201 Pottering About

On Saturday morning, I was talking to a neighbour.  I asked him what he was going to be doing that day.  He told me he intended to “potter about in the garden”.  

“Doing what?” I asked.

“Prune bushes and rake up some leaves.  Possibly do some weeding.  That kind of thing.”

“I don’t think that’s Pottering About,” I told him.  “I think that Pottering About is doing random things or activities while continually moving around with no discernible plan.  But you intend to carry out certain tasks.  If you actually intend to do those tasks, they can’t possibly be random and so you’re not Pottering About - in my opinion.”

He disagreed and maintained that he would be Pottering About because as far as he was concerned, that meant doing useful but unimportant jobs with no time pressure and that, he told me, was what he would be doing.

I think he is wrong because I don’t think that you can actually plan to Potter About.  I feel that Pottering About is only something you realise you’ve done in retrospect or with hindsight and so it could be an answer to a question such as, “What did you do today?” but not, “What will you be doing today?”

I told him that he would be gardening and not pottering.

Some people think that Pottering About is just another way of saying “wasting time”.  It isn’t because there are some potentially positive aspects to Pottering About .  

Pottering About allows the mind to wander.  It gives your subconscious mind the time to process experiences or thoughts you are having.  It can reduce mental stress by focusing on simple, non-demanding activities.

Pottering About can give you a sense of accomplishment and even perhaps, a feeling of triumph as it can create a sense of having done something useful.  Also, for those of us who lead predominantly sedentary lives, it can be the source of gentle exercise and that has to be beneficial.

I played in a league cricket match once that ended in a dull draw followed by a heated argument between our captain and a batsman who was not out at the close of the innings.  

We had needed around 220 to win in 47 overs and at the close of play, we were about 200 for 5 and so, the game was drawn.  The batsman who had (justifiably in my opinion) incurred the wrath of the captain, was 53 not out from more than 90 balls.

“You weren’t trying to win the game,” yelled the skipper.  “You were just Pottering About, playing for yourself and you never intended to do anything else.”

However, according to my criterion, if the batsman had actually intended to bat that way from the start of his innings, he was not Pottering About at all.  

He was just selfish.  

189 The Bairstow Incident

 If you’re reading this, you have probably come across it by accident.  These are my thoughts arising from the Bairstow run out at Lord’s on July 2nd, 2023.

To recap, Bairstow ducked under a bouncer, tapped his bat on the ground behind the popping crease and then walked off down the wicket.  Carey, the Australian wicket keeper, underarmed the ball at the stumps immediately after taking the ball and Bairstow was given out: run out. 

That incident caused incandescent rage from both the spectators and the MCC members.

*****

First of all, the Aussies were not cheating when Bairstow was run out.  It wasn’t gamesmanship either.  Bairstow is a dozy idiot and, in a way, he got what he deserved.  

However, in “the spirit of the game”, the appeal could have been revoked.  There is precedent for that with England’s revocation of the runout appeal against Alvin Kallicharan after the last ball of the day’s play in Guyana in 1998.

Cheating in cricket in by no means unheard of and probably the worst cheat in cricket history was the man whose name is most closely linked to the game – the Englishman, Dr WG Grace.

In the Oval test of 1882, Grace was fielding close to the bat. Sammy Jones, the Australian batsman, blocked the ball and it dribbled to Grace.  Grace picked it up and apparently threw it back to the bowler. The batsman straightened up and started 'farming' the pitch. As Jones walked out of his crease, Grace took the ball from where he had hidden it and threw down the stumps.  Jones run out 0.

While Grace was playing, English coins had Queen Victoria on one side and Britannia on the other. The coin would be tossed and if Grace was particularly keen to win the toss, he'd call "The lady".

Charles Kortright played for Essex and once, when he bowled Grace knocking two stumps out of the ground, he said,  "Are you leaving so soon Doctor?  There's still one stump standing." 

Grace was such a cheat that a number of Laws were rewritten to close loopholes which he exploited - such as the one which means you have to appeal at the time, not the next morning after you've had a word with the umpire about whether the last ball of the day should have been given out.

If that weren’t bad enough, he was accused by the Sydney Mail of betting on the matches he played in.

All that was more than 100 years ago.  Modern cheating (I’m ignoring bodyline as that was gamesmanship and ungentlemanly conduct rather than cheating) began in 1946 with the Australians and Don Bradman.

In the first test at Brisbane, Bradman was caught by Ikin at second slip from a ball bowled by Voce for 28.   No one appealed as it was so obviously out, and it was assumed that Bradman would walk off.  But Bradman just stood there.

The fieldsmen stared incredulously as Bradman stood his ground and then Ikin appealed for a catch. The (Australian) umpire said, “Not out.

Bradman said afterwards that he had jammed the ball on to the ground and so it was a bump ball. Bradman was in a minority of two in his opinion and luckily for him, that minority included the umpire".  

Bradman eventually scored 187.  Keith Miller, the Australian all-rounder who was playing in the game, wrote, “That decision was subsequently admitted in nearly every quarter to have been erroneous.”  

Bradman was 38 years old and suffering from fibrositis.  He had been advised not to play by his doctor and a cheap dismissal would almost certainly have made him retire at the end of that game.

A similar incident occurred in the Second Test, though it might not have been seen as much of a problem if it had not followed so closely on the events of the first. 

Bradman was on 22 when he appeared to snick another catch to Ikin, this time fielding at short leg.  This time though, there may have been some cause for doubt.  It was an appeal that could have gone either way.  It went Bradman’s.

He went on to make 234, so in his first two innings he made 421 runs.  If he’d been given out (by two Australian umpires) when he was actually given not out, he would have made only 50.

In the Fourth Test of that series at Adelaide, Cyril Washbrook was given out to Ray Lindwall to a ball that Don Tallon, the keeper scooped off the ground. Washbrook "stood there transfixed.” Even some of the Australian leg-side fielders expressed amazement. 

Tallon was known for his impetuous appealing and Bradman asked him if he still wanted to appeal. Tallon said he did, and Bradman stood by the decision. It was later suggested that Tallon told Bradman that it was not a clean catch and Clif Cary (Australian cricket reporter) thought that if Bradman had gone into the matter further he would have recalled Washbrook. 

Another Australian reporter Ray Robinson wrote "I believe nearby fieldsmen were impetuous in appealing as the wicket-keeper scooped up the ball, and that the hesitant umpire would have been wiser to have asked his square-leg colleague whether it carried to the gloves or was gathered on the half-volley".  

Hammond tried to locate a press photograph of the ball touching the ground, but no photo was found.  How convenient. 

Jump forward now to 1981 and a one-day game between  Australia and New Zealand. With one ball of the final over remaining in the match, New Zealand needed a six to tie the match. To ensure that New Zealand were unable to achieve this, the Australian captain, Greg Chappell, instructed his bowler (and younger brother) Trevor Chappell to deliver the last ball to the batsman underarm along the ground so that hitting a six was impossible. 

Perfectly legal at the time and not cheating but hardly within the spirit of cricket.

In 2018, Steve Smith, Cameron Bancroft and David Warner were punished for their role in “Sandpapergate”.  They were caught red-handed cheating in the series against South Africa by roughing up the ball with sandpaper.  

The Australian cricket board sought to “draw a line” under the affair by conducting an “independent” inquiry, but as everyone knows, it was a sham.

James Erskine, David Warner’s manager, claimed that there were "far more" than three people involved in the Sandpaper saga.”  

One of those people is Pat Cummins, the current Australian captain, who was a bowler on the day and must have known what was happening.  He was aware of the cheating, said nothing and was later rewarded with the captaincy.

Erskine also said that some unnamed officials had given the go-ahead to players to tamper with the ball when Australia played South Africa in Hobart two years earlier in 2016.

Erskine has said that Warner could blow the lid on the whole affair. “When the truth comes out, everyone’s going to turn around and say, ‘well, why was David Warner picked upon?’ The truth will come out, let me tell you.”

As I wrote at the start, Bairstow was out at Lord’s, and Australia didn’t cheat.  However, they could see that Bairstow was not seeking to gain an advantage and  that he had touched in and may possibly have believed that the umpires were moving at the end of the over.

The Australia coach Andrew McDonald has admitted the whole thing was pre-meditated.  They must have known what a furore it would cause but they didn’t care and did it anyway.

Finally, the views of a former Australian player and an English woman:

Justin Langer: “Cricket is not just about being good cricketers, but good people who play the right way”. 

Victoria Coren Mitchell:  “I think the intensity of this kind of controversy is tremendously helpful when it comes to maintaining the illusion that things like cricket matter at all.”

 

 

110. Loyalty, Allegiance and Support

Jeremy Corbyn didn’t sing the national anthem at a service in St Paul’s Cathedral soon after becoming elected as the leader of the Labour party.  He was accused by some of not showing respect or loyalty to his country. 

On Friday 18th September, the day that the rugby World Cup started, a column in The Times newspaper was headlined,

“The left will never really love this country”.

If he cares about rugby at all, will Jeremy Corbyn be supporting the country of his birth, or will he and other English socialists have their loyalties elsewhere?  What about expats living abroad; will they be supporting the country of their birth, or will they be hoping that their adopted country triumphs?

I never had any interest in the Winter Olympics until the 2010 Vancouver games.   I couldn’t name one UK competitor, but I was really hoping that Dow Travers would do well in the giant slalom because he was the Cayman Island’s first ever winter Olympian and Caroline and I were living on Grand Cayman at the time.  

He finished 101st, only beating a skier from India and one from Mexico.  The UK didn’t have a competitor in that event but if we had, I would have hoped Travers would beat him.

In February 1956, I was given a book token as a ninth birthday present.  I didn’t use it immediately and so the token was unused for some weeks.  Then in April of that year I discovered the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.  I literally read the 1956 Wisden from cover to cover many times. 

I had lived in Sidcup in Kent until 1953 and so I started by reading about Kent County Cricket Club.  By the end of the summer of 1956, I could recite all the Kent averages from the 1955 season and all the county’s records.   I can still remember many of the adverts in that edition.

Although I played cricket in Middlesex for many years and played with and against many Middlesex players, Kent remains the county whose result I always check first because Kent was, is and will remain, my county.

In January 1955 my Dad took me 30 miles to Norwich to watch Norwich City play Bristol City in the 3rd Division South of the Football League. 

Norwich lost 0-1 but despite that and despite the fact that the school where I taught for 33 years was only three miles from Tottenham Hotspurs’ home ground, White Hart Lane, and even though for ten years, I lived only 500 yards from Underhill where Barnet played, Norwich City is still the team whose results matter more to me than those of any other club. 

I am in touch with Patrick Gallagher.  Pat and I were at University together 50 years ago.  He was a very good cricketer indeed.  After we graduated, we both lived in London and we both joined Finchley Cricket Club.  In a game for Finchley against Malden Wanderers, Pat performed the remarkable feat of taking all ten wickets in an innings – the only time I ever saw it done.  

That feat was astonishing enough, but what made it almost incredible was that two of those wickets were as a result of catches by me at first slip.

A couple of years later he emigrated to Australia, and he has been living in Sydney for the past forty years.  In July this year I met him and I was surprised to hear him talk quite casually of “our opening bowlers” when referring to the Australians: Johnson, Starc and Siddle.  I hoped that he was doing it to see if I would ‘bite’ but I soon realised that I was wrong; he meant it. 

After the test series had finished Pat sent me an email with his thoughts on the outcome and wrote:  “…all our quicks leaked runs…”, “I think our bowling can improve…” and, “Ever since 2005 our batsmen…”.  I think they show that his assimilation into becoming an Australian is total and complete.

Perhaps Pat should bear in mind something said by Cecil Rhodes 150 years ago:

“Remember that you are an Englishman and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life.”

Does it matter that Pat has thrown away his lottery ticket when it comes to cricket?  No, I don't think it does.  Support for a team is rather like religious faith.  Faith is the belief in something for which there is absolutely no evidence.  Every year I believe and have faith that Norwich will get promoted that season or win the Cup.  For a week or two I really believe that it will happen.  

Support in sport, defies logic. Only when the hard facts confront me do I reluctantly accept that my hopes for Norwich that season will not be fulfilled.  Last season, however, was a wonderful exception.

With most sports Pat transferred his allegiance to Australia within a couple of years but with cricket it did take longer.  In 1981 he had been in Australia a few years and when England won the Ashes series, he was still a Pom, disturbing the neighbours in an Adelaide hotel while he cheered loudly in the small hours of the morning as England won at Headingley.

But, after a few years of playing cricket with Australians, watching and reading about Aussie cricket and talking about Aussie cricket, especially in the pre-internet days, he found it harder and harder to stay engaged with English cricket.

Is he demonstrating that he has passed the Aussie version of the Tebbit test?  I am always tremendously uplifted whenever I see an Afro-Caribbean or an Asian spectator in an England shirt supporting England and so I shouldn’t be surprised if and when the same thing happens in other places. 

But all those immigrants who support England today are second or third generation and I suspect that those who arrived relatively recently still support their country of origin. 

Fifty years ago, in the 1960s when England played the West Indies at The Oval, all the West Indians in the crowd, and there were many of them, vociferously supported the Windies.  That clamorous support is largely absent nowadays for two reasons.  Ticket prices have risen disproportionally in the past 45 years and are beyond the means of many.  Most South London Afro-Caribbeans who do go to The Oval were born here and those few who do attend are supporting England.

I don’t think Pat supports Australia just to have a happy, calm and harmonious time socially and at work.  For reasons that I can’t understand and that totally elude me, he really does genuinely support Australian cricket and probably gets the same unrestrained joy when Australia wins a series against England 5 – 0 that I experience when Australia is bowled out before lunch for 60.   

I regard it with the same mystification and bafflement with which I view religious faith.   To me at least, it challenges reason.

As I said earlier, support denies and defies logic and so at the moment I am looking forward to the Ashes series of 2017-18, supremely confident that by then Finn and Wood will have become world beating opening bowlers; somebody will have been found who can open the batting with Cook; we have an authentic wicket keeper/batsman and at least one genuine, international-class spinner and we will retain the Ashes by winning at least three tests.

I really believe that.

A last thought:  When Canada play France in the Rugby World Cup on 1st October, which team will the Quebecois support?

 

97. 100 and 5

Last Sunday, October 6th 2013, was the fifth anniversary of my liver transplant and this is the 100th piece I have posted on this blog and so this is a rather special posting for me. 

I can still remember the feeling of trepidation that I had when I pressed “Send” at 6:15pm on Sunday, January 17th 2010 to post the first one, “Bad Umpiring Decisions & Good Pub Quizzes”.  

My grandson, William, was 18 months old at the time and I had only met him once.  I wrote these things hoping that he might read them some day.  He’s five now and going to school but he’s not ready to read this sort of stuff yet. 

The five-year survival rate for liver transplant patients is around 60% and so I feel very lucky to have lasted this long.  My next target is 10 years and eventually, I want to set a new world record but as that record currently stands at 44 years and that person is younger than I am, and very fit and healthy, I will be at least 105 when I break it.  It’s going to be quite a challenge.

A hundred is a significant, captivating number and not just because it’s round and we use the decimal number system and we only probably use that because we have 10 digits on our two hands.

It’s in cricket that 100 is really important, both for batsmen and for bowlers.  100 is the score that all batters want to achieve as they walk to the crease and 100 wickets in a season is the mark of a good bowler.

Just before 6pm on August 14th 1948, Don Bradman (the finest batsman the world has ever seen, despite what the Indians may say about Tendulkar) went out to bat in what he and the rest of the cricket world knew was to be his last ever innings in test cricket.  

His batting average as he walked to the crease on that Saturday evening was 101.39.  He needed to score at least 4 runs in his last innings to retire with a career average of at least 100.  He didn’t.  He was out for 0 and so his final test batting average was 99.94. 

Think about other ways 100 is a significant number.  People never make a huge fuss about a person’s 99th birthday and the Queen doesn’t send out greetings for any birthday after the 100th.  

When I was a boy I would ride on my bike along Clapham Road in Lowestoft and look through the window of the dairy to try to get a glimpse of Ada Rowe, a supercentenarian, sitting behind the counter where she still worked.  When she died in 1970 having lived to be 111, Ada Rowe was the last proven and documented person in the world still to be alive who was born in the 1850s.  She lived in 13 decades!

I spoke to Ada Rowe once when she must have been about 105.  I saw her through the shop window as I rode by and decided that I had to speak to her just to say that I had.  I went in and asked for a pint of milk.  

“Give me your flask,” she said and it was immediately clear that she didn’t sell milk by the bottle, only direct from the churn.  I wonder if it was pasteurised?

In northern Europe, where the temperature scale was devised by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, 100°F is just about the hottest it can ever get but I’ve never experienced that temperature and 94°F is the highest I was ever aware of in Cayman.  

Returning to my moan about the metric system (Metric Madness), this is a key reason why we should never have given up the Fahrenheit scale – Fahrenheit reflects the human experience.

When travelling in a car, 80 mph is fast; 90 is quick but 100 is thrillingly exciting.  Something different happens at 100 mph that doesn’t happen even at slightly lower speeds.  When I was seventeen and at school, five of us went on our scooters (Vespas and Lambrettas) one lunchtime to take it in turns to have a go on Graham Levett’s motorbike, riding along the deserted coast road to try and reach 100 miles an hour.  I eased off at 90 but others were braver.  No helmets – madness!

Writing this blog has been a little like playing an innings in cricket.  Getting off the mark is one of the hardest parts.  I had written the first one for a couple of days before I decided to post it and once I had, there was a sense of relief.  Unlike a cricket innings, however, I don’t remember the 50th one.  I’ve checked and found that it was, “Where are all the pork pies?” which was about a visit that Caroline and I made to watch Arsenal play Manchester City.

Just as in a cricket innings too, I didn’t really think seriously about getting a hundred until I reached the eighties and now, I’ve done it.  It is also like a big innings in that there have been some edges and false shots.  I once scored 106 against Gerrards Cross after which my teammates told me they reckoned only about half my runs had been made as I intended them.  I admitted that there had been a few edges but I thought they were being a little harsh.

If we had eight digits on our two hands like Homer Simpson, we would probably use an octal number system, used sometimes in computer programming.  For those of you unfamiliar with number bases, concentrate!

If we counted in base 8, “100” octal runs in cricket would only be the same as 64 runs – hardly enough to signify much of an achievement.  In a base 12 cricket match, “100” runs would be 144 decimal, which is too many.  100 is perfect.  

“100” in base 8 or octal, is equivalent to 64 in our decimal system.  If Homer Simpson played cricket, would he feel a sense of achievement about scoring “144”?  That’s what he would need to score to have the 100 runs the way we count?  I really doubt it. 

We certainly wouldn’t get very excited at scoring “1100100” runs in cricket, (64 + 32 + 0 + 0 + 4 + 0 + 0) if we counted in base 2 or binary.

Apparently, there are “10” kinds of people: those that understand binary and those that don’t.  This is Caroline’s second favourite joke.  If you don’t get it, send me an email.

Why do computer programmers get Halloween and Christmas mixed up?

Because to a programmer, Oct 31 is the same as Dec 25.

Octal “31” is equal to 25 in base 10.  (Oct 31 = Dec 25)

Apropos of absolutely nothing, here’s a lovely maths poem to accompany the two maths ‘jokes’:

A Dozen, a Gross and a Score 


Plus three times the square root of four, 


Divided by seven, 


Plus five times eleven, 


Equals nine squared and not one bit more.        

                                                            John Saxon

I admit now that there are a few “edges” among the 100 posts in my blog.  There are a couple that make me cringe when I read them again but there are a few that I am rather proud of and I still enjoy reading.

Bradman’s highest ever test score was 334.  I am not going to reach that unless I do live to be 105.

77. One Two Three........

I have a mental disorder.  You may have suspected it for some time but last Saturday, Caroline confirmed it for me and even went as far as to tell me what it is.  Apparently I suffer from arithmomania.

Unwilling to take her word for it, I looked it up.  It seems that she thinks that I have a “morbid compulsion to count”.  “Morbid” seems a bit strong though.  It means an abnormal and unhealthy interest in something.  
Counting isn’t unhealthy.  It can be fun.  But Caroline may be right.  Suddenly much of my life makes more sense than it did. 

When I was thirteen I found a game to play that made car journeys and even just walking down the street, much more interesting.

In Corton Road, around the corner from where we lived in Lowestoft, was a parked car.  Its registration number was ERH 1. One day, just after I had cycled past it on my way to the beach, I was overtaken by DEX 2.  From that moment I was on the lookout for a ‘3’ and then, once I had seen that, a ‘4’.  
These numbers had to be seen in the right order and it was extremely frustrating for example to see a 145 when I needed 144.

Five years later when I left school to go to Durham University, I was on 768.  University life was too distracting and I eventually stopped somewhere in the 790s.  Anyway, I had lost heart a year earlier when my father had got rid of his car with the plate WMJ 905.  Despite my pleading with him to hang on to it for a bit longer, he sold it.

I played cricket for more than 40 years and during many of those games I fielded at slip.  Between overs, I had to walk the 22 yards between the two sets of stumps and I eventually learnt to automatically lengthen my stride so that I covered those 22 yards in 22 paces.  Obviously, as I made those 22 paces I counted them in my head every time and that could have been as many as 65 times a game.

Did you know that in Tesco stores the wine, beers and spirits are kept as far from the door as is possible in order to make it difficult for shoplifters?  I was told this while having a conversation with a manager in the nearest Tesco to us which is so huge that I think that it possibly covers at least two different postcodes.  When I told him that it took me 243 steps to get to the non-alcoholic lager section, he looked at me with some surprise. 

“You count them?”

“Of course.”

I had to go to Guys Hospital a number of times last year.  I discovered that if I went from Winchmore Hill to London Bridge station via Highbury, I had to climb 128 steps on the stairways, whereas if I changed at Moorgate I only had to climb 97 and so that was the route I took even though it was longer.

Last December, Caroline and I were with friends in their house.  During the evening, their daughter Skyped them from America where she is studying at university.  I couldn’t avoid listening to the entire conversation.

“How are you?” her Dad asked.

“I’m like so stressed at the moment. Like everything’s happening like all at once.”

I listened in awe as she used the word “like” 32 times in an 8 minute 25 second conversation during which her father had spoken for almost half the time.  That number includes the one time that she used the word correctly when she said, “It’s yellow but not like a taxi.”

If you have read Amazingl“ posted on October last year you will know that for several weeks I was hooked on counting the number of times that the four judges on The X Factor used the word “amazing” in their descriptions of the acts.  I would record the show and then fast forward through the music and only listen to the comments.  It seemed very important at the time.

Caroline made her accusatory statement when I told her on Saturday evening that I had seen Jessica Ennis’s navel for the 500^th time since August 2009.  I first became aware of it on August 15^th 2009 at the World Athletics Championships held in Berlin.

I became interested when the cameraman made it the focus of attention for a few seconds by filling the entire television screen with her abdomen.  Earlier that day, I had seen a photograph of Jessica Ennis and her navel in The Times in a preview of the Games.  So that made it two in one day and counting!

The rules I set myself were strict.  I never sought sightings.  Looking for them on Google would not be not allowed.  The next day, even though she featured in many TV shots over several hours, I only allowed myself to count them all as one sighting but I made several more from photographs in the newspaper and on the BBC website.  Last Saturday morning the total stood at 499.

I was looking at the ‘Weekend’ section of The Times on Saturday - not the most obvious place for a navel seeker - when I turned to page 8 and there it was: a huge photograph of Ms Ennis and her navel accompanying an article on diet.

I had initially set myself a target of 1000 but that seems unlikely to be achieved now and so I am stopping at 500.

What shall I count next?

72. Let's make it more interesting

 

I no longer play any kind of sport.  I’m too old, too fat and neither of my legs works in the manner for which they were designed.  

I played my last ever game of rugby when I was 29; my last ever football match when I was 34 and the last time I played cricket was in 2004.  I could still play darts, pool, or skittles but none of them is a sport.  They are games.  

What is it about an activity that makes it a sport and not a game?

I used to think that a sport was something that couldn’t be participated in while the contestant was smoking or drinking alcohol.  I no longer think that works because I can remember several works-league, 20-over cricket matches I played in when I saw a fielder in the outfield having a smoke.

I was guilty once myself of drinking beer during a rugby match.  That so incensed the referee that he booked me.  The fact that it happened during a ten-minute hiatus while a seriously injured player was being treated and the beer was offered to me by a spectator did nothing to assuage his ire.

This is a better distinction, I think:  A sport is an activity for which a participant must change into different footwear.

That consigns darts, bridge, chess and possibly even golf into the “game” category where they belong.

The only time I have ever rung into a radio phone-in programme was while listening to an interview with someone who had recently become a Chess Grandmaster.  Throughout the discussion, chess was referred to as a “sport”. 

“If chess is a sport,” I said (I don’t know how many people were listening at 2:15 in the morning), “then so is doing crosswords, playing Monopoly or Scrabble or Poker.  Any activity that you can do while drinking pints of beer and smoking a pipe cannot be called a sport.  Chess is a game!”

You probably think that settled the matter and you would no doubt be amazed to learn that it did not.  They both told me that I was wrong.  Idiots!

Nowadays I only watch sport on television.  I won’t go to watch live sport.  If I were given tickets to attend a sporting event I would not go.  You see so much more on television.

Watching sport on TV allows you to realise just how things could be improved:

Athletics

Usain Bolt false started in the 100 metres of the World Championship recently and was disqualified.  The watching world was denied what they were all looking forward to with such excitement and anticipation. 

The solution:  Let them all run and afterwards, disqualify anyone who set off too early. Retrospective disqualification is what they do with drug tests, and it would work with false starts too.  Everyone benefits and the only sufferers would be the cheats.

Boxing

Why are there rounds?  When two rutting stags attack each other, they don’t pause every so often for a rest and a drink.  When drunks have a brawl outside a pub on a Friday night, they don’t stop every three minutes to discuss with their mates how things are going.  Boxing should stay as it is but make the contestants fight for up to 30 minutes without stopping.

Cricket

Things have changed considerably since the Laws of Cricket were written.  When the height of the wicket was decided the pitches were never covered and they were often soft and spongy.  The ball would rarely bounce over the top as it does now, when the soil is dry, rolled and compacted like concrete.

Make the stumps longer and so make the wicket higher.  And while we’re about it, to redress the balance between bat and ball (the advantage these days is far too much in the batter’s favour), add a fourth stump.

Football (Soccer)

Where to start?  0-0 draws.  Whatever the pundits say, 0-0 draws are not good.  If you are in the crowd watching the game live, a 0-0 draw can be very exciting but remember that I am writing this as a TV viewer.  

When I heard the Arsenal had beaten Chelsea 5-3, I was eager to see the recording of the game but had it ended 0-0, it wouldn’t have mattered how dramatic and exciting the analysts told me it had been, I’d have been up those stairs and asleep before it started.

Make the goals bigger.  150 years ago, the average goalkeeper was five inches shorter than his counterpart today.  To make up for this 7% increase in size, make the goals 7% bigger too.  Now, they are 8 yards wide and 8 feet high  (7.32m x 2.44m).  Increase them to 8 metres by 2.5 metres.  It’s a bit more than 7% but that should do it.

Formula 1 Motor Racing,

Watching Formula 1 motor racing on television is one of the most boring things there is.  In bordometry terms, it is only beaten by NASCAR racing. Some drivers may be marginally better than others, but the cars are the stars.  

Whoever has the best car will be in pole position. 

Whoever is in pole position will be first out of Bend 1 and,

Whoever is the first out of Bend 1 will win. 

Once the cars have negotiated the first bend, the race, from a spectator’s point of view, is usually over.

I’ve got the answer.  Instead of 24 cars lining up and then following each other round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round for two dull boring hours, how about putting them into two groups of 12?

Group A will race clockwise, and Group B will go anti-clockwise - two start/finish lines on opposite sides of the track.  Paint a white line down the middle of the track and tell them to drive on the left (just to annoy the Euro Zone members’ teams).  Then we’ll see how good their judgement is and their driving skills are when faced with oncoming traffic.  That could be really exciting.

Golf

Golf is a game of two distinct parts: golf proper and putting. 

When watching on television, the interest is in the tee shot and the approach to the green.  Once the ball is on the green, I go and make a cup of tea.  The hole is too small!  It is 4¼ inches in diameter and it is that size by accident because that was the size of the first ever golf-hole-cutting machine. 

(It’s a similar situation as with the standard track gauge of railway lines.  They are set at 4 feet 8½ inches because that’s the gauge standard set by George Stephenson on the Stockton and Darlington Railway when work began in 1822.  It’s a bit late now to widen it.)

The primordial (in golf time) golf-hole-cutting machine was made and in use before the rules of golf were established in 1891 and since then that size has been set in stone – except it isn’t of course.  Unlike railway tracks, the rules of golf could easily be amended to make the hole bigger and watching putting on television less dull.

If putting is so interesting, why don’t we have putting competitions on television?   Because nobody would watch it, that’s why!  How many viewers would watch "Celebrity Putting" or "Putting with the Stars"?

Rugby Union *

A total mess.  Probably broken beyond repair.  Collapsing scrums, forward passing, crooked feeds, constant offsides and referees who can literally decide the result of a game with one arbitrary whistle blast that no one can see the reason for except for him.  Introduce a referral system as they have in cricket with a maximum of three refused referrals a game.

“Excuse me, Sir,” the England captain may say to the referee.  “Sorry to bother you Sir but I believe that French chap with the beard might have been just a teeny-weeny bit in front of the ball just now when he received the pass that led to the try.  Could I refer it to the match official please, if it’s not too much bother of course?”

*  Thank goodness some people are paying attention. 

Since this was written more than 10 years ago, Rugby Union has now introduced a TMO (Television Match Official) for international games.  The TMO can only rule on exactly what the referee asks them but they can direct the referee’s attention to foul play by speaking to him through his earpiece.

Skiing

Watching slalom on telly can be quite fun because sometimes they fall over and may even break a leg or two, but downhill racing is boring.  Any activity against the clock runs a high risk of bordomness.

I would like to see the Downhill Race be just that – a race.  Let the competitors go off in groups of 8.  No clock and the winner and runner-up go through to the next round until we reach the final 8.  Just like in athletics.  Fantastic!

Squash

B O R I N G !  It must be the only sport where spectator interest wanes as the quality of the players increases.  The court is too small for top professional players.  Sadly, there is no answer.

Tennis

Why two serves?  It’s ridiculous.  It’s worse than golf.  Two different sports: tennis and serving.  Scrap the second serve now.  It’s analogous to someone being allowed a second penalty kick if the first one missed.  Ridiculous!

I’ve got some revolutionary ideas for chess, bridge, scrabble, backgammon, tiddlywinks, Hungry Hippo and Twister too, but as they are all games and not sports, I’ll keep them to myself – for now.

 

52. Discomfited?

Last Tuesday, I had to go to Hemel Hempstead to deliver a package.  I saw it was becoming unwrapped when I arrived and so I went into a newsagent to get some glue.  

As I entered, a woman was coming out. She turned to the shopkeeper and said, “Look after Mona for a couple of minutes, will you?  I’ve got to pop next door.”

She went out leaving the three of us in the shop - the shopkeeper, a fat little girl who was about eight years old and me. The lump of a girl stood staring at me, all the while stuffing her mouth with sweets. 

The shopkeeper went off to search for the glue I had asked for.  The girl continued to stare and stuff even more and more chocolate into her mouth.

“Hello,” I said. “Why aren’t you at school?”

She said nothing but put another sweet into her fat little face.  Then she wandered off about fifteen feet away to look at the display of comics.

The shopkeeper returned and handed me the glue.  “She’s been to the dentist,” he told me.

“Hmph,” I grumped.  “If she ate less chocolate she’d have better teeth and she wouldn’t be so fat.”

Her mother returned from next door.  “Come on Mona.  Let’s go.  Say goodbye to Dad.”

I have not often been embarrassed.  I’m probably too lacking in self-awareness to be embarrassed and also, when you’ve been in hospital for nearly four months and been subjected to virtually every indignity that it is possible to experience, very little else is really embarrassing.  

That’s why, to Caroline’s embarrassment, I sat in Miami airport for two hours after I had finally been discharged from hospital, waiting to catch the flight home to Cayman, wearing only my pyjamas.  Nobody said anything.  Maybe no one noticed.

There are two other instances, however, that I still remember clearly when I was embarrassed.  One happened fairly recently and the other happened about twenty-five years ago.

I had my liver transplant in October 2008.  I was very ill for about eighteen months and confined to bed for most of that time.  During that period of inactivity, having to eat only hospital food, I lost a lot of weight.  I dropped from 183 lbs (13 stone 1 lb) to 132 lbs (9 stone 6 lbs) in a year.  What do you think of that Weight Watchers?  It’s not a weight loss strategy that I recommend though.

Most of the weight I lost was muscle, due to the liver disease and atrophy.  Occasionally, I had been referred to as a “fatso” in the past but no more.  My legs and arms were stick thin and my bum had vanished.  I was not a pretty sight - but then I never was.  My legs were so weak and my arthritis so bad that they were not strong enough to support even my reduced weight.  My recuperation was slow and painful.

In September 2009, eleven months after the transplant and five months after a hip replacement, I had an experience that was probably my most embarrassing moment ever.

I would go to George Town hospital every fortnight for blood tests and the room where the blood was taken had two chairs so that patients could have blood taken from them, two at a time.  Just as I was having a piece of plaster put on my small puncture wound, a man aged about thirty, sitting in a wheelchair, was wheeled in by a lady whom I assume was his wife.

Three months earlier I had gone everywhere by wheelchair.  First, I had to be pushed and then, as my arms became stronger, I could wheel myself.  Then I progressed to a walking (Zimmer) frame and after that I hobbled around using a stick.

As I passed the man in the wheelchair I gave him my friendliest smile and said,

“You could be like this in two or three months time.” He smiled and shook his head.

“Oh, come on,” I said, “be positive.”

“That’s difficult,” said his wife and then she bent down to lift the sheet covering his lap to reveal that he was a double amputee.

“Oh,” I said.

One Sunday in July, about 25 years ago, Finchley Cricket Club held an intra club game.  We used to hold these games about once a season and they were always played very competitively.  No one wanted to fail against his clubmates. Usually the game would be something like Married versus Singles or Under 35s v Over 35s.

I was sometimes described dismissively, as a ‘leg side’ player.  That’s only one step up from being called a slogger.  Totally leg side players lack the finesse and skill to place the ball accurately on the off side and in the world of batsmanship they are second-class citizens.

Anybody seeing the field set for the first ball I received that day would have been in no doubt of the reason for that soubriquet.  There were eight fielders on the leg side and just one on the off side.

If you have no idea of the fielding positions in cricket, think about is as a clock face with me, the batsman, just below the centre.  The deep fielders were on the boundary at 3 minutes to the hour, 9 minutes to the hour, 14 minutes to the hour and 20 minutes to the hour while the four near to me on the leg side were in the gaps between the deep fielders. The solitary offside, slip fielder was behind me at 25 minutes past the hour.

There was a huge arc of 170° on the off side with absolutely no fielders. 

I glanced around and grinned. It was clear that they were taking the piss and the best way to deal with that was to bat properly and not rise to the provocation.

I looked at the fielders and saw eight of them chortling away on the leg side.  I wished a ‘good afternoon’ to the wicket keeper and to the slip fielder.

The first ball was slower through the air than I was expecting and it was a full length and on off stump.  Whatever field had been set and whatever the match being played, that ball had to be driven into the off side.  The fact that there was something like 7500 square yards of empty space on the off side removed all risk and any doubts that I might have had.  

I decided not to be greedy.  I would just push the ball into the vast acres of untenanted steppes and jog an easy two runs.

For the first, only and probably for the last time in his life, Mike Milton got one to turn. It flicked the edge of my bat and went waist high to Kus Bahradia, the slip fielder, who caught it nonchalantly and tossed it back to Mike.

Although I was embarrassed, there were about 100 other people who thought that it was one of the funniest things they had ever seen. 

Even I thought it was fairly funny.