The Reality

Playing cricket at this level allows average players to participate in a sport that vaguely resembles its professional counterpart. This in turn gives rise to those players sometimes holding an image of themselves and their abilities that is perhaps a little at odds with The Reality. Between matches the batsman will close his eyes and see himself striding down the pitch to lift the fastest bowler in the league back over his head for six. The bowler, in quiet muse will be launching a searing delivery down at the best batsman which destroys all three stumps in a flurry of splinters and sawdust. The Reality can be quite different.

I had personal experience of this in Saturday's match. After a fortnight's break in Spain, I was not feeling in the peak of physical condition. However, in my last match three weeks ago, I had taken two wickets with my last two balls. This meant that my first ball in Saturday's match was a hat-trick ball. What follows, is the scenario being played out in my head, and The Reality.

In my head: Potts is looking motivated here. Despite the two week break he looks in reasonably good shape. He's given the ball by the skipper to open the bowling. His team mates look at him expectantly. They all know what's at stake here. That rare bowling feat of a hat-trick. Mid-off and mid-on give him a respectful nod as he commences running in.

Potts steadily increases pace gazelle-like right up to the crease and slams his foot down hard. His left arm swings over in a blur and the nervous batsman tentatively prods his bat forward. Potts is unlucky. The ball is nigh on unplayable but catches the inside edge and shoots along the ground through square leg for four runs. Potts stands mid-pitch, hands on hips with a rueful smile playing on his lips. Around the ground his team mates give sympathetic applause for an outstanding effort. Dignity maintained.

The Reality: What a lard arse. The ruddy-faced Potts has been away in Spain for two weeks and has clearly enjoyed too many extra helpings of anglicised paella and cheap lager. The usual two opening bowlers are not playing today so Potts benefits with a rare opportunity to start the bowling. How can this guy be on a hat-trick? His team mates look around at each other nervously as his huge bulk begins to wobble towards the bowling crease. He looks a little queasy. The paella and lager swish washing machine fashion around his ample belly.

Potts manages to reach the bowling crease without dying. His arm eventually comes over and the ball hits the deck halfway down the pitch. It's a leg side long hop. The batsman's eyes come out like organ stops and he belts it to square leg where it bounces just in front of the boundary for four.

His team mates give Potts a collective angry stare and Potts himself looks for cracks in the pitch wide enough for him to disappear down.

He realises that only the Grand Canyon will suffice.

Make 'em laugh

Over the years I've seen numerous ways of winning a cricket match, and not all of them have been strictly legitimate. However, I played a central role this week in the discovery of a new way to win. Make 'em laugh!

Here's the background. It was a low scoring game on a terrible wicket. We had dismissed the opposition (Wombourne) fairly quickly and were making horribly slow progress towards our target of 95. Regular blog readers will know that my own talents as a batsman are even less than my talents as a bowler but as we were short of recognised willow wielders, I got promoted up the order to number seven. This was where the fun started.

I got in when we were 78 for 5. This was more precarious than it sounds as we were scraping through at one an over due to the awful unpredictability of the track. At the other end was fourteen years old Richard Kimberlin.

After a decent enough push through the covers for two, everything fell to pieces. For reasons I am still unable to explain, I proceeded to give one of the most ludicrous batting performances that the game of cricket has ever witnessed. It's difficult to describe what happened in cricketing terms because the game has not yet evolved the appropriate language. That may now change. Suffice to say that the opposition were laughing so much, it was seriously impairing their ability to bowl and field properly. It went something like this:

Shot No.1: Imagine a giant spider doing a star jump. Then, at the apex of his leap, he is peppered with a hail of machine gun fire. It looked a bit like that. At this stage, the Wombourne guys were merely incredulous and incomprehending. Fortunately, the ball missed everything.

Opposition comment: "This one needs a bell in the ball"

Shot No. 2: I get a quickish ball fired down the leg side. Remember the song 'Jake the Peg'? Well, my legs were spread wide with my bat directly between forming the 'extra leg'. The ball shot through my legs and we managed to scramble two byes. During the running of the second bye, both of my shoe laces fell undone and my right batting pad came adrift. Some of the fielders are now visibly holding their sides.

Opposition comment: "Bowl him a piano, see if he can play that!"

Umpire comment (This was our own umpire and he was laughing): "Hey Dave. You got a name for that shot?" Perhaps I should have said it was the 'Jake the Peg' shot.

Shot No. 3: My eyes were closed for this one. No foot movement. No elbow movement. Just a limp upturn of the wrists and the bottom of the bat ends up pointing at the heavens. The ball missed everything and the bowler wasn't happy.

Opposition comment (through the laughing): "Christ! What must the rest be like?"

One of the great things about batting with some younger batsmen is their keenness to do well and their willingness to learn. At the end of the over, young Richard approached me and asked for advice on how to play the next over. I just said "Learn from me Richard. Watch everything I do, and make bloody sure you do the opposite."

Richard heeded my advice and carried us through to victory. As for me, well the inevitable happened and I lost my off stump but my eccentric partnership with Richard did carry us through to within three runs of the target. I left the field to raucous laughter from the opposition and my team mates waiting outside the pavilion were bent double.

To cap it all, my earlier bowling performance where I had taken three wickets for nine runs had been incorrectly entered into the book by my own skipper Chris Rudge. The history of Penn Cricket Club will now forever record that on the 8th July 2006, three wickets for nine runs were taken against Wombourne by a Mr. D Perks.

Thanks Rudgie.

Dismissed by Shane Warne!

I must first of all make this absolutely clear. What he said to us was deadly serious. Unambiguous. There was not a hint of irony. He meant exactly what he said.

I speak here of Paddy who is our wicketkeeper and genuinely all round nice chap. He had just been dismissed and had arrived back with those of us who were padded up and waiting to go in.

I've played cricket for twenty years and I don't really think you ever get over that feeling of nervousness before you go in to bat. You look for any piece of advice, or any hint on how to play the bowlers, particularly from those batsmen that have already been out there. You yearn for anything that will give you a little more confidence.

So, Paddy comes over to me and Dev Penn and we both look at him eagerly for some sage words. And this is what we got.

"There's nothing to worry about out there. He's doing nothing at all. All he's doing is bowling exactly like Shane Warne."

I can't speak for Dev, but I was a little concerned. I wondered if it was only me that thought this piece of news wasn't all that good. I reasoned that facing someone who could bowl like the world's leading test wicket taker, the man who has been the scourge of English cricket for the last fifteen years, ought to be a cause for some concern.

So I got out there and Paddy was not wrong. He was spinning it from leg with some ferocity. I played at every delivery in his first over to me and got nowhere near the ball.

Finally, I suffered the same fate as many English batsmen that have tried to master leg spin. After carting him for a six, a couple of fours and some scrambled singles, I top edged a sweep and was caught at backward square leg.

No one could say I hadn't been Warne-d.

Shouty

Part of the beauty of playing cricket is not only meeting the characters you get to play alongside, but encountering characters from other teams.

We played a team a few weeks ago that contained such a character. His most salient characteristic was an unparalleled ability to shout. He shouted at us, he shouted at his team mates and he shouted at himself. For this reason, using our unrivalled talent for assigning obvious nicknames, we christened him 'Shouty'.

Now not all Shouty's shouting was angry shouting. Shouting was just his default mode of communication. Whether it was hailing his mate on the other side of the cricket ground, or a one-to-one conversation, he shouted. He simply had a naturally loud voice. This was unusual but tolerable. Just.

The problems really arose when he started to get angry with his batting partner. Shouty was getting increasingly perplexed at his team mate's sluggish attempts to back him up when he wanted a quick single.

WYWOHYERBUDDYRUN!!?? was Shouty's pleading yell. We later worked out that he was questioning his hapless batting partner as to why he would not run when asked. THAWOZANEEZEEUNTHEEYER!! turned out to mean he thought the run was a comfortable one.

As the overs went by, Shouty got increasingly cross and increasingly purple. In direct opposite, his poor partner started to shrink and became increasingly nervous (We christened him Nervy). He was visibly twitching.

At one point, he could not bring himself to lift his gaze towards the glowering Shouty who by now had steam coming out of his ears and whose head looked on the verge of exploding. YOEAYEVENLUKKINYERPRAT!! rang out across the ground. WOTSSUPWIYA!!?? AMYA LAME??!! each time a shot was played.

Poor old Nervy. He looked like he wanted to die. His legs wobbled like jelly. He started to run even before the bowler began his run up. He genuinely did not know if he was coming or going.

CUMMMMON!! came the cry as Shouty flicked the ball to midwicket where one of our grateful fielders was waiting. He swooped at the ball, whipped it in to our wicket keeper who quickly broke the stumps. Nervy had been run out, but this did little to ease Shouty's mood. His voice rose to a frighteningly high pitch as he lambasted Nervy all the way back to the changing room. YAMTOOOSLOW!! WHYDAYYERSPEEDUPABIT??!!

Nervy looked very relieved to be off the field. The same could not be said of the incoming batsman who bore a visible air of apprehension.

Eventually, with bulging eyes and gritted teeth, Shouty smashed at the ball and holed out to a catch on the boundary. Needless to say, he did not go quietly. SHUDDABINNAFOUR!! was the strangled cry on the breeze as he trudged back towards the changing room where the trembling face of Nervy stared out in terror.

In praise of Wives and Girlfriends

There's no two ways about it. Wives and girlfriends of cricketers get cheesed off during the season.

For a start, there's the fact that most of the summer's weekends are disrupted by their cricketing partner's absence. In the week there will probably be at least one net session and endless phone calls about last week's game/next week's game/team selection/individual performances/team tactics/best place for a beer after the match. Even if us cricketers agree to a summer holiday away, we will spend Saturday afternoon on the phone listening to team updates as our foot-tapping, folded-arms wives and girlfriends (WAGs) look sternly on.

In fairness, all of this adds up to a pretty raw deal for those WAGs who have no interest in the game.

To compound this misery further, we cricketers sometimes do not help ourselves. I had personal experience this week when (having declared my availability last week) I suddenly remembered late in the week that the forthcoming Saturday was my wedding anniversary.

So here is the dilemma. In my own mind, a dilemma of Hamletesque proportions. Do I let down my skipper and the team by pulling out of Saturday's match? Or do I upset my gorgeous wife by spending most of our anniversary on the cricket field?

Well, I didn't bowl but I did take a catch and I got a majestic 13 with the bat so the day wasn't totally wasted.

For those of you that feel a sense of injustice here on behalf of my wife, I want to reassure you that I love her dearly and did not forget it was a special day. There was a card and a beautiful bouquet. I chilled a bottle of champagne and after I returned from the match we spent a late warm summer evening on the patio with candles, light Mediterranean food, the scent of honeysuckle and some lovely memories of our seventeen years together.

When I woke up this morning she was gone.

I'm joking. It's Father's Day and she wouldn't do that. She's waiting until tomorrow (still joking).

So on behalf of cricketers everywhere I say this to our WAGs: We're sorry. We love you. Don't leave us.

To my fellow cricketers: See you next week lads.

Potts is honoured by a Fly Past

In cricket, a lack of confidence is something that is very easy to diagnose in a player, but extremely difficult to put right.

My own confidence has suffered lately after a series of very poor bowling performances. It got to the point where I started to think I should give up altogether. To be fair, my team mates have been thinking the same thing for a number of years.

However, it is amazing how different everything looks when something positive happens and this week it did! I took my first wicket of the season, and two more followed.

The first wicket was accompanied by a strange sound from the heavens. Naturally, I thought even the gods were appealling to the umpire on my behalf but something very different turned out to be the cause.

As I stood in the middle of the pitch being congratulated by my team mates, a five helicopter formation flew overhead. I was of course delighted that the authorities had seen fit to mark my first wicket with a fly past, but I did wonder how much fuel they had consumed in the previous six weeks of waiting.

I later found out that there was an Air Show at RAF Cosford (the local air base) and the likelihood was that the helicopters were en route. I'm not so sure. Next time I take a wicket(please let there be a next time) I shall settle for no less than a Spitfire, the Red Arrows and a Lancaster Bomber.

Blood, a cricket ball, George Orwell and me

When I was a boy, I remember reading an account by (I think it was) George Orwell who had survived being hit by a bullet. He committed the experience to print simply because he could not remember having read about it anywhere else.

During this week's match, I was hit in the face with a cricket ball and while I do not pretend that it was quite as serious as the unfortunate Mr. Orwell, I think the event should be recorded for similar reasons.

First of all, apologies must go out to our master spin bowler Dev Penn. He did what all good spin bowlers do and set a trap for a batsmen who was slapping our bowling to all corners of the ground. Just before he started his spell, I asked if he wanted a slip. He laughed at me and with delicately spiced language remarked that my time would be better spent on the boundary.

Walking towards the boundary (and here is the first piece of irony), I noticed that Chris Rudge was already there. Chris then reasoned that my catching abilities might be superior to his own and he offered a swap.

So there I am. Standing poised at the deep long on boundary. Dev is in the business of baiting the trap, I am supposed to be the iron jaws that clamp tightly to the victim preventing his escape. The bait is taken. The burly left handed batsman launches a skier towards me. It is high, far, fast, and away to my left. I run towards it and make up good ground getting to the exact spot I need to be to pouch it. Fleetingly I see a vision of a Venus Fly Trap swiftly closing on an unsuspecting bug.

I'm in a good position. My arms are up, elbows slightly bent with palms towards the sky. The hand position is important. They are together, thumbs and forefingers crossing with a roundish gap inbetween. It was the gap that proved my undoing.

The ball is coming down at me at a fair rate of knots. I'm looking at it just above my hands. My eyes are in perfect line following the ball's rapid descent into my hands. There is a crucial moment here. A split second, a micro second, a nanosecond where the ball passes below the line of my outstretched fingers and into vision through the gap between thumbs and forefingers. A further nanosecond later and I expect to feel the slap of the ball in my palms. The slap doesn't come. Instead, several things happen at once.

There is a sickening crunch resounding through my skull. There is an explosion of pain between my my nose and top lip. I hit the ground. The ball rolls away I know not where. I realise the gap between thumb and forefingers was a tad too wide. I see another fleeting vision of the bug crawling out of the Venus Fly Trap holding his sides from laughing.

I manage to bring myself up to my knees and my trembling hand feels for facial damage. I'm expecting to see a handful of blood, teeth and bone but I've been lucky. My eyes are watering, there's blood all over my hands and I'm shaking but the Potts features remain intact. Some would say that was unfortunate.

By this time concerned players from both sides (Thanks Aldridge Boys) have surrounded my prostrate form. I start to get concerned as Pam Kimberlin, mother of our young fast bowler Richard, runs toward me. She is a dental worker and I'm sure she is looking at me in a 'rubbing hands at prospect of future business' kind of way.

My own Penn colleagues offer all kinds of advice.This ranges from "Would you like a glass of water?" to "Get up you stupid bugger they're still running!". Thanks lads.

Full 4th XI Match Report is at: www.penncc.org

It is now Sunday morning. The traditional English panacea of a cup of tea has worked wonders and the mirror reveals no facial bruising or disfigurement. My time is devoted entirely to devising a brand new fielding position for myself next week where there is no chance of my having to catch the ball. Back to scoring for the firsts I reckon.

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?