Cricket

I’ve always loved the game of cricket,even back to my childhood I enjoyed playing and watching cricket more so than football, which was a bit controversial back then as 99 percent of my school mates were football through and through and if the conversation strayed onto cricket it soon was back on to match of the day. Luckily football was my second choice so I had a good variety of sporty mates.My eldest brother was also an avid cricket fan and even got to play at a decent level,making a few appearances for Derbyshire under 18s.He spent most of his amateur days playing for Eastwood Town and became the youngest player to make an appearance for the first eleven.I spent many a Saturday and Sunday down at the ground watching Eastwood play.When I reached my teens I plucked up the courage to go for a trial to play for the newly formed Eastwood under 16s,there was around 30 young kids waiting in the wings to show the coaches what they had to offer and I was very nervous as the only experience I really had was playing on the local park,with my brother and his cricket buddies.The first session went quite well and because my brother played in the first team I think I got selected in the 16 man squad due to him being part of the “family”,as you read on you will realise why.Now to the bad bit.The year was 1978 and I was 13 years of age and the long established players of Eastwood were sensing a bit of a competition for their place in the team.The atmosphere at the training sessions was horrible and after finishing each session and walking home I was almost in tears and muttering to myself I’m not going back ever again,but I enjoyed cricket so much that I soon snapped out of it and back I was next time suffering the same indignity as before. Luckily my brother was now a well established player at the club and a great opening batsman breaking records for most runs,highest opening partnerships etc,so he looked after me and stopped the bullying towards me by threatening to quit the club many times if things didn’t change.How the club worked was like this “the Chairman”(who we will not name) was absolutely in charge,nobody would question his motives.His son was the first team captain,his other son was the Sunday team captain,his 1st grandson was under 18 captain and his second grandson was the newly formed under 16 captain.Im not saying they were bad players,as it happens they were all pretty decent players,but a family of team captains was a bit of “nepotism” in my book.My cricket career was very short lived making perhaps 5 or 6 appearances for the under 16s when I decided that the club was very much a family and friends affair and i was better off playing for a different team.Again my eyes were opened when I attended a few selection processes for a few other local teams,they were all run in the very same fashion and my cricket career was over.Some people over the years have suggested that maybe I wasn’t good enough to play at that standard and the coaches were only doing what they did for the club to survive at the top level,looking back at those times makes me think maybe they are correct but the way I look at it is that the cricket club was a very close knit family and any outsiders threatening the positions of the old guard were stopped in their tracks as soon as possible.

All that said I do still love the game and go to spectate as much as possible, which brings me to the drinking of beer at the games.As you all know I love a pint or two,but going to a cricket game is a disappointing drinking scenario for me.The bars around the ground typically have 3 different draught beers on offer “a lager” “a bitter” and “a cider” sometimes Guiness is available,all in a horrible plastic cup prepoured 10 minutes before you’ve asked for it and a lot of it spilled down the waste pipe,and to top it off the price is around £2 more than my local pub.I took my son as a treat to a 20/20 game recently and whilst we were there met up with a couple of mates,and after a bit of a review of the game next morning realised that I had spent £48 on two rounds of drinks (£6 per drink).Because it was a treat for my son and I had invited my friends all the drinks were purchased by me so including 2 tickets,beer,a couple of trays of scolding hot chips,transport and a programme the 3 hours of cricket cost in excess of £100.Happy days…….