16 – Across the Border
Welcome to the village of the damned. Wild, wild Denholme – “Badlands” – a backwater of Bradford, perched on the hills on the outskirts of the city and the only place that I have ever played cricket in the snow. It resembles one of those outposts in the American Wild West that was far too cold to ever interest the Red Indians.
A place where the kids rode the rooftops of the local buses for kicks and a character called Toxic lived, so nicknamed because he was considered a bit of a waste as he slept with his pigs and only woke up to go to the pub.
The Denholme cricket team of the 1980s seemed to consist entirely of giants. Who knows what they ate up there, but they had either discovered steroids well before the East German female shot putters, or they simply ate anything that moved; salad was definitely off the menu and perhaps that’s why Toxic slept with his pigs?
Coming from “down the valley” we were considered “townies” – on a polite day. Their ground had a sheer drop on one side, which meant that if you had to go and fetch the ball, the only way was to abseil.
Even then you had to negotiate the odd starving horse and sleep deprived bull after another nocturnal visit from Toxic. When I was bowling there we generally had a man posted in the valley to save time.
Land of the Giants
When Denholme batted, these lads were not interested in crisp grass cutting cover drives with a technically correct high front elbow straight out of the MCC Coaching manual. Wielding bats like railway sleepers and with forearms wider than most of our legs – the term “Cow Corner” was coined for Denholme – they never died wondering at the crease.
No need for a pitch map for most of their batters as often it was “Whoosh” and there it went again, sailing into the fields yonder and another hacked off bull to negotiate. Still at least it was generally a bit warmer down in the valley.
Their champion opening bowler was Geoff Fisher, a hulking mass of a man. Although he only bowled medium pace, he seemed to block out all the light in the world as his enormous frame lumbered to the wicket with a rhythmic roll side to side and a very economical action.
Geoff was and remains one of the nicest men you could meet and his son, Ian, went on to escape the village of the damned for a career in county cricket, most notably with Gloucestershire. Geoff bowled brisk away swingers and seemingly could bowl forever; he rarely bowled anything less than very well.
Spenner
His young, tearaway, partner in crime at the other end was Spenner – a lad carved out of the same Denholme granite – who made his mark on us in the classic 1986 Waddilove Cup Final. Simply mad as a hatter and on his day a violently destructive cricketer with bat and ball.
Thick as a post – or so he liked you to think but as I discovered in later life actually quite a bright lad – and off the field as nice as they come but standing 22 yards away with a bat in your hand he was a complete nut job.
In fairness, his good days with the bat were few and far between; you just had to hope that it would not be against you. And as daft as he was, he was Oxbridge potential compared to his brother who never caught on to the modern day trend of wearing batting gloves.
Spenner actually induced my first and only flirtation with epilepsy and near death during a cup final at the now defunct Grattan ground. Now Spenner could be quick and, although raw, he had actually been invited to bowl at the England batters prior to a test match with the West Indies in the 1980s – when they used to have really fast and menacing, nasty bowlers – to serve up some short and nasty stuff at the game’s elite.
Who better to invite across town and replicate the chin music England were about to face. A short run, he relied on pure explosive power from shoulders wider than the local railway viaduct. Why he bothered wasting one of these lightning strikes on me God only knows.
I think I saw the ball pitch but after that how I got my bat in front of my nose I will never know. JB, who was batting at the other end, described it as akin to a lightening strike – once he had stopped laughing. It was okay for him being five foot nothing as most bouncers sailed over him standing up.
How ironic that Spenner nearly reduced me to his IQ equivalent with one ball. Funny that his bowling partner, Hodgy, also laid me out in a cup final against them. I don’t remember dallying with anybody’s wife in Denholme so not sure what I’d done to upset them.
Briggsy the Radiator
The Denholme wicket keeper was Briggsy, who, whatever the stage of the season, never wore anything other than a short-sleeved shirt. The man was either a walking radiator or just as hard as nails – I suspect the latter. Briggsy was never going to threaten Jack Russell’s England place at the time as he was typical of many who end up as either wicket keeper or goalkeeper – fat and useless.
It’s the only way some lads get a game by claiming to be a “specialist” (i.e. rubbish at everything else) and so they end up clad in padding from head to foot with the gloves being the least used part of any of that equipment. It’s all about stopping it however you do it and Briggsy was wide enough to accomplish this most of the time.
It really was like going back in time when we played at Denholme. I half expected a trolley bus to trundle by, lumbering just like Fisher up the hill, into a howler, rain and sleet pouring down. Strange that Fisher would always trundle thirty yards up the hill and Spenner would trot in off his three paces down wind.
Mind you, Spenner generally did run the full pitch length to eventually question either your parentage, sexual orientation (fair question with some of our lot) or whether your girlfriend had recovered from the seeing to he gave her last night. Inferring that the local sheep were in more danger only served to fire him up more so we always kept our mouths shut.
Cross Border Poaching
In a bizarre twist of fate somehow three of the locals were attracted across town to come and play for the Villas. Obviously, as I have already intimated, we were strapped for cash so all we could entice were three clapped out old lags at the end of their playing days on free transfers.
So we ended up recruiting three of Denholme’s “finest” and in so doing introduced them to running water, central heating and colour television although, perhaps the description of “finest” may be an exaggeration.
Abdul
Stuart “Abdul” Harris had been an opening batter of the JB mould in our junior days, in that he very rarely got it off the square even when I was bowling so most of us queued up to bowl at him before the arrival of the next axe wielding yokel. Weighing in at seven stone wet through, he was clearly behind Fisher, Spenner and Briggsy in the queue for school dinners.
However, he was a much-underrated cricketer and developed into a crucial part of the Villas first team as a leg spinner. Not that I ever saw many turn. It just goes to prove that the lob it in the air bowler will always get wickets on a Saturday afternoon, anywhere in the country. In fairness he was better than that.
Credit for his discovery as a leg spinner goes to Brent. I’m told this discovery happened at one of the early pre-season net sessions generally hated by most players but more so this particular season as they’d been arranged on Saturday mornings starting at nine.
Given that I’d generally not been home long anyway, the thought of swapping my pit for a ball snorting at my nose in light dimmer than the club I’d just left did not hold much attraction. So, for obvious reasons, my early memories of Abdul’s discovery are limited.
Now Abdul’s success was, in fairness, not down to his vicious spin or wily flight – more to a combination of the accepted fact that most league players just cannot play slow bowling plus the best wicket keeper we’d ever had at the club.
Although he was almost sixty at the time – at least he looked it – Steve “Leapy” Lee had been a Bradford League legend and had enough stories of former glories to fill Wisden and entertain us on many a rainy Saturday afternoon. Even in his dotage he was still razor sharp behind the sticks.
So Abdul’s success was down to the fear factor induced from the twin effect of a high quality wicket keeper stood up and the fear of actually getting out to rubbish. And Abdul did chuck a lot down.
An England Scalp for Abdul
His greatest prize? None other than the Yorkshire and England player Anthony McGrath, who nearly never played for England as he just avoided being beaten senseless and rendered limbless by his enraged dad for being bowled out by “that pile of garbage” a description often used to describe the odd spell from Abdul.
Perhaps batting against “garbage” was not covered in Yorkshire’s coaching manual? When later I watched Anthony playing for England it did make me think that maybe we all still stood a chance, especially as fellow professional Ian Fisher had hardly dominated us. Well he was twelve at the time. I do expect Abdul to get a mention in McGrath’s inevitable autobiography.
Abdul’s now plying his trade on the East Coast, having moved the family to take over a local post office and we are deprived of a lovely guy and a genuine asset to the club. I believe he is still bamboozling the locals with that mix of leg spin lovingly still referred to by all as buffet bowling – just tuck in.
Whitters the Quickie
This was how Dave Whitrick was prone to describe himself – claiming to all who would listen to be the fastest bowler at the club. We knew him by any one of several other nicknames, including “Glass Back” / “Man With Many Wives and Even More Children” / “Whitters” and “CSA’s Most Wanted” – which went some way to understanding the Quickie nickname.
Dave was a complex character who, had he understood what it meant, would have been all in favour of polygamy. It would certainly have been cheaper in the long run. He was fond of describing himself as the quickest at the club although we did not know whether he meant with the ball, or the time it took him to “knock up” his latest conquest.
I think he was on his seventh wife by the time he joined us – seeking political asylum in North Bradford and with the CSA hunting him down like a wounded fox. As for being a quick bowler well Browny had just retired, Mick Adams was approaching sixty and so Whitters probably did deserve the accolade for a few seasons. These were tough times for a captain at the Villas.
Tell Me You Love Me?
On his day, although I cannot remember many, he was a nippy swing bowler rescued from the depths of Denholme’s Stiffs to eventually open our first team attack. An inspirational pick from the depths of anonymity in fairness and when we could bandage him up and get him on the field he did a great job for us.
He was though a nightmare to captain, in constant need of reassurance and receipt of the captain’s “hug” although this was metaphorical as you did not hug any bloke from Denholme. When I captained him, I told him I loved him more often than I have ever told any woman, so that’s at least once.
His finest hour was as Man of the Match in our Cup Final victory over Harden in 1998, taking 5/37 to win the game for us. This day typified him as he was innocuous in his first spell riddled with nerves– only to take an early wicket in his second spell and bowl like a man inspired shorn of all the fear that had limited his first spell. Credit where credit is due because he won us that game and his beaming mug shot as he is gripping those two trophies looks down on my office desk to this day.
I’ve no idea where Whitters is now (apart from pictures of a balding, fat lad on Facebook) or how many wives or kids he has added. Even though he was a complex character he was a really likeable lad and did great, unstinting work for many years with the juniors often without much help and as someone who has done plenty of that I know how he felt, even though I suspected he was just checking out the mums all that time.
Molly
Rumour has it that in convincing Molly to cross the border, come down the valley and eventually marry Carol Shuttleworth we saved him from an early drink induced death and the probability of seeing out his final hours in a drunken haze in one of Toxic’s pig sty’s probably cuddling Toxic.
Into the bargain, Villas recruited our Head Tea Lady (aka She Who Must Be Obeyed) and finally convinced her younger brother, Steve, to leave the bright lights of the Bradford League and join us eventually leading the first team to future glory. So if we’ve had to put up with the many eccentricities of Molly over the last few decades then the trade off has made it worthwhile.
There is always a counter view when one witnesses the strict control Carol exercises over Molly that perhaps Toxic would have enjoyed the company and Molly would have avoided forty years of torture; I’m only joking, Carol, darling. From the scruffy, drunken, bum I first encountered she has done wonders with him and the leash shows no sign of slackening as the years go on and nor should it. Give the man a teaspoon and he will sup a gallon before you know it.
The Great String Vest
At first sight Molly is hardly your modern day athlete. In fact athlete is not a word you would ever apply to Molly. Rotund of frame, Eric Morecambe glasses, fat backside and a string vest possibly passed down through three generations of Molyneuxs probably knitted from wool pinched from sheep on the Denholme hills.
The look on the newest youngster into the Stiffs’s dressing room as Molly starts to change for battle never varies from utterly gob smacked; simply put these kids have never seen clothing like it indeed one thirteen year old said it was like sitting next to a tramp.
Four layers of underpants including a thirty-five year old jock strap over the top all tucked into a string vest that Rab C Nesbitt would have binned. No figure hugging Lycra here.
Molly’s type of bowler, so common in the local leagues, is known as a Trundler and, frankly, it’s more fun having the clap than batting against one of his type. His bowling over the years has been described in many ways normally derogatory. I have to be careful here as he once bowled me in a warm up game as I simply could not take the torture anymore. Here are a few descriptions of the tripe he chucks down:
- Wily…bores you to death
- Clever change of pace…slow, slower, going backwards
- Moves it …off the middle of the bat over the mid-wicket boundary
- Lively…likely to explode after smashing him over the boundary
- Steamy – just check out those glasses when he starts sledging
Follow the Bright Lights Mr Tram Driver
Rain Starts PlayHome games simply have never held the same attraction for Molly and, for the record, many a cricketer with a woman waiting back home. It is just an extension of the days as a kid when your mum called you in late at night but you just wanted to play and play.
Even though it’s been raining cats and dogs at the Villas, Molly has become an expert in offering the excuse, admittedly in stuttering words that “we had to give it a few hours to see if it would dry out …love you….hiccup”. which is generally what he’s needed after Carol has finished battering him senseless on his return.
Carol, never slow on the uptake soon figured out that by making the teas she would know exactly when play was suspended for the day and the leash was tightened still.
Singing in the Rain
One of his finest hours, blathered of course, was actually at Lords; the home of MCC and the spiritual home of cricket. We were at a test match, a particularly dull one at that with several merciful interruptions for rain. One such rain break saw the players trying to continue in the drizzle when Molly decided to lead the crowd in a rendition of “Singing in the Rain” in an attempt to keep us awake.
To our amazement the entire covered stand where we were sat joined in with our conductor who could do a good job standing in for the Go Compare man these days and, largely due to the acoustics but also Molly’s promptings, the noise began to attract the attention of the players and other spectators.
Soon most of the ground was itching to join in – even the stuffed shirts in the sponsored boxes. So loud was the noise that on our return my mum did ask “tell me that was not you silly asses singing?” as even Richie Benaud had commented on the rotund tenor leading the crowd.
Salmonella Sid
Over the years Molly has become a club stalwart as he will take on any job to sneak out of the house and snaffle a slurp or two. He has been captain of the Stiffs, is currently a junior coach and he’s been Club Secretary for many years.
Another of Molly’s dubious talents for getting away from the wife is that of “proprietor” of the well-known Villas’ equivalent of Sid’s Café from Last of the Summer Wine fame. Our version of Sid’s’ is open most Sunday mornings during the summer for junior games.
Molly will be up at the crack of dawn, refrying all sorts of “meat” products some actually purchased in the same year of sale to be devoured by hungry kids, frozen parents and hordes of hung-over senior players. How he has never poisoned anybody in all these years is a mystery but despite national breakouts of E-coli, Mad Cow Disease and Salmonella, Sid’s Café has rolled on, seamlessly.
Clubs like ours – and many more up and down the country – would not exist without the likes of Molly. True, without us they would most likely be sectioned and never be released again but people like Molly get stuck in and have a go whilst the never too silent majority generally look the other way.
He might not do everything to everybody’s satisfaction – most of all those grease-laden, slimy, heart attack-inducing bacon butties – but at least he has a go.
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