There was always cricket. An early memory, alongside pop songs like Move Over Darling by Doris Day, on the radio. And my grandmother would sit with the test match picture on telly and the radio commentary. The Test Match was a happening of national importance in those days. On Sunday afternoons, the International Cavaliers would play one of the county sides and when the ball was dispatched over the ropes, Jim Laker would comment on the small boy throwing it back. Well, once at Trent Bridge, that boy was me and then in the same over, it happened again. It might or might not have been Gamani Gooneseena I threw it back to but we'd need to corroborate that with the Notts Ceylonese spin bowler. I was destined to play cricket from an early age.
Close observers might recognize some faces from the photograph of Dinglewell Junior School cricket team 1971 from that of the football team 70/71 below, with the captains having swapped places. I had no idea why I was being taken out of the classroom early that summer and it was quite a bombshell to realize I was being invited to be captain of cricket. The captain's role involved little more than taking part in the toss and looking after some kit (not picking the team or deciding who bowled) but it was the first of three cricket teams I was going to be captain of.My first competitive game had been at the start of the previous season, against near neighbours, Barnwood, in which those two of us stalwarts of that generation of Dinglewell sport opened the bowling and got them all out for 10 and then put on pads and scored 11 for 0, thus winning by 10 wickets. A one-sided affair, and thanks to the other nine players who turned out and watched us do it, but it was not without minor drama. I had decided to use my own bat but soon found it was not as robust as the school equipment against a cricket ball. I asked if I could swap my bat but the same teacher as taught us so many lessons about football took the attitude that I had made my bed and so should lie in it and so I had to defend doggedly until we reached 11, which didn't take long and 10 of them were provided by wides, no balls or byes anyway.
I think it was the following season that began in a rich vein of form and, after 3 or 4 games, I was averaging over 100 as opening bat, having only been out once. I must have felt beyond all restraint. But confidence is just as dangerous in excess as it is when it deserts you and the right level of sensible confidence is essential in anything, not only sport.
From those heights, the season when into a declining spiral of cheap dismissals. The darkest moment was when all the top order batsmen had got out cheaply and a heroic innings from the middle order was retrieving the situation but I, as captain, was setting a very bad example by not watching as my team mate tried to save the day but was seen by the umpire/teacher having a kickabout with the other failed batsmen. As a result, I suffered the disciplinary action of being dropped for the next game. (Now I can reflect that there was something a bit David Gower about that but it was shameful in those long ago, more respectful days).
I specialized even then in the big hit and didn't really regard a four as a genuine boundary. I don't remember very much about bowling apart from making sure I made a red mark on my white shorts by polishing the ball on them. On one occasion, one of us prodding the pitch in between balls as if we were John Edrich, the teacher told us not to bother, we didn't know what we were doing and were only doing it because we'd seen it on telly. However, having been bowled out for 33 and the opposition on 32 for 9, I was brought back on to bowl, presumably as the most likely to bowl a straight one which might remove this no. 11 which I immediately did. With a full toss that should have gone for six but the last boy to bat in a junior team like that is unlikely to be Viv Richards and he wasn't so we won by one run.
But my batting declined throughout the season to such an extent that by the time of the big school jamboree event at the end of term, which centred around a match between the school team and the Fathers XI, I was going in at no.6. The top order had failed and it was a given thing that the school team would win so there has always been a suspicion that the Fathers were told to let us get some runs and, coming in down the order, I was the beneficiary of such leniency.
I remember being quite depressed that a little flick off my legs had gone for six because the boys had a shorter boundary than the Fathers. But it became more serious for me when my own father was brought on to bowl his array of slow, right-arm chinamen and googlies. A tense maiden over was played out as I realized that discretion was the better part of valour and then went on to score 54 until being caught and bowled Higginbottom.
On going to senior school, I found myself made twelfth man for the first match in our first year there but I had better things to do than that, I'm afraid, told the teacher I was going on the Junior Club Run with the cycling club (more of which in a future chapter) and so my cricket career entered a wilderness that lasted about 16 years.
There were some house matches at school; the football club, FC Spartak (as described in the previous chapter), had a couple of games; I turned out for a couple of matches in Swindon with teams from my dad's work but the highlight of those sporadic appearances was putting my name down for the annual, end of term English Department match at Lancaster University, between students and staff, and finding myself asked to be captain of the students.
I had to find ten other people who wanted a game of cricket. I compiled a team that included an Indian spin bowler from the Chemistry department and a girl who ran off in a sulk after a few overs because I hadn't given her anything to do by then. The staff team included Prof. David Carroll, the George Eliot specialist; Richard Dutton, pre-eminent on Ben Jonson, and fashionable critical analysis theorist, Mick Short, whose home brew provided the post match refreshment. I batted number 4, ludicrously adopted Peter Willey's square-on stance, never having tried it before, and was out first ball but mopped up the tail by taking four wickets in a match that slipped through my fingers from an advantageous position.
But, finally, aged 27, the best thing that ever happened to me was being employed by the civil service and allocated to Customs & Excise. One of the many benefits of that was that there were cricket teams and I soon volunteered myself for the Portsmouth Customs Club if they cared to give me a try, which they kindly did.
I went in at about no.7 on my debut, looked at the bowler's arm coming over, all sense of propriety left me and I took an almighty swipe at it, edged it over the slips for a surly one and the rest is history. I ended on 30 not out with two sixes and two fours, contributing to a cosy enough win and was invited back for the next game and, in fact, for as long as the club continued.
I soon made the no.5 batting position my own, with some excursions into opening. Batting initially proved easy and, like 16 years earlier, I began to believe too much in myself as an almost flawless run machine, once achieving the milestone of a hundred runs before the end of May in our 20 over evening matches long before the professional game took up the idea of T20. But the trajectory of that career was going to follow my junior one with batting confidence waning and good scores becoming fewer and further between while, at the same time, I began to realize that I was not a fast bowler, that every time I dropped one short of a length it went through mid wicket for four and so I became economical, a bit more accurate and hardly needed to check the scorebook to know that I'd returned figures of 4-0-1-13.
I was well-fitted to the no.5 position, the captains well aware that if I didn't make a rapid 20 or 30 then I would not detain them long in absenting myself from the crease to let somebody else have a go. But big hitting is addictive and compulsive and, having felt the ball disappear off the middle of the bat into the blue yonder once, I only wanted to do it again and so I never hit more than two sixes in an innings and not all of them went exactly where had been intended. Once, looking round confusedly to decide whether I should run or not, the non-striker said, 'no, you're alright' - it had gone over the wicket-keeper for six.
One Sunday afternoon, I was well set on 45 with ten balls to go when a new batsman arrived at the other end but then proceeded to blast 21 off the last ten without me facing the bowler again and, we will never know, possibly deprived me of a proper, adult 50 in the interests of the team and I've not tired of talking about that day ever since ( Have I, Ian?).
We memorably toured Jersey, in 1989, was it, and then less memorably went to Bristol and onto an abandoned fixture in St. Austell which did for touring for me but it was a wonderful club to be a part of that will continue to provide stories and memories for those who were there for as long as we want. The side we could put out circa 1989 was formidable at its chosen level and it was a privilege to be a part of.
There were civil service 6-a-side tournaments which suited me fine with a six counting for 10 and a four counting 6 and only four fielders to try to catch it. But I managed to be caught in the slips off a wide in Portsmouth once although had some compensation on a particular day in Poole. Sensitive negotiations had to be entered into about who would play in the A team and who in the B team which I offered to resolve, to the A team's ultimate detriment, by saying I'd captain the B Team, who were not so much the remnants as a quirkier collection of talents. But I led from the front with a 14 and a 36 not out, bowled very well and never enjoyed captaincy, a job I'm not really suited to, as much.
But into the mid-1990's, although still made to feel most welcome, I began to feel that cycling was a higher priority. I played much less cricket because I had ambitions on two wheels that could only be achieved by putting in the miles on summer evenings on the lanes of southern Hampshire. When fielding in a match in Denmead a week or two before my date with destiny in the 12 Hour bike race, I was more interested in looking out for uneven ground in the outfield on which I might twist an ankle, and thus ruin 8 months and 5000 miles of training, than asking the captain when it would be my turn to bowl.
But there were a few more years of cricket left, post-bike, in a reduced fixture list and, with some of the talent of the best years having moved on, I relished the responsibilty of opening the bowling and, without the record books to hand, might claim that I went through a couple of seasons without being hit for a boundary. One of my favourite devices was to change from right arm over, medium pace to the right hand batsman to slow right arm round the wicket, bowling leg breaks, to left handers. It had always seemed to me that fast bowling was the real business but spin bowling could be good fun, too.
At some point, I did actually contribute a league point to a club I turned out for one Saturday afternoon. Having batted at 4 and second top scored with 11 against some quick but wayward bowling, much of which seemed to be intended to improve my face but wasn't accurate enough to find it, I came on as first change bowler with the opposition needing 5 to win, took their fifth wicket before they got the required runs and that earned the makeshift side a bonus point and I treasure that league point as if it were a good, if unregarded, poem I once wrote. But I wouldn't have wanted to spend too much time in that atmosphere of dark, competitive league cricket, even if I had been good enough to do well at it, when one could play for sheer enjoyment on a sunny Tuesday evening.
Perhaps in the end the club continued for one or two seasons too long but, as has been pointed out by a wise observer, no club would pack up while it is doing okay. In our last season I was maybe 43 or 44 and by no means in the older half of the sides we put out. Even if there were sometimes only nine of us, which included our Under 16 youth squad. In four matches, I was the joint top wicket-taker with four wickets, two of them almost identical dismissals in the same game, full tosses that the batsman tried to swipe over mid wicket but miscued and looped out to mid off where they were caught. It was agony, really, and the last match ended in the low-key absurdity of a defeat with the winning run conceded by a wide.
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, one might say. And, In Absurdam, except to remember so many glorious moments of comedy, some memorable sport, spectacular moments and I'm very glad of all the good times, and good mates, that it led to.
You might remember how the Australians' 60 All Out last summer was soon fitted into a tweet. Certainly, most of the grand total of mine could have all been fitted into one but few more gloriously than my 38 out of 64 All Out by Customs which hasn't been featured on this website for nearly five years so it's about time we enjoyed it again.
