During the Cricket World Cup, I am offering copies of my latest book, The Exhaustive Guide to Club Cricket for just £6.99, whilst England are in the competition, or until they win it (you may have to hurry after today). In the meantime, here is one of the chapters from the book for free. Read on and enjoy the differences between the professionals and us clubbies. You can get your 'split webbing hands' on a copy by clicking this link here...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Exhaustive-Guide-Club-Cricket/dp/1729676960/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=The+Exhaustive+Guide+to+Club+Cricket&qid=1559587921&s=gateway&sr=8-1
20 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CLUB CRICKET AND THE PROFESSIONAL GAME
1. Wicketkeepers
in short-sleeved shirts. You never
see professional keepers in short-sleeved shirts, but in the club game they are
rife. You can spot a keeper on holiday as he is the one who has tan marks for
just a third of his arm, starting half way up his forearm and finishing just
above the elbow. He also has a permanently grazed elbow.
2. Wicketkeepers
in batting pads. This has not occurred in the professional game since the 1970s.
To be fair, most clubbies don’t do this, but you still get the odd one.
3. Players
who umpire while using mobile phones. Can you imagine the row that would go on
if Aleem Dar missed a stumping with the immortal words, “Sorry gents, I wasn’t
looking”?
4. Smoking
a fag during the drinks break. This is endemic in club cricket. Many can’t go
for more than an hour and a half without nicotine. Pitches are littered with
butts, as are occasionally stump holes. It is a habit that is completely park
(or “village”), depending on where you’re from. The thought of Warnie stubbing
out a stogie on the turf at Lord’s in front of the pavilion would give your
average MCC member a coronary.
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A rare sight in the pro game |
5. Jazz
hats. Quartered or hooped caps of a variety of colours are still regularly seen
among club cricketers from a public school background. They have not been seen
in first-class cricket since the days of Douglas Jardine. Likewise cravats.
6. Players
having a beer while the game is going on. Imagine watching the Test match and
Joe Root and Jimmy are supping a couple of cold ones on the balcony? Then they
bowl a pile of rubbish, drop catches or throw caution to the wind and play a
rank shot. The press would have a field day.
7. Fielding
on an outfield that has been used for rugby or football. With the shortage of
space found in club cricket, often we clubbies have to field on areas that are
dry, bobbly and as rough as half of a Kookaburra cricket ball. Getting your
body behind a ball that is smashed at you in May on one of these pitches is to
take your life into your hands. I am sure that some groundsmen are on a back
hander, or at least some form of commission from the local dentists. A
dislocated ankle as his foot disappears down the hole where the goalposts stood
a few weeks previously is another hazard that the unfortunate clubbie has to
overcome, unlike his professional counterpart.
8. Having
to play on park pitches and diving in dog poo, broken glass or discarded
needles.
9. The
professionals are generally watched by a knowledgeable crowd, interested in the
intricacies of the game. It is unlikely that they’ll have to deal with cars whizzing
by with comedic youths hanging out of the passenger window shouting such
witticisms such as “Owzat?!” or “Come on you whites”.
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Doubtful that the pros have to remove visitors from the pitch before a game |
10. The
professional cricketer will play on a ground which has a large sightscreen or
two smaller screens. Their games are not held up by some idiot who insists on
going over and around the wicket to a right- or left-hand combination. Neither
are they required to push a sightscreen which has got foot-long grass growing
into the wheels, which need six blokes to push it, only for the wheel to fall
off. Neither are they made to move it because of some bloke (who has the eyesight
of Stevie Wonder) and can’t pick up the opening bowler (who is too quick for
him), insisting that the screen is moved six inches to the right.
11. “Err
Cooky, seeing as you’re out, can you relieve Jimmy in the scorebox, ’cause he
needs to pad up” are words that you will never, ever hear Joe Root say. Full
stop.
12. While
the professional cricketer might have to clamber into empty stands to retrieve
the ball in county cricket, not many will spend their weekends having to stick
their hands into nettles so that they can carry on with the game. Or a
blackberry bush. Or roses. A lost ball in the professional game only happens
when someone whacks it out of the ground – never when no one has the
inclination to wade into six-foot high stingers to retrieve it and cannot be
arsed.
13. Neither
does the pro player have to contend with the ball being hit into neighbouring
houses. He’ll never need a “leg up” from his team mates to climb the fence and retrieve
the ball, only for the resident Rottweiler to take umbrage at some flannelled
fool being on his manor.
14. Rarely
is a professional game held up by random people or animals on the pitch,
although dogs and monkeys have held up England in recent years in Sri Lanka and
India. At club level, random drug-smokers, stray mutts or oblivious teenage
girls regularly, hold our games up, blissfully unaware that there is a game of
cricket taking place.
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"I told you to sort the fucking drinks out" |
15. I
wonder if, when Joe Root is batting, he ever has had a pop at Jonny Bairstow
because he hasn’t made up orange squash for the second drinks break? Hmmm.
Probably not. While on the subject, I bet Jonny Bairstow has never had to rope
off the square to stop kids running on it after the game. The likelihood of
Stuart Broad having to collect the boundary markers post-match, is slim, as are
the chances of Moeen Ali being sent off the pitch half an hour before tea to
make sure that the urn’s been switched on.
16. Schoolboy
white shirts. The button-through cotton “schoolie” is becoming rare in club
cricket these days, but you still occasionally see one come out. You never,
ever see them in the professional game anymore and likely haven’t since the
days of Mike Denness. Or Tony Greig.
17. Even
when playing in London at the Oval or Lord’s, I bet no England player has had
to knock on the door of Sam Curran’s or Ollie Pope’s mum’s house to get him out
of bed when he’s been out with his teenage mates the night before and has woken
up in a pool of his own vomit.
18. Joe
Root has never been responsible for ringing in a result, making sure that the
bar at Lord’s is open all night or setting the alarm in the pavilion at 1am,
having skippered all day.
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"Be a good lad, there's £20 and I want the change" |
19. Sam
Curran, as the current youngest member of the England side, has probably never
been sent down the corner shop to get a battery for the clock which has stopped
working, or some milk for the tea … “Oh, and pick up 20 Benson & Hedges and
a jazz mag while you’re down there.”
20. Joe
Root doesn’t spend his Saturday morning like a Vietnam veteran “on the wire”
every time his phone bleeps, with Ben Stokes informing him that he’s got to drop
out because “the Mrs is ill and I’ve got to look after the kids”.
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