I have a small selection of old photographs on the wall adjacent to where I am sat now. Below them are old magazine articles pinned onto a corkboard; stuff I have cobbled together whilst chasing a quasi-secondary career as a freelance journalist. Underneath them are trophies, mainly from the 90s and early 2000s. The whole lot of them are worth less than the loose change shoehorned behind your average sofa. But they retain an inextricable link to those photographs, their memories perfectly...
I took my kid to winter nets last weekend. He has turned ten now, and this marks his first exposure to a hard ball. To ease them in gently the coaches intersperse the hand-smacking cherry with a tennis ball and one of those “Incrediball” things. They swing so much that even I can project one with the “Sultan of Swing” menace of a slightly older Jimmy Anderson. Give it a go. You won’t be disappointed. Of course, this being the home-counties, I had to buy all the gear in advance. Not that I...
One-nil down. Where do you go from there? If you happen to be the England cricket team in Australia, usually only further down. All the way, crashing through the basement into the hard earth beneath. For a short while, much like with the England Football team before a major tournament, I allowed myself to believe. Australia are not all that I thought. We were showing blemishes of form and Australia appeared happily undecided on their selection. At precisely 2am in the wee small hours of...
There is a scene in an old episode of The Simpsons where Principal Skinner is addressing a new intake of students and Bart scuppers it by unfurling a banner with the message – “Skinner is a wiener”. The Principal of Springfield Elementary looks up forlornly to the heavens and mutters “you’ve lost them Seymour. You’ve lost them”. He knows immediately that regardless of what he does throughout the school year, they will only ever remember him for this one moment. It is a bit like that with Chris...
I suppose that Henry Blofeld has often divided opinion. You could almost describe him as the Jeremy Corbyn of the commentary box – a sobriquet that is deliberately facetious as I think it would be stretching credibility to suggest that Blowers is hiding even a hint of red under the bed. He might have a picnic hamper, perhaps, and maybe a jeroboam or two, but Mao’s little red book? I doubt it somehow. I learnt the other day that Blowers is 77 years old. This wasn’t necessarily...
I turn 40 this week. Don’t worry, this isn’t a Brian Johnston style appeal for cake. I won’t suddenly be sending out “thank yous” to Mrs. Cholmondeley in Upper Piddle for delivering a rather nice chocolate sponge with strawberries on top. But cake or no cake, these type of milestones do tend to focus the mind – firstly on where the last 20 years have gone and more critically on where the next 20 are going. I suppose there is an upside. For example, reaching 40 must be infinitely better...
