Posted by Send your match reports to king@kingcricket.co.uk. We’re only really interested in your own experience, so if it’s a professional match, on no account mention the cricket itself. (But if it’s an amateur match, feel free to go into excruciating detail.)
Ged Ladd writes…
Out of the blue, Nigel Father-Barry invited a brace of Australian gentlemen – a father and son combination – to join our regular Heavy Rollers Group at Edgbaston. Nigel is our founder, so no-one, not even Charley “The Gent” Malloy, could object.
I sprang into action by documenting some moral conundrums, which King Cricket might have published separately by now.
I volunteered to walk our guests to the ground on the first day of the Test match. I tried to give them some elocution lessons during that two-mile walk but it was quite hopeless; their Strine accents simply didn’t want to go.
Mercifully, I managed to get them to the ground unscathed and found a friendly steward who let the Aussie guests in without forcing them into convict costumes and without condemning them to the Eric Hollies Stand; a place that Nigel had taught them to dread. I think I did well there, as, during my several subsequent walks around the ground, I saw many people who must have been thus punished, especially in the vicinity of The Eric Hollies.
Our Antipodean guests actually turned out to be extremely good company and very knowledgeable about cricket, ingratiating themselves with the Heavy Rollers and even with the assorted Raglan Stand masses seated around our group. Fiendish infiltration.
For example, the father, Papa Pete Blong Vila, had honeymooned in Vanuatu, an Austronesian archipelago/nation, rarely visited by tourists, that has long fascinated me. I asked if the visit had made a lasting cultural impact on him and his family. Papa Pete said, “mi no yet lanem Bislama”. Pete’s son, Boe Blong Pete, shook his head, concurring. When I asked if Papa Pete Blong Vila had brought back an assortment of penis gourds as souvenirs, I got some very strange looks indeed. In fact, Boe Blong Pete then rapidly changed the subject, telling tales of his father wrestling with a giant moray eel in the Indo-Pacific seas.
Towards the end of the first day’s play, a nice but rather drunken man sitting behind us asked if our guests wanted a picture of themselves with our group. With thanks to that man for the following surprisingly good snap.
From left to right: Ged Ladd, Boe Blong Pete, Papa Pete Blong Vila, Charley “The Gent” Malloy, The Boy Malloy, Harsha Goble. Please note that Nigel Father-Barry chose not to appear in the picture; understandable given the circumstances.
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Just occasionally KC publishes one of my jobbies that I had totally forgotten about, other than a note scribbled in my own posting to suggest that a piece might appear eventually.
Six years later, “eventually” is now.
Here’s my own take on the story from 2019: https://ianlouisharris.com/2019/08/02/let-the-ashes-commence-three-days-in-the-west-midlands-mostly-edgbaston-31-july-to-2-august-2019/
I believe that Boe Blong Pete has produced his own “pikinini blong Matt” or two since then. And so it goes.
It doesn’t seem to matter how quickly we publish these things, the contributor always seems to make some comment about how long it’s taken.
Might as well be hanged for a sheep, eh, KC?
That might explain your continued deferral of the brace of 1974 Ged Ladd reports for which your readership is surely crying out in eager antici…
…pation.
You make it sound like that’s when you submitted them.
Indeed. Some say I have a way with words. 😉