The Black Art of Scoring.

I promised in a previous post that I would give you my low down on the subject of scoring, well, here it is and I apologise in advance for any implied profanities contained within my account of my experiences.

On any given Saturday or Sunday from April to September, thousands of normally well-adjusted human beings will give up a whole afternoon of their precious leisure time in order to keep the score for a collection of flannelled fools. In most instances, the only remuneration they receive is a cup of tea, a sandwich and a piece of cake. This is not, however, to demean the quality of the aforementioned sustenance, the finest cup of tea, the loveliest sandwich and the most superb piece of cake that I have ever consumed were in cricket pavilions within the northern home counties.

Whilst the Umpires and the tea makers are generally looked after quite well, post-match drinks are purchased for them etc. The poor old scorers are lucky if they get a cursory thankyou from the respective skippers. The job specification for any prospective scorer will require; the patience of Job, the mathematical acumen of Newton and the artistic skills of Michaelangelo.

So you get to sit there all afternoon, quite often with the book on your lap as there is no seperate scorebox and usually singlehanded so there is no-one to check up with. You are required to interpret signals from so-called umpires who don't know the laws or who have spent too much time watching Billy Bowden. Umpires who don't signal or don't wait for you to acknowledge and my own particular bete noir, the rabbits and ferrets in particular, who ask you what number they are batting ! When you tell them its nine, ten, Jack, they scowl at you as if its your fault they couldn't hit a cows arse with a banjo.

Then you get the clowns on the field who ask "Is that score right ? Only we scored three fours in that last over so we should be on 211 now. My other favourites are the bowlers who stand over your shoulder at the tea interval as you are totting up and tell you that "the second ball of my fifth over was four byes not four wides" well tough, it's staying as four wides. In this instance any 'missing' unallocated runs get given to these bowlers.

I've never even come close to wanting to perpetrate violence whilst on the field of play, I've come close to it on a number of occasions when ensconced behind a scorer's desk. One particular example springs to mind, we were playing a Sunday friendly game against, let's call them Old Septictankians, and 14 year old Tarquin had bowled a few overs in my team's innings. Whilst we were batting, Tarquin walked over to where I sat, in the middle of scoring, and actually took the book from under my elbow to show his Dad his bowling figures ! Fortunately his Dad clipped him round the ear for his troubles, the bloody cheek of it !

If anyone really wants to know how to score, go and sit next to Lynda who scores for a small Hertfordshire town's 2nd XI that her husband plays for. Lynda is better than the late, great, Bill Frindall IMHO.

The best is left for last however, when you play an away game and bat first, if there is no scorebox and you have a partner from the oppo. you become INVISIBLE !!! The opposition will sit around gaily slagging off your team mates and make ribald comments about their