February 2009 Archives

Next season, for the first time in a few years, the Bears have a four-day game at Taunton. It will offer a chance to reflect on the true glory of cricket, particularly the truly glorious history of cricket. And Arnold Ridley.

How evocative it is to visit a famous old cricket ground and picture feats to have unfolded there. And people who have passed through - not just players but fascinating people with little or no aptitude for the sport but a deep love for it.

Arnold Ridley was such a man. And a man of fascinating parts.

Most famed, of course, for his brilliantly low-key portrayal of the doddery Private Godfrey in Dad's Army, Ridley actually fought in both world wars. He was in the thick of the Battle of the Somme. Three times he was invalided out and sent back into that vile slaughterfest. With typical under-statement, he later reflected that "the first war knocked me about a bit".

Ridley went on to become a fine writer and actor but the strongest thread running through his life was a love of cricket. In particular, Somerset cricket. Many hours across many decades he spent at the lovely county ground. How evocative it is to picture, say, a day in the 1920s and Ridley, fresh from the horrors of the Somme, entering the ground and settling down to watch play. Would he sit by himself and quietly enjoy the cricket? Or attend with friends? Did he pop in during breaks from writing and ponders his plots while a championship match unfolded?

And much, much later what did he make of Somerset's long-awaited success which arrived not long after his own belated rise into the public eye? In the 1970s, Ridley became a national treasure for his part in Dad's Army. And then late in that decade along came Botham, Richards, Garner, Dredge, Rose, Denning and co to supply the cider county with a golden era of cricket. Imagine ageing Arnold relishing those Lord's finals and wonderful semi-final wins inside packed Taunton.

Ah, the magic of cricket. The history. The brotherhood (and sisterhood) of cricket-lovers. The cast of millions. And all those grounds with so many tales to tell and so many secrets that will never again be told.

If you pop down to Taunton when the Bears visit in April, just picture dear old Arnold watching from a quiet corner in the 1960s or 1970s or long, long ago, dapper young Arnold, so much of his colourful life still in front of him.

The magic of cricket.

"Barking up the wrong tree" is a term which has its origins in 19th-century raccoon-hunting.

Raccoons are nocturnal creatures so were pursued at night. Hunting dogs were dispatched to give chase and a persecuted raccoon would invariably end up seeking refuge up a tree.

The dog would then wait at the foot of the tree and keep barking so that the huntsmen, following up behind, would home in on the noise and come and shoot the poor victim down from the branches.

Often, however, in the darkness above, the raccoon would scramble on to the branches of an adjacent tree and skedaddle off into the night - thereby leaving the outwitted dog barking up the wrong tree.

Calum MacLeod has had a minor operation to remove a cyst but will be fully fit in time for Warwickshire's pre-season trip to South Africa and the rest of the Bears' squad are as fit as butchers' dogs, which means extremely fit, although if you go back through the records, there must surely have been a dog somewhere, some time, which belonged to a meat vendor and at the same time let it go a bit, fitness-wise.

Anyway, the absence of injuries is welcome especially among the bowling department as it appears increasingly likely that the Bears will go into the 2009 season without an overseas paceman.

Little or no headway has been made in the hunt for one of sufficient calibre.

Tim Beddow's bookstall was, for many years, a popular part of the Edgbaston furniture until that picturesque temporary office building was dumped on his summer location.

Would anybody like to see Tim's bookstall return to the ground?

Why, when a half-time or full-time whistle is long overdue, and the ball goes out for a goal-kick and everybody KNOWS that the whistle to terminate this particular portion of "entertainment" will follow next and it's freezing cold and everyone just wants to have a break and get their mitts round a hot toddy, does the referee, instead of blowing his whistle straight away, ALWAYS wait for the goalkeeper to retrieve the ball, place it in the six-yard box and boot it downfield, a process which can take up to half a freezing minute, before blowing said whistle?

Cumbria County Council reports that new users are flocking into libraries across the county.

Between September and December 2008, the number of people who joined the Cumbrian library service was 39 per cent up on the figure for the same period of the previous year.

An extra 4,989 members joined up during those four months - a highly impressive figure bearing in mind the large but sparsely-populated county has only just over half a million residents in total.

This blog emphatically opposes plans to implement a cull of grey squirrels.

Seagulls, yes. Grey squirrels, no.

Belly really does need a score or two in Test cricket very soon doesn't he?

Mind you, not that I would ever wish Bell and Tim Ambrose, nice chaps that they are, anything but the very best for their international ambitions, but if they did happen to find themselves on the outside looking in to the England team this summer, Warwickshire could be fielding a top order of: Westwood, Maddy, Bell, Trott, Troughton, Frost, Ambrose, which isn't too shabby.

And then if you throw into the lower-order mix the likes of Botha, Clarke, Salisbury, Carter, Woakes, Anyon, Rankin and Sensational Overseas Fast Bowler and, crucially, stir in some good luck on the injury front, then do you perhaps have a team capable of challenging for the championship?

Tonight, having driven home from covering Walsall v Leicester City, I had to finish the journey, as always, by executing a small reverse manouevre into the exact parking spot directly outside our hovel.

As always, I lowered the window and looked out and behind me to make sure I was in, as they say in cricket these days, the right areas, when suddenly I became aware of a very unpleasant crushing sensation in my head. My bonce felt like it was being compressed in a vice and I felt blood spurt in a thick, warm stream from my nose.

After a few bewildering and horrible seconds I realised what was occurring. As I had leaned to the right, my arm landed on the electric window button and the window had responded, in traditional fashion, by rising. The pane had wedged up the right side of my nose and was still forcing hard in an attempt to reach the top of the window space. During the few seconds it took me to work out what the hell was going on, my arm remained on the button so the window kept trying to elevate so kept forcing its way upwards into the obstacle: ie. me 'ed.

More by luck than judgment, I think, after a second or two of panic, I lifted my arm off the button and me fizzog (I dread to think what it had looked like for those few seconds - even more grotesque than usual) recomposed itself. The bleeding stopped quite quickly and I went inside to write about Walsall v Leicester City which, for those few seconds at least, had not seemed very important.

Two questions.

Has anybody else ever done this, thereby raising issues of possible serious design faults in the automobile industry?

Was it simply an act of the most extreme stupidity ever displayed by a member of the human race?

On June 2, 1975, there was famously no play in the championship match between Derbyshire and Lancashire at Buxton due to the ground being covered by snow.

Warwickshire, meanwhile, were playing Sussex down at Hastings. The game was unaffected by the weather - but guess who opened the bowling for Sussex...

Chortle, chortle.