Boys of Summer

Stuart's excellent club cricket soap opera prompted these four thoughts from my own personal archive of memories: -

Exhibit A - We went out after tea, defending a small target - around 120. Our skipper opened the bowling. (and the batting, and fielded first slip for that matter - but anyone who's played the game knows that rank egotism occurs at all levels) He exhorted us from the start of his run up - ''On your toes lads, keep it tight, make 'em fight for every run'' Down came the first ball, a rank long hop that was ceremoniously knocked out of the ground, over the South Circular dual carriageway and into the park on the other side of the road, causing picnic parties to scatter.

Cue much hilarity on the fielding side, and the old favourite of 'something travelling that far in the sky normally has a stewardess on it' getting another welcome airing.

In the pub later, some bright sparkworked out it ended in a different London Borough to which it started.

Exhibit B - One of our regular opponents had a couple of batsmen who were very competitive - they used to compare averages, which is always a dubious practice in my book - a bit like school kids behind the bikeshed comparing the size of their tools.

At the end of one season, Batsman A had a 20 run lead over his rival. He happily went off on holiday a week later, only for Batsman B to arrange another game, in foul autumn conditions that even rugby players were dubious about playing in, to allow himself to score the required runs to top the averages.

The following year Batsman A got his revenge by creating a mythical game in the scorebook when Batsman B was on his travels.

Exhibit C - Playing our local rivals who we rarely came close to beating, on this occasion we were surprisingly on top. They were 70 odd for four chasing 150. One more wicket would probably clinch it.

Then their umpire took a hand and gave a batsman 'not out' after being BOWLED, saying the ball came back off the keepers pads. Said keeper then had to be physically restrained by three colleagues. Meanwhile the rest of us became forensic experts, looking at the bails at least three feet behind the stumps, and the off stump pointing backwards towards first slip.

Next over from that end, the bowler deliberately walked over and gave his sweater to the square leg umpire rather than to the one with the white stick and dog at the bowlers end! The kicker was after the game (which we lost) when we asked the batsman why he didn't walk. 'My Dad's a good umpire - he always gets it right'.

Exhibit D - I was bowling. The skipper put a fielder at short leg. I'm never sure why we do this. Most of out cricket is played on pretty placid wickets where the ball hardly ever gets above stump height, and none of us can fling it down at anything above medium/quick. Following the gameplan, though, I dropped one in short in the vain hope that it might rear up into the batsman's chest. Instead, his eyes lit up and the ball came off the bat like an exocet - smack into the skull of the fielder three yards from the bat.

The batsman then came out of his ground to join the concerned ring round the prone figure, at which point our keeper ran him out. We subsequently withdrew the appeal - round about the time the ambulance turned up.