England v New Zealand second one-day international match report

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Lemon Bella writes:

Indian Skimmer and I attended this match due to my brother and his drunken bidding at a charity auction. Phil Tufnell was the guest speaker at the auction and was, according to my brother, “rubbish”. If I ever have cause to arrange a guest speaker from the world of cricket, I now know not to book Phil Tufnell.

The man sitting next to us had bought extra umbrellas. I hate umbrellas because all they do is disperse the water so that one patch of you gets incredibly wet, rather than all of you getting slightly damp. However, the man was very insistent that we used one so we did. He had enough for the people behind us to use too, although I think they only used it out of politeness as well.

It rained a lot, so in the end we were quite grateful for the umbrellas. There were also some bright spells in which there was no rain. Interestingly, cricket occurred during the rainy bits and not during the bright spells.

This is most definitely the way forward. Shivering in a rain jacket is so much more enjoyable when there’s cricket to watch, and during the dry spells you can read a book or go in search of pies, so you really don’t need any cricket to watch.

It was clear that the crowd appreciated the innovative and practical way the umpires and regulators dealt with a tricky situation. Personally, I particularly liked the bit where, when a result was imminent, they took everyone off lest the crowd see any kind of “match”. “Matches” are so old-fashioned and only hold the game back.

DON'T BE LIKE GATT!

Mike Gatting wasn't receiving the King Cricket email when he dropped that ludicrously easy chance against India in 1993.

Coincidence?

Why risk it when it's so easy to sign up?

24 comments

  1. LB, I was there too… we should have met up and been blogging buddies and had a special handshake. That’d have been AWESOME. Certainly better than spending many hours sitting next to a drunk cohort (pimms and lager. good combo i’m sure) annoying the teeth out of me. AWESOME i tell you! AWESOME!

    Worst bit was my members pass in my pocket that I wasn’t allowed to use as I’d bought the non-member ticket months ago… Now i’ve experienced the members facilities I’m even more jealous in retrospect.

    AWESOME!

  2. We should have some kind of special way of identifying each other. At the next match I attend I shall stand up and shout “King Cricket, King Cricket, does anyone read King Cricket.” That should do the trick.

  3. Bella – I’m intrigued by Umbrella Man.

    Did he require you to synchronise the opening and closing of your borrowed umbrella in time with his, and of course the people behind you?

    Did he looked pained and draw in a sharp breath when you were out of step?

    Did Indian Skimmer have to guard the umbrella whilst you hunted pies in the dry spells?

    Did you steal the umbrella at the end?

  4. I wasn’t sharing my umbrella with my friend next to me (the sober one) and so as above it basically just dripped rain water onto her knee for hours on end, and somehow she kept apologizing to me because of it…

  5. Some sort of blogger identification is needed – maybe we could (gasp) put pictures up somewhere – a sort of ‘spotter’s guide to cricket bloggers’

    Alternatively, we could all get Rob Key tattoos.

  6. Have you all gone MENTAL?

    Identify ourselves? Talk face to face?

    Have any of you actually read any of this site?

  7. He was exteremly insistent about the umbrellas, to the point of telling us when we had to open it. I think it might have been so that we didn’t complain about being dripped on by his umbrella. He was pushing the complaints to 10 feet away from where he was.

  8. AP Webster, yes, if only there were some kind of – I don’t know – social networking website, on which one could have a profile, post a pretty picture, tell the world (or selected friends, depending on one’s privacy settings) a little bit about oneself, perhaps join up with groups of like-minded people. I predict that something like that could take over the WORLD.

    I wish I’d thought of such a site BEFORE getting the Rob Key tattoo.

  9. where’s the tat then mimms? thinking purely of the subject matter it’d have to be somewhere round and squishy…

  10. Reading the tat talk above I’m awfully sorry but the word Keyhole keeps appearing in my brain……

  11. Ceci, the tattoo that you are envisaging is the most incredibly disturbing image that I can imagine, and I have quite an imagination.

  12. I’m not too sure I’d be all that comfortable actually meeting people who only really exist on my enchanted typewriter.

    From now on, when I go to games, I’m going to wear a paper bag on my head.

    Yes….a paper bag…….that should stop them all from recognising me.

  13. You know, this was actually quite a classy site before the harridans descended. Now it’s the Twenty20 of cricket blogs. Except without the money.

  14. It can only be a matter of minutes before someone photoshops something truly horrific.

  15. Also, everyone failed to notice that I broke the first rule of match reviews and mentioned the cricket….

  16. That reminds me of a club game I played last year where it was dry right up to the start of play, rained steadily until tea where it abated for 15 minutes then rained again until just afer close of play.

    We completed the match of course.

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