These boots were made for scoring

OK. It was my fault. No-one else to blame. But, it was bad luck all the same.

Saturday morning arrives and it is the fourth or fifth consecutive wet weekend. We are travelling to a ground I've never visited before so I arrange to meet some of the guys at our club so we can drive over together. When I get to the ground, I remember that we're playing on an artificial pitch and spikes are not allowed, and (this is the 'my fault' bit) I've forgotten my spikeless trainers.

Never fear! I drive over to a local sports shop and buy a pair for £27. By this time, my team mates are on their way to the ground so I have to travel over with a head full of sketchy directions. The rain still pours.

The inevitable happens and I get lost. Never fear again! I call the skipper on his mobile phone only to discover that the match has just been called off. If anyone wants a new pair of artificial track cricket shoes, size 10....

It's about this time that I get a call from the first XI scorer who needs substituting owing to an evening engagement. I decide to help out and set off for the game over the other side of the city. This was a smart move.

The mighty Firsts are engaged in a highly exciting game that goes all the way to the last over. They are victorious and my first Birmingham League scorebook looks immaculate and even adds up correctly. This never happened to me in the Staffs Clubs League and would never had been predicted by my old maths teachers.

Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now

No game for me this week as I'm going to see Morrissey on Saturday night in Birmingham. It would have meant leaving the team before the end of the match and that is not really on. However, I intend to limber up my vocal chords for next week and serenade the lads with a medley of hits from Morrissey and The Smiths. I bet they can hardly wait.

Good Luck for Saturday lads!

Spring unsprung

Another Saturday. Another cold and wet day to confirm that the gods surely can't be cricket lovers. Not in England anyway. The great poets have mused on the English summer with tales of swallows, sunburn and cherry blossom. I can only assume they never came to Wolverhampton.

On the plus side, we won! The Penn bowlers were superb in bowling Quinton out for 77. Chris 'Asbo' Asbury bagged five wickets to add to his six last week. Chris 'Thermals' Rudge got three with some good tight bowling. A superb run out from Ghazi Zaki near the boundary left his team mates in shock.

We knocked them off for only one wicket in thirteen overs with some excellent shots from young Jimmy Grosvenor.

Sunshine next week perhaps? Please?

In whites at last!

So, three weeks into the season, yours truly finally flannels up and takes to the field on a cold May afternoon in rural Staffordshire. Rodbaston Agricultural College is an interesting place covering a fairly large area without a single sign pointing to the cricket ground. It is highly amusing to watch the bemused faces of cricketers driving around the many winding roads of the campus asking young apprentice farm workers where to go. None of them know.

Finally, all the errant vehicles managed to meet up in the same place next to a clay pigeon shoot. The shots of the batsmen sounded doubly explosive as they coincided with the field next door. At one point, several clay pigeon shooters wandered across the cricket field with rifles in hand. It was rather like a scene from the Magnificent Seven.

The match ended in a winning draw for us, the Mighty Penn Fourths. This was largely due to a diligent 75 n.o. from Ghazi Zaki, and a magnificent six wickets from Chris 'Asbo' Asbury. Yours truly bowled like a prat (International Readers: 'Prat' is a quaint English word for someone who still participates in competitive sport but should have given up a long time ago)

Absence makes the teams play better

The thirds and fourths were victorious on the weekend of my Post Office-induced injury so they clearly missed me.

Not selected for last weekend's fixtures.

What is the bribe most likely to succeed with this week's Selection Committee? Money is too obvious. Beer too expensive.

Instead, I've written a song called "The Deselection Blues" and will sing it live with my acoustic outside the Selection Meeting on Tuesday. Here are the lyrics:

"Got no game again this week,
Is it 'cos I'm past my peak?
Without me you won't lose,
I got the Deselection Blues

The post girl left me incapacitated,
To the sidelines I was relegated,
My ego got all bruised,
I got the Deselection Blues

The skipper says I'm dropped,
My parcel left me crocked,
Sat'days shopping I must now choose,
I got the Deselection Blues."

A rude awakening! Fri 21st April

I learned in the week that I'd been picked to play for the third team away at Whittington and was really looking forward to what is a nice fixture, especially as there is great weather forecast for this first match of the season.

At 7.30 this morning my front door was being banged and the bell rung as if a fire were sweeping the street. I leapt out of bed and immediately pulled several back muscles. I hobbled and winced as quickly as I could downstairs to find a sour faced gum-chewing Post Office woman showing me a parcel. Before I had chance to open the porch door she had left it upside down on the floor outside. Charming.

I've spent the whole day dosed up with painkillers and have had to withdraw from tomorrow's match. I would kick the nearest post box in an act of petty and pointless revenge if I weren't sure I'd break a metatarsal and miss the rest of the season.

Cricket season 2006 begins

Well, here we are again.

The sharp April wind cuts through the hardiest of us and the sunshine yet brings little warmth. It's the start of the cricket season in England, and the players of Penn, near Wolverhampton, are just starting to think about cleaning the mud off their boots from last September.

The pre-season routine remains pretty much the same. Practice nets have been ongoing since just before Christmas, and players are already setting themselves personal goals before the first match has knocked it clean out of them.

Cricket, like all things has been touched by technology. The old round of early April phone calls to gauge player availability has been replaced by a series of text messages. Fixtures and league tables now surface on the web rather than the local rag, and ageing cricketers like me take to blogging to record their personal experience of this year's campaign.

What lies in store I wonder?