Wednesday, 14 April 2010
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
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
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
ECB ACO L1.
The course was eight evenings over a twelve week period (due to Christmas / New Year and inclement weather) and was held in one of the classrooms of a reasonably large public school.
There were about fifteen of us of varying ages, all from local cricket clubs and we were blessed with a couple of really experienced Umpires as our course tutors.
Obviously, most of us were current or ex-players who all thought we knew a fair amount about the Laws of the game, the course is not really designed for absolute beginners. However, it soon became apparent that the Laws are a perfect example of pareto analysis, whereby we spent 20% of our time on 80% of the Laws and 80% of our time on 20% of the Laws.
Contrary to popular belief, cricket is quite a simple game to understand and the laws are quite straightforward. However, although there are only 42 Laws, some of them get quite complicated. I suppose one of the key skills possessed by any competent Umpire is the ability to know which law to apply at any given juncture. There is probably at least one instance in every game where something 'unusual' requires a judgement call, this instance, which will probably not be repeated for at least another five seasons, requires the Umpire to have an encylopaedic knowledge of the laws in order to pass judgement. Furthermore, should he be a little hesitant in his decision making, he can rest assured that he will be 'assisted' in reaching his decision by one of the players, quite often the wicketkeeper is the first to offer his unsolicited 'advice'.
Anyway, I digress, I enjoyed the course immensely and passed the exam, so, fully armed with my copy of Tom Smith, I can enter the exciting world of cricket officialdom.
MtF.
There were about fifteen of us of varying ages, all from local cricket clubs and we were blessed with a couple of really experienced Umpires as our course tutors.
Obviously, most of us were current or ex-players who all thought we knew a fair amount about the Laws of the game, the course is not really designed for absolute beginners. However, it soon became apparent that the Laws are a perfect example of pareto analysis, whereby we spent 20% of our time on 80% of the Laws and 80% of our time on 20% of the Laws.
Contrary to popular belief, cricket is quite a simple game to understand and the laws are quite straightforward. However, although there are only 42 Laws, some of them get quite complicated. I suppose one of the key skills possessed by any competent Umpire is the ability to know which law to apply at any given juncture. There is probably at least one instance in every game where something 'unusual' requires a judgement call, this instance, which will probably not be repeated for at least another five seasons, requires the Umpire to have an encylopaedic knowledge of the laws in order to pass judgement. Furthermore, should he be a little hesitant in his decision making, he can rest assured that he will be 'assisted' in reaching his decision by one of the players, quite often the wicketkeeper is the first to offer his unsolicited 'advice'.
Anyway, I digress, I enjoyed the course immensely and passed the exam, so, fully armed with my copy of Tom Smith, I can enter the exciting world of cricket officialdom.
MtF.
Leather on willow.
Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!
Robert Browning.
I love this poem, it always reminds me of the thrill of anticipating the start of the
cricket season, such a quintessentially English thing.
I have not been well for the last couple of years, I'm getting a lot better but still have
really bad days now and again. I have now realised that my ill-health and my
advancing years have put paid to my regular cricketing days, so I decided to look into
some alternative ways of staying involved in the best game in the world.
I didn't really fancy umpiring at first, I've 'done my ten overs' on spring and summer
Saturdays and Sundays for as long as I can remember, I've never been that keen
though, I'd always grab the book in preference to a coat. I became ill in the spring of
2008 and ended up not playing at all that season for the first time since the summer
of 1973. Thirty four years ! Crikey. I decided to 'own' the scorebook for the
foreseeable future as I was not really fit enough to stand in the middle for six hours,
I'd done it before so it should have been a walk in the park.
Oh how wrong I was ! It turned out to be two seasons of abject misery. People
talk about umpiring being a thankless task, the army of men and women who
give up their time to score games of cricket all deserve a bloody medal. My
experiences alone deserve a seperate post, I will oblige at a later date.
So, this experience narrowed my options, I couldn't just turn up and watch, that
would be boring, I was already the Hon. Sec. of my village side and that wasn't
keeping me fully occupied so I was left with a stark choice. If I didn't want to end up
doing nothing, I had to umpire. Just putting on a white coat wouldn't suffice, I had to
do it properly, so I signed up for the ECB ACO Level One course.
More to Follow.
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