me in five moves!

There is – of course – a moral to this tale. That – however – can wait for another post…

 

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Day perfected

May 29, 2014 in Life in England | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidLast Sunday there was a break in what appears to have become in recent years the accustomed pattern of weather for the English month of May – chill, damp and unremittingly grey! The cricketing gods clearly smiled on me, however, for the day marked my first (and quite possibly only – though who can tell?) appearance in whites this season. The match was to be played on the downs above Guildford.

Long-time scholars of these humble scribblings might sense at this point that they can distinguish the sounding of some distant carillon – and they would be right so to do. Two years ago – almost to the day – I posted a screed entitled ‘Perfect Day’ in which – amongst other things – I extolled the simple pleasures obtained from the equivalent fixture then – the which was played on the self-same spot.

To quote myself (odious practice though that might be):

“The match was played in a suitably amiable spirit, I scored a few runs and the right side won. It was, all in all, a most satisfactory result and I rolled home close to 9pm tired but happy.”

I am delighted to report that I can repeat that sentiment word for word this year, even though – on this occasion – the spoils went to the opposition. The match had gone to the final over, was close and satisfying, and everyone was content.

The substance of my posting two years ago – however – concerned less the Arcadian charms of the occasion itself, but more the fact that such pleasures counted for little if one happened to be – as I was then – separated from one’s significant other. The Kickass Canada Girl was at the time but a few months into her sojourn in Victoria and I was missing her badly.

How different are things now! Not only was the Girl waiting to greet me when I stumbled back home after the match, but she had earlier driven over to Guildford to watch a little of the game – in spite of knowing that I would be in the field at the time and thus unable to speak to her beyond the odd snatched exchange. She strolled instead around the boundary – looking particularly windswept and gorgeous in the sunshine – and I found myself accruing serious kudos from my fellow flanneled fools for having snared what the tabloid press would most certainly term ‘a stunna!’ (defined by the Urban Dictionary as – “Someone who is always fly with gear, cars, jewelry.” – whatever that means!).

I am minded of a comment made by Oldest Friend (of whom I have written previously in these annals) concerning his wife. “A day not spent in her company” – he opined – “is a day wasted”.

He’s not wrong…

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One for the purists

August 20, 2013 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidIt says a good deal as to the frenetic pace at which we have been living of late that Sunday last saw only my second appearance of the season in the whites (as opposed to the garish ‘pyjamas’ of the short-form game) that are still in the main the mark of the village cricketer.

I posted regarding my first outing of the season here. This fixture was played under rather different circumstances, taking place not on some bucolic countryside cricket green but rather in a council run park in one of the suburbs of south London. Nowhere near as pretty and – as is often the way with council squares – the pitch was – shall we say – erratic… to put it mildly. In other words – some balls kept low whilst others would shoot abruptly up to chest or even chin height and very few came on nicely to the bat – making the timing of shots difficult in the extreme.

No matter. A good game was had by all and the opposition – another side new to us – were good sports. The match was thus played in an appropriately Corinthian spirit.

One of the great beauties of cricket is that the game came be played in a wide variety of formats, from the full five day ‘tests’ so beloved of the purists (of which I count myself one) down to the frantic dash of the Twenty20 format, which is done and dusted – razzamatazz and all – in around three hours. Even at village level subtle variations can be agreed upon to enhance the occasion. For this fixture – for example – we had agreed on two additional rules:

  • every member of each team would be required to bowl at least one over – including the wicket keepers…
  • once a batsman reached 30 runs he would be obliged to retire, though he could come out again if all of his team’s other wickets had fallen.

These ‘house’ rules were adopted to ensure that all concerned would be as involved in the match as possible, and so that no particularly gifted individuals could hog the limelight.

As a result I got to bowl a couple of overs for the first time in ages and – to my surprise – I actually took a couple of wickets… although the second such – a stumping – came from such a rank bad ball that I felt embarrassed to have my name associated with it. I also hung around for a while with the bat and accumulated what is – for me – a respectable score.

Once I was out – however – we lost several more quick wickets and soon found ourselves at 120 for 8, chasing a target of 183 and with only 7 overs or so left in which to get them. A win looked the least likely outcome at this point. Fortunately – by another of the sort of quirks that features only in this type of game – we had held back a couple of our better batsmen until well down the order, and some judicious hitting out by them saw us home with a few balls to spare in a most exciting finish.

Jolly good stuff all round – and everyone went home happy.

As the title of this post suggests, I have made no attempt herein to elucidate any of the arcana of the game for those with little or no extant knowledge thereof. To make up for this ommission I am very happy so to do – individually – for anyone who might be interested.

I don’t think I will hold my breath though!

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