Categories
1930s Odds & Ends

Motor-cycle Hazard

IN THE 1933 match at Chorleywood, P. Kingsley scored 100 for Chorleywood, hitting several shots into the road.

Radlett’s A. L. Baucher fielding in the deep was positioned for the catch a few yards in from the road.

Sure enough, Kingsley hit a half volley out of the ground over Baucher’s head while the fielder with his eyes glued to the ball in mid-flight slowly back-tracked towards the road and failed to notice a motor-cycle parked in his way.

He was next seen disappearing head over heels over the bike with his legs in the air onto some hot tarmac. He slowly arose very much the worse for wear.

Categories
Odds & Ends

After Stumps: Study of Social Patterns

IT IS EARLY evening in June. A keenly fought cricket match has just resulted in a close finish, at any rate, as close as a margin of eight wickets permits.  Inside the pavilion, students of the human condition and refugees from the local parole board congregate in the centre of the building to enjoy the revels.

From the left dressing room comes laughter and levity interspersed with vain pleas for match monies and shouts of “stop doing that with the soap”. The opposite chamber is enlivened by the sound of bats with thick edges passing through windows with thin glazing, dialogue that makes ‘Last Exit to Brooklyn’ seem like a Jackanory script, and the piercing screams of a teenage colt being boiled alive because he’s unable to read the instructions in the showers.

These petulant tantrums are put down to the artistic temperament (i.e. bad losers). They cease after a while and both sides frequent the bar— though in separate camps divided by a demilitarised zone, which could comfortably petition Korea.

This uneasy truce lasts until about 8.30 p.m. when a major crisis erupts: home players are required to do a bar stint. The variety and ingenuity of the excuses proffered would make rich material for a Ph.D. thesis. Has . . . . . really got a granny who has died three times? Does . . . . . really go to Plymouth Brethren prayer circles? Despite these rats deserting the drinking ship, the bar survives amid an ocean of horizontal bodies and abandoned kit.

Now approaches the maudlin hour when post-mortems are analysed in slow replay and it is generally agreed that one questionable leg-bye turned the game: wholly forgetting that their number nine who scored 60 not out began his innings by handing a white stick to the umpire.

At eleven o’clock the bar shutters descend like guillotines and so to the end of another genteel paramilitary exercise.

 

Categories
1900s Odds & Ends

Old Rules – Same Relevance?

TIMES have changed – or have they – following is an excerpt from a set of club rules published in 1902. They make particularly interesting (and relevant?) reading:

11. The Captain, Sub-Captain, and Secretary shall select the elevens for matches. Any member who has received four days’ notice of his selection, and who is unable to play and fails to give two clear days’ notice of the same, shall be fined one shilling, unless he provide a substitute, or tenders a reasonable excuse.

12.That any member wilfully destroying or damaging any property belonging to the Club, shall restore it at his own expense within one month; and that on refusal to do the same, the Committee shall deal with the case as they think fit.

13. That should the conduct of any member on the field be inconsistent with the character or interest of the Club, the Committee shall for the first offence caution such member, for the second offence fine him and for a third shall have power to expel him from the Club and not permit his presence on the ground.

14. That all fines shall be paid within one month of infliction, and that any member refusing to do so shall be expelled from the Club and ground.

Categories
1960s Odds & Ends

Aviary Dismissal

WHEN Robin Wing and Malcolm Bird played in the second team in the early sixties, they achieved the following dismissal line in the scorebook against Southgate.

Chicken, caught Bird, bowled Wing.

No one remembers how many Chicken scored – but it wasn’t a duck.

Categories
Odds & Ends

Mole Kills Mole

RADLETT seconds were once playing at Flitwick when suddenly something moved on the square. “It’s got to be a mole coming up for air,” was the general view, whereupon a Flitwick man hared off for a shovel, beat the ground and a mole appeared. It was then quickly despatched by—would you believe?—a Mr. Mole.

The headline on the local newspaper the next week ran, “Mole kills mole.”