I held just two slip catches in the last two seasons. One of them an infant in a pram could have caught. The other lodged between my thighs, causing much raucous merriment among team-mates. The worst wicket was one mowed from the middle of a public park in Leeds. Man, I ain t batting on that.
Friendlies usually mean evening matches.
On a summer s evening in June this can be idyllic. But around 8.30pm in September, you just hope a car goes past with its headlights on now and again, to see if everybody s still playing or not. The daftest tale about cricket administrators involved a team-mate who, in his early journalistic days, earned a few bob by sending Bradford League scores to the Sunday papers. He arrived at his local ground during a small cloudburst on Saturday and fell in with a mate, the opening bowler for the home side. They decided, looking through the window, that the prospects of play were rather less than zero, so decided to have a pint or two.