Surviving the Western Terrace

Or as one tweeter reminded me, the "notorious" Western Terrace - one of the very best places to watch cricket so long as you don't want to follow the play too closely!

We were sat on the terrace as part of what seems to be a very extended send off for Stu Muxlow, who having taken redundancy is setting off Eastwards on his trusty motorbike. I gather that Stu will actually set off later this month.

The Western Terrace is loud, bumptious and extremely good-humoured. It is populated by a mixture of youth and experience which, fuelled by copious amounts of booze, results in a mix of chanting, occasional bursts of what might (if one feels kind) be singing and a neverending stream of wisecrack, ribald comment and edgy commentary on the play.

The crowd did the obligatory ooh-ing as the bowler ran in, cheered Yorkshire's sixes and wickets while ignoring the same from Warwickshire. And, as it became clear that the visitors were going to chase down Yorkshire's score with some ease, the crowd commenced with other entertainment - cheering as some young women walked up the stand, jeering as the stewards removed a lilo and conducting a perfunctory and disorganised Mexican wave. All interspersed with the familiar cry of "Yorkshire, Yorkshire".

I'm sure there are similar crowds at other grounds but part of me suspects that the denizens of Headingley's Western Terrace are probably the loudest, wittiest and cheeriest - or that's what they would tell you! A fine way to spend three hours in the sunshine - under a perfect blue sky rather than Yorkshire's more usual grey - enjoying our national sport (or rather the bowdlerised, pajama-wearing version of our national sport), having a beer or three and enjoying the noisiness of Yorkshire's best crowd!

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Twicket - village cricket arrives with a bang in the cyber-age!

Spend much of today bunking off from the election campaign to attend Twicket – the world’s first livestream of a village cricket match featuring the Lancashire village of Wray versus “The Rest of the World”.  And what a fine day in a fine place.

Wray is one of those places that seem to work.There’s a little spark, a bit of magic that brings it all alive. I’m sure on dull November midweek afternoons the village is less delightful and no doubt there are moments when folk don’t get along but on this particular Spring day with the sun shining the place worked.

The magic is the people – those who do things, organise things, turn ideas into activities. We assume, do we not, that scarecrow festivals, straw races, holly scroggling and other such community events emerge from out of the ether – we seldom stop to think of the hours put in to making these events so good or of the wonderful people who provide the impetus to make and sustain these event.

And even better when the eyes of the world were turned to the village – over 2000 viewers of the livestream, the BBC popping in to film and interview and a good bunch of spectators enjoying the sunshine and a game of cricket – to see local people, visitors and those running the livestream working together to make an event like Twicket a success! 

And like so often happens, I got roped in – on this occasion to do the match commentary with the lovely Brenda, a local resident and, it seems, a natural broadcaster with a love for Pimms! You can see the results here.

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Legalising gambling would help stop corruption in sport.

The revelations regarding the Pakistan cricket team are at the same time a tragedy for the game (indeed for sport in general) and also the inevitable consequence of prohibition. Assuming that the allegations have some substance, it seems that the corrupt hand of Asia’s “gambling syndicates” has infected the great game of cricket – and not for the first time. Why is this?

The main reason is that throughout Asia – and in too many other places – gambling is illegal. And – given that people will gamble whether it’s illegal or not – that means the punting business is run by criminals. Which of course in nothing new – ask ‘Shoeless Joe’ Jackson!

If you ban something that people want to do, you hand it over to criminals for them to run. And, given that those criminals are (ipso facto) unregulated, the result is the fix – the criminals set up the system to increase their advantage. Forget about the bank having advantage – this is the bank ensuring it wins.

For the sake of sport – and for the liberty of snails climbing up walls or droplets running down windows – we need gambling to be legalised. Only then can we have any chance of controlling the corruption of sport by the bookies and the sharks.

Dog Days

The dog days of summer. Still lush, still trying to flower but somehow a little tired, slightly droopy. Ready for a long sleep.

This is the time when slips are made, when our tongue's looseness is in inverse proportion to our brain's attention. These are the days when we want to sit back and watch the kids play, or glimpse at the cricket through heavy-lidded eyes. We don't want anything too strenuous, too attention-grabbing - none of that excitable winter sport.

These are the languid hours. Afternoons when we think about a little cider - perhaps to help down a pork pie (and that little bit of salad she insists we eat). Time slips by and we watch it, lolling about in its passing.

One day we'll have to get up, kick off the Summer's laze and get on with the the things that need doing. Soon the football will start again, the kids will be back to school in slight trepidation at the new class and our lives will once more be filled with action and activity.

But tell us about that later. Right now I'm doing nothing.

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