It was that very rare occasion; a sunny bank holiday Saturday and a drive to another beautiful old ground in the village of Addingham.
Once more the temptation to keep driving onto The Dales, chuck the bat out of the window, stick Abba’s Greatest on and prevent more humbling personal humiliation was strong but what could possibly go wrong today?
After all, the opposition were rumoured to be as bad as last week’s.
In order to guarantee my place in the Stiffs this season I have the job of chauffeuring Harry – H – the club’s long-serving and equally long-suffering scorer.
“Get H there Willy and you can bat in the top six no matter how many full-tosses you block” said skipper, Tall Pete, negotiating my “contract” pre-season.
It was a done deal and so I went out and bought the padded seat, back massager, Perry Como CD and a tin of Werther’s Originals to keep the old boy quiet.
Having witnessed many of our numerous ups and downs, H is as much a part of the fabric of the Villas as the grass itself for cricket is so much more than just about the twenty-two who take the field.
Saturdays without H are simply poorer for it on the rare occasions he misses – often following his beloved Bradford Bulls – as any week that goes by without a despairing cry of “who caught that?” from the box is just not the same.
It may have been a flying, one-handed catch but if Molly gets to him first you know that it will be “Caught Molyneux” in the book and evidence in support of a claim for the fielding point.
Having faced the prospect of early retirement from the scorebox, brought on by the ludicrous advent of lap-top based scoring, H faced oblivion, never having owned a computer. T’Management Committee – average age 97 – had insisted on this brave new world.
Try as he might he could not get happy with his unreliable new toy that appeared to consign his pencil case – a gift for surviving World War Two – to the bin.
Numerous cries from the score-box last season of “…it’s fucked again” were like a caged, dying animal.
How could t’Management Committee make a loyal old servant suffer like this just so spotty kids could see their scores on the internet before they played Candy Crush for the rest of the day?
And so at the end of last season we offered H a free-transfer from the Firsts to the Stiffs where the Mandarins have declared that the transmission of our scores may remain at a more leisurely pace, in keeping with most of the bowling on show.
Anyone sad enough to want to know ball by ball scores for the Stiffs will have to contain their naked desperation. The scorebook lives and H was off to Staples for a selection of new coloured pencils, chest out, glad to be first name on the teamsheet again.
Bananas, jelly-beans, factor 50 and thrice-filtered water packed it was off to pick up Aza, my once chubby Under 15 captain, now 18 and built like a brick shit-house.
Discussing tactics some years ago, he stood up and said to me “…you’re not as big as me!” I was – but only just – and definitely not now.
We bumped into each other at the gym the other day; I was doing my wake-up stretches ahead of Pensioners’ Pilates whilst he was simply admiring pecs I never ever had in the mirror, chatting himself up at the same time.
I made a note to have a “word” with dad, Big Frank before he started asking to borrow my body oil; Big Frank would nip this in the bud.
With Aza and H bonding like lost friends across the generations, fused by their shared passion for rugby league and the Bradford Bulls, it was off on a tortuous journey through the holiday traffic.
We eventually got to Addingham, just outside leafy Ilkley, picking up JB en route who “fancied a few beers” having left the long-suffering Sally humping sand and cement, presumably to entomb him under the patio when he got back.
It seemed the woman would agree to anything for some freetime.
Late as we were, there was certainly no time for my pre-match Zumba warm-up. With barely enough time to pop a jelly bean and squeeze a last few nervous drops out in quiet contemplation – nervous dribbling inevitable – the pads were strapped on, new glasses demisted and off we went into the sun.
It was so hot, Head of Team Security, Geoff, had turned up this week in Speedo’s and flip-flops. Son and heir – Our Jordan – was in charge of the team guard dog, a timid chocolate labrador that even the sheep were taking the piss out of. Geoff had some work to do there.
Soon our batting was in tatters and I was contemplating being dropped to the tea-room after yet another failure, albeit my opinion that the umpire had stopped off en route to spend his match fee in advance was carefully muted.
“Blind old twat” carefully muttered under my breath would suffice for now, avoiding a wad of disciplinary forms and a public stoning from t’Management Committee with old lap-tops.
At 40-5 we needed a big rescue job and in strode young Aza, having not held a bat since last year and proving that pre-season nets are clearly a little over-rated.
A double act of opener Gazza and young Aza – sounding like a late entry to Britain’s Got Talent – rescued us to a position of strength setting up an outrageous cameo knock from JB to take the game well away from our hosts.
Smiting sixes to all parts, peppering the sheep still abusing Geoff’s dog, JB was batting with a freedom that no one had ever seen. Had I ever seen him hit three sixes in an over? In truth, I don’t think he had hit three in his life.
Would Addingham be seeking a dope test? A final total in excess of 200 was worth many more on a pitch with a bounce lower than Geoff’s Speedos and we took tea in good heart.
You should never take sport for granted though and Molly was soon wiping steam from his glasses as his bowling was being consistently swatted over the short boundary by a spotty assailant, half his age at least and wearing red moon boots.
“Tha’s only got one shot you little scroat” the big man blustered as Tall Pete scoured the field for replacement options. And true to his words, the one-shot wonder continued to smoat Molly to the boundary with that same shot.
Our Jordan eventually ended the frolics and control was restored.
In the end it was a comfortable victory but not without a moment of high farce. When ACC’s youngest batsman came in – all four foot ten of him – Molly was instructed to go in close and “make yourself big and ugly…do what comes naturally”. said Tall Pete.
Many of us wondered how much bigger Molly could make himself especially in view of the huge tea he had consumed.
Up he waddled, drowning out much of the light from the terrified youngster and crouched as far as his straining breetches would allow. A puddle appeared at the young lad’s feet – nothing to do with Blind Marsy’s bowling – and the end was nigh.
Game over, JB sprinted off the field – well hobbled – to see who’s shower gel he could nick before consuming a swift few, anticipating a shovel over the head and a watery grave…better to not feel a thing.
The i-phone mob crouched like slip-fielders over their phones to see how the Firsts were doing and suddenly, as a proud owner of a three year-old Nokia, I only had the umpire to talk to.
Asking him if he was due back at the rest home was not a good idea so I bade him farewell, suggested he owed me one and hoped I never saw him again.
FOOTNOTE
This week I leant of two local cricket clubs suffering at the hands of idiots. Undercliffe CC were the subject of a mindless arson attack whilst – I hope they don’t mind me saying – the somewhat less affluent Bingley Congs CC had a break-in.
All of us connected with any sporting club dread these happenings largely because our day to day existences are so tough without this idiocy to contend with.
Should the culprits be caught I hope they get what surely should come their way.
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