Cricket clubs across the land perform a hugely valuable service to their communities for a large part of the year by taking otherwise dangerous and unhinged people off the streets, at least for the summer months.
We offer them something to do in a secure environment with fencing and often a large gate. At the end of day the numbing effects of fizzy beer are available too and very rarely refused.
I’ve enjoyed the company of many such characters over the years but few more than Denis “Dirty Den” Wood. He rolled up some time in the early 1980s a hunched, diminutive figure with wispy white hair and a twinkle in his eye.
Den was a spin bowler but could easily have been great in the Harry Potter films as a mad little wizard as his hair largely grew out of the sides of his head, like a lavender plant gone wild.
He was permanently fidgeting, often tossing the ball from hand to hand, watching it rotate with a half-mad stare before bowling variations of leg-spin well before Shane Warne was even heard of.
It may have been unpredictable stuff but quite often the ball did actually pitch in the intended area although just as often also in the gardens surrounding the ground.
Den’s added value to the team was that he was generally useless with the bat so at least one slot in the batting order was sorted without debate as Denis was a shoo-in for No 11.
His finest moment was actually with the bat though in sharing a match winning stand with JB in the 1986 Waddilove Cup Final, defying mad Spenner and the rest from the wild rural outpost of Denholme.
He was a feisty and determined cricketer plus someone who made the dressing room that bit livelier.
My early relationship with Den was put under some strain by a confession he made after one pint too many of the vile Grunhalle lager that the club served in those long gone days.
Den had a big, nasty Rottweiler named Boris who he brought to each and every game as a form of moral support I suppose.
Boris’s twin purposes in life appeared to be to guard Den’s twenty-year-old orange Lada Estate (as if anybody would have wanted to nick it) and scare the crap out of the opposition…apart from Spenner who scared Boris.
The Lada came in handy because Den worked at the local sauce and pickle factory; he would turn up each week with crates of brown sauce and pickled onions ensuring he was always in the team no matter what sauce he had bowled the previous week.
The produce also was great for stuffing in various team mates’ batting gloves and watching them fish these out as they got to the wicket. If you inserted said produce at the end of the last game of the season anything could be growing by the time April came around again.
Boris though had a very dark secret.
Long before the term “credit crunch” was ever heard of he had been granted a personal loan by the company I now worked for. When Den discovered this he sheepishly admitted his doggy business.
A loan to a dog? Surely not…Den had obviously overdosed on the Grunhalle!
Monday morning I scurried to the office in my Ford Escort 1.3 Popular – I’d yet to hit the big time – with Terry Wogan telling me what a wonderful day it would be (not if Boris really did have a loan) and frantically fired up the computer.
Lo and behold there it was and with an unblemished payment record I might add.
Sadly, Boris died before the loan was eventually paid off. I was minded to suggest that our Payment Protection Plan might have been a good idea especially as no medical was needed and he might have got some compensation by now.
Den became a legend at the club and taught me many things, but I never needed to put into practice his ultimate trick.
When rain stopped play one Saturday, Den was faced with the prospect most sporting men dread, that of going home to the wife and being hauled off around some shopping centre.
So he came up with an ingenious plan, which involved emptying his bag and rubbing his whites on the wet grass, sprinkling them with more water to resemble sweat, although nobody ever witnessed Den work up a sweat.
The fact that his gear stank anyway enhanced the aura of industry and toil.
With his gear soiled, he was free for the rest of the day. Being the nominated-driver of our team “bus” this was greeted with joy from the rest of us keen to explore the flesh-pots and ale houses of Bradford, somewhat uncaring that a madman was driving us around Bradford in the nearest thing to a tank.
Den’s finest hour, albeit not strictly cricket related, had it’s origins on one of these nights.
Under the dominating influence of ten pints of Grunhalle he declared that if his then fourteen-year-old son Nigel ever scored a fifty – top score at that time eleven – then he would walk to the wicket and strip naked.
How fate can stuff you in the nuts.
Next day Nigel swiped a glorious fifty for the Under Fifteens – his very first and very last before he became a chef and waved a spatula better than a bat. As the day coincided with an afternoon cup match, the post match entertainment was as good as we have ever seen.
After several more courage-building Grunhalles, Den sidled off into the toilets declaring that the time had come to pay his dues. We next saw him walking slowly to the wicket and then he stopped; off came his shoes and then at every few paces he began to shed clothing.
Old Vera Nicholson, ashen-faced at her window, did not live long after the event and local naturist Jean Blackburn even popped her top on to cop a glimpse of the competition.
As Den approached the wicket, his arms went up in triumph as he twirled joyously naked for all to see and danced a jig on the wicket. I swear the roof nearly came off the building. It was pure Reggie Perrin.
A wiry little man dancing manically in the middle of a cricket field, naked as the day he was born, as the setting sun lit up his manhood.
Boris though is not the only famous dog to have graced Villas; Indeed, most people who know me would claim that I have brought along enough in my time to populate Crufts. However, there have been some much-loved pets along the way…if you get my drift…now back to the dogs.
Whisky was the adored collie dog of Ken and Olga Shackleton and would sit in her rightful spot in the club every night alongside her owners who would be sat in their rightful spots too.
Ken liked a beer or two but often it was Olga who would set a furious pace, shooing Ken to the bar for a “fill up”. Olga drank lager, which being dearer was another source of irritation to Ken.
Even though Ken and Olga lived close to the ground, they always drove to the club as they felt safer, which was more can than be said of the punters that Ken weaved past on the way home on many a night.
On warm summer evenings, Whisky liked to sit outside and Ken would moor her to his brown Morris Marina. This particular night as they got into the car to leave they forgot one crucial thing; Whisky.
Off they set, and then after the second speed bump had been negotiated Olga shrieked at the sight of Whisky’s face in the rear window – outside – seeming to vault the car.
Poor old Whisky had been jolted from her slumbers as Ken and Olga had stumbled into the car and set off oblivious to her chained to the bumper.
The horror dawned on Ken as he stopped the car in a flash causing Whisky to almost vault it like a long jumper; small wonder that Whisky walked to the club from thereon.
Muzz was an all together different dog.
The Tattersalls adopted Muzz and the family’s life changed forever. Muzz was a scruffy, stray dog of no fixed breed or abode and always involved in fights which he never seemed to win.
Nobody quite knows how Muzz arrived at Villas, but the day he did, battered and bloodied from another losing battle, he entered the hearts of the Tattersalls and the rest of us for that matter.
Muzz was a bit of a lad and one fine day as our President, Ernest Jackson, was dishing out a deserved rollicking to some of us aspiring juniors for assaulting a wooden bench with the heavy roller – we were inquisitive types – we noticed Muzz in the background, mounting his latest flame.
Soon Muzz was giving it what for and Ernest’s attempts to make us see reason were falling on deaf ears; widening grins and stupid looks spread across us like a plague.
As Ernest unstrapped his belt to give us all a good seeing to, we could not stop falling about as Muzz howled in agony; he was stuck end to with his conquest.
Amidst louder and louder howls – from the dogs and us – Ernest gave up as a lady from an adjoining house marched out with a bucket of cold water. I am sure it put many of us off the thought of nookie for years.
Ernest, as was typical of the man, saw the funny side and left us with a weary shake of his head relieved at least that he did not have to have a “birds & bees” chat with us for another few years yet.
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