Mel writes:

I arrived at the home of the Oxford University Cricket Club with a sore shoulder and a light wallet. The former was due to packing a heavy bag to cover all weather eventualities (although in hindsight the mosquito repellent was a tad unnecessary). The latter was due to forking out £12 to park in Oxford city centre for five hours.

A large number of spectators failed to materialise (as did the players - the weather was not good), and I found that upon arrival I comprised precisely 50% of the crowd. My fellow specator was a dead ringer for Germaine Greer, which was unfortunate as he was a man.

I struck up a conversation, only to discover that Germaine had once been the Dutch national team’s wicket-keeper, and so I was kept amused for a considerable time whilst he tried to teach me the correct pronunciation of Ryan Ten Doeschate.

We companionably ate our sandwiches (mine from M&S, his provided by Rugby Travelodge where he had spent the previous night). Coincidentally, we had both also brought along a piece of fruit (he a pear, me an apple). Conversation had moved on to Ruud Gullitt, Johan Cruyff and the Dutch Resistance movement during World War II as the clouds cleared, and I prayed that play would begin before I ran out of Dutch-related conversation.

He must have sensed that I was on the verge of bursting into “Tulips from Amsterdam” and announced that he was bursting in an entirely different manner and went in search of the toilet. I was quite relieved myself, as I only had Denise van Outen left up my sleeve.

Tags: match report by King Cricket
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Sorry about this morning’s aberration where we actually contributed something to the website. David “Pappus’ Plane” Barry’s here to redress the balance with a match report:

This was my first experience of cricket in England: the opening day of the 2008 County Championship. One notable difference from Australia was clear at entry to the Oval - the price of the ticket was £12. Twelve pounds! There are days when the exchange rate makes that more expensive than a day of Test cricket in Australia. Queensland Shield games cost $8 at most.

Nevertheless, I paid for my ticket and sat down in the Bedser stand, about half an hour before play was scheduled to start. Much of the centre wicket area was under a plastic cover. The problem, as far as I could tell, was that the sun was out. After inspections at 11 o’clock and 11.30am, the umpires were confident that there might be dark and overcast conditions by 1.10pm and that was indeed when play began.

Three Wigan lads behind me were creative. They had brought a packet of Lancashire Tea, and were hoping for the Lancashire stars to sign it.

I was lucky to be there on day one, when the temperature soared to twelve degrees or so. There was once a day in Brisbane, in 1965 and in the middle of winter, when it was colder. And yet, day one was the warmest day of the match. It was eight degrees on day two. That’s cold football weather. Only in England would some people play cricket in such conditions, and thousands of others actually pay twelve pounds to freeze while watching it.

There were various people with their own little scorebooks, studiously keeping score. The reason for this, I realised, is that the scoreboards at the Oval don’t actually tell you anything. Want to know who’s bowling? No good looking at the scoreboard. Want to know which batsmen are out, how many runs they made, who took the wickets, and who’s left to bat? The scoreboard won’t tell you. And I don’t mean that it doesn’t tell you all of those things. No. It doesn’t tell you any of them.

All up, it was a successful day. The Wigan lads missed out on Freddie’s signature, but they got Mal Loye, Stuart Law, and Brad Hodge to join Sajid Mahmood in the most Lancashire-signed box of Lancashire Tea. I had seen Stuart Law and Brad Hodge for once on the same side, wearing the same team’s shirts, and jumpers, and whatever goes over jumpers.

I was really cold by the end. I needed a second jumper.

Tags: match report by King Cricket
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With a bonus Kent v Essex in the Friends Provident Trophy match report thrown in ABSOLUTELY FREE.

This continues this week’s theme of our not really writing anything. How long can we keep it up?

Lemon Bella writes:

Myself and Indian Skimmer saw our first matches of the season this weekend.

Friday

On Friday we travelled down to the St Lawrence ground to watch the third day of the Championship match against Notts.

We discovered that the coffee machine in the members’ lounge has been changed to an inferior brand and the coffee is now horrible. This is yet another example of the game’s administrators being out of touch with grass roots fans. Moreover, they’ve moved the machine to behind the bar, so we have to talk to someone whenever we want a cup.

Ryan McLaren ate a crumpet at tea time. We didn’t have crumpets. We just had to sit there in the cold with our horrible tasting coffee. Next time, we’re asking Ryan McLaren for a bite of his crumpet.

Yasir Arafat didn’t bat because he had suspected appendicitis. We didn’t believe him because that’s the kind of lie we used to tell to get out of PE lessons at school. He was fine by Sunday, so that proves our suspicions.

Saturday

On the final day of the Championship match we went to the zoo because we didn’t want to sit in the rain for six hours to watch Kent fail to defend 22 runs.

Instead, we walked around in the rain for six hours and saw a lot of animals hiding in their shelters. We got flapped at by an ostrich and bought a soft toy of an African Hunting Dog.

Here is a picture of Nella the African Hunting Dog being indifferent to a video of South Africa playing Australia.

At first we thought that maybe he was only indifferent because he’d seen the game before, but we tested him again and his indifference only increased. This is him failing to inspect the pitch in Indian Skimmer’s back garden.

Sunday

Before the Friends Provident match on Sunday we wandered around Canterbury for 20 minutes trying to find somewhere to buy a newspaper. Everywhere was closed, even WHSmiths. When we got to the ground, Andre Nel had a newspaper, so the Essex team must have stopped at a service station on the way.

Martin Van Jaarsveld scored a century. At breakfast, our B&B owner had told us he would do, but we didn’t believe him. From now on we will listen to his every psychic word. He makes really good poached eggs, so that only bolsters his credibility.

Tags: Animals being conspicuously indifferent to cricket, match report by King Cricket
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If you attend a cricket match this season, please send us a match report. Our submission guidelines are ever-so-straightforward: on no account mention the actual cricket.

Miriam opens the season’s reporting:

I went to this match after church (yes, how very English of me). Having heard so much about him, I was extremely disappointed that Dirty Dirk Nannes wasn’t in the playing 11.

Because of the building work at the Oval, the members were housed in the OCS stand, which I like because it has comfy seats and nice toilets. The toilets have an automatic soap dispenser with a sensor – you just hold your hand under it and it dispenses a measure of soap. You only need to do this another four times and then you have enough soap.

Hot drinks were available for free in the John Major Room, which was very nice, but I really think that they should do barbecues on that little terrace next to the room. If they then got some decent beer in they’d be on to something.

The men I was sitting near had ABSOLUTELY no idea how Duckworth–Lewis worked. They also weren’t sure whether the DL score was the score to win, or to draw. I wanted to say “neither was Shaun Pollock”, but I was a little bit afraid of them.

A lady at the bar said that my hair was beautiful, and touched it without my permission. I didn’t mind too much, though, as I’d actually thought I was having a bad hair day.

I think I was the only person in the crowd wearing pink, and I’m not even a Middlesex fan!

During the rain delay, I got a chicken pie. I wasn’t going to get a pie, but by that stage they were reduced to £1 and it turns out that I AM in fact price-sensitive when it comes to pies.

Also, I lost an earring. So if anyone finds a white pearl 7.5mm stud, it’s mine.

Tags: match report by King Cricket
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Royal Cricket (no relation) visited Canterbury to ignore the North Gear Premier League Twenty20 Grand Final. They say this:

Our mate Paul Hibberd’s younger brother, James, was playing, so we didn’t ignore him but we did spend lots of time ignoring the cricket and looking at the cameras to make sure we got on the telly.

In the bits we saw, James was legendary. We were surprised, but then we picked up why this was so. Early on, Paul had met Rob Key. During the meeting, as you can see from this picture, Rob’s power surged from Rob to Paul - you can tell from the way that Paul’s hair has stuck out at the side.

This proved to be the decisive factor because when Paul stood near his brother afterwards, the power of Rob Key surged onwards to James. James then went on to pick up the man of the match award in the semi-final and take 2-15 in the final as Totton and Eling Eels defeated Ockbrook and Borrowash Devils.

We got on the telly in our club shirts too. Which made us laugh. Actually that might have been the many pints of Shepherd Neame Masterbrew that we drank.

Tags: Rob Key, match report by King Cricket
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Miriam et al. report from Greece where they witnessed the television coverage of England’s not-at-all fictional win over New Zealand first-hand.

If you are thinking of sending a match report, consider this confirmation that not only does the report not have to be timely, it also doesn’t particularly matter if you weren’t there.

Anyway. The report:

After moaning about how we couldn’t find cricket on the radio, we found a bar that would show cricket so long as it didn’t interfere with the football or rugby. On match morning, we rocked up at 11:23am local time, expecting a breakfast of beer and bar-snacks. To our surprise and delight, the bar served proper breakfasts.

We had omelette and chips. There were eight omelettes on the menu and the four of us each had a different omelette. The barman commented that next time we could perhaps order the other four omelettes on the menu. We weren’t sure whether he was making a joke, or whether he was annoyed that we had put them to the trouble of making four different omelettes.

During the match, we consumed the following between us: two filter coffees, one latté, five glasses of “fresh” orange juice (there was another, presumably non-fresh orange juice on the menu, but we didn’t risk it), and two glasses of sparkling water.

The bar TVs had pictures but no sound, so instead of insightful commentary we were treated to the kind of saxophone muzak that used to accompany pages from Ceefax (but this did resurrect happy memories of checking the cricket score as a child). This culminated, in the final nailbiting over, with the theme tune from Cagney and Lacey.

Because of the music, we had to guess at what each new batsman’s favourite shot was. The only one we could even begin to make out was Paul Collingwood’s nurdle off the pads. We also couldn’t hear any of Rob Key’s words of wisdom during the break, but we noted that he had chosen an all black outfit to wear. We hoped that this was for its slimming properties and not subtle support for the Kiwis.

That evening we went to a cocktail bar and recreated cricketing scenes using only the items that came in or with our cocktails - and we were strict about this. I therefore attach a picture of Kevin Pietersen’s run out in the South Africa match:

You will be able to make out the crease (our drinks receipt), KP (piece of melon, cocktail sticks, a grape for his head), the stumps, his bat, and that’s Shaun Pollock (not a palm tree) to the left. The Shaun Pollock “hair” strands were much longer, but I bit each of them down to a more realistic length. This was horribly time-consuming but once I’d started there was no going back, and it’s important to maintain absolute accuracy in these things.

We had had quite a few cocktails by this point. From Katie, Katy, Carolyn, and Miriam.

This isn’t really relevant to the report. I also attach a picture of a Colossus (of Rhodes, not Scott Styris), also made from cocktail accoutrements:

Tags: match report, photos by King Cricket
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Lemon Bella reports:

I went to watch the last three days of the Kent v Durham County Championship match. However, because Kent appeared to have somewhere more important to be, I only ended up seeing seven hours of play. I put my spare time to good use by purchasing a new throw for my sofa from a shop in Canterbury. It’s purple and blue; I may need to get some new cushions as the old ones don’t quite match.

I stayed in a B&B and the owner told me all about Graham Gooch over breakfast. I didn’t want to know anything about Graham Gooch, but he carried on telling me anyway.

For cricket-watching snacks, I tried the new oat and cranberry clusters you can get from M&S. They were very nice, much better than their flapjacks. However, I accidentally left the tub in the sun and they went a bit funny.

The coffee machine had broken down, and the coffee they offered at the bar was horrible. It was a terrible end to the season.

Tags: match report by King Cricket
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From what would appear to be our Kent Pro40 correspondent, Lemon Bella:

I forgot that this match started an hour earlier than usual, so I didn’t have time to get lunch ready. This meant I arrived at the ground armed only with some dried apricots and a bottle of water.

I sat in a different seat than usual. Generally I fear change, because it only ever ends badly, but this time it just ended with a squeaky chair and me looking at everything from a slightly different angle. I might attempt more change next season.

In the interval I ate my apricots and a Jaffa Cake my friend gave me. Ryan McLaren ate a piece of melon.

I didn’t have any coffee because I didn’t remember about it until I’d sat back in my seat. There was a cross-looking couple sitting on the end of the row and I was a bit scared to ask them to move again. They had coffee. It was in a flask and they’d brought their own special mugs.

Tags: match report by King Cricket
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A match report, again from Lemon Bella who’s swiftly earning the title of ‘roving reporter (who tends to rove to the same destination)’:

I was sat in front of two old ladies who couldn’t read the scoreboard or tell the players apart, so I had to help them fill in their scorecard. This meant I had to watch a distressing amount of the actual cricket.

At one point they told me they thought Marcus Trescothick was a ‘lovely looking young man’. Given that they couldn’t see, I’m not sure that’s the ringing endorsement Marcus would hope. However, I hope that when I’m 76 I can still go to cricket matches and pass comment on the attractiveness of opening batsmen.

A man in front of me ate two tiramisu. I didn’t have any tiramisu. This was very sad for me and I aim to remedy this at the next match.

I rescued a man at the coffee machine who had forgotten to put the cup under the spout. He tried to persuade me that he wasn’t as stupid as he looked. To be honest, I think he probably was. I then spilled coffee on my hat. It wasn’t on my head at the time, which was a blessing I suppose, but it probably means I shouldn’t judge other people’s stupidity.

Tags: match report by King Cricket
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Lemon Bella’s sent in another match report:

The day started off badly after I had to scrabble around under the seat of my car to find enough change for the car park ticket machine. They’ve put the price up by 50p. On the positive side, I not only found 50p but also my spare phone charger which I’ve been looking for for ages.

When I got to the ground, I pressed the wrong button on the coffee machine and got a “café au lait” rather than a “café crème”. This was probably one of the best mistakes I’ve ever made in drink selection. It turns out that the café au lait contains significantly more cream than the café crème.

After the interval there were some drunk men sat in front of me who took 6 overs to subtract 89 from 204. The answer is 115. I worked that out in my head before Steve Harmison had walked back to his mark.

Darren Stevens hurt himself. I didn’t see how, because I was doing the crossword in The Guardian. I did see Geraint Jones do a little impression of a running man to get someone on the balcony to send on a runner, though. That was worth the extra 50p all by itself.

Tags: county cricket, match report by King Cricket
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