Not a rum innings

By London Leprechaun
July 15 2016

London Leprechaun descries the complications of trying to keep up with Middlesex goings on when real life, other sports and phone coverage conspire to make it difficult. if you've been in similar situations you'll sympathise. 

After a morning volunteering at Lords where I got to see the new Warner Stand open for seating for the Test, and mighty fine it looks; I spent the afternoon at work while multi tasking. In no particular order:

• Getting the office ready for a successor starting on Monday;
• Keeping an eye on England making a mess of playing spin;
• Keeping an eye on the GB Davis Cup team in rainy Serbia;
• And then listening to our T20 match with some less then inspiring Somerset commentators.

First problem was synchronised timing. I though it was 5.30 according to the computer and my phone.  When I tuned into the commentary we were already into the end of the second over and Somerset sounded like they had had a flyer to start. Not that the commentators were over excited about it.  Listening to the commentary did not exactly entice me away from concentrating on what I had to do for work, but I got the gist of the Somerset innings. In spite of their flying start they never got away completely; we mainly bowled well and fielded pretty well.  There was even one of those boundary relay catches when the fielder (don’t know who thanks to the commentary) threw the ball back to Moggie. I don’t remember seeing Middlesex do that successfully before. From a reasonable if cautious 70 odd of the first ten overs Somerset went into steep decline.  And when there were three wickets in the 17^th  over from TRJ, including a grand direct throw from James Fuller it sounded almost like some of our batting displays in recent years.  They ended up with one of those nothing totals that can still be tricky to chase.  And it was getting very gloomy (not just because it was getting late in the day.

Meanwhile England ended the day behind the eight ball and the tennis was going swimmingly (almost literally) in Belgrade.

Next problem was leaving the office where you can have a lot of tabs open on the system and hop between Lord’s, Taunton and Belgrade at will to trying to get information via the phone – dependent on a signal and a radio –depending on the BCC getting their act together.  The BCC website and digital display on R5 Extra said that the tennis was on Sports extra when play resumed there. Good I thought – I will listen to the tennis and follow the cricket by the BBC app as I knew the commentary would be dodgy around West London – it always is.  However when I actually tuned into the radio it sounded remarkably like a T20 match between Sussex and Hampshire. They kept saying they would go to the tennis when there was play there, which was a bit odd especially as while they were saying that, Kyle Edmund was strolling to victory according to the phone. Now I am only diverting attention to this oddity because my knowledge of the Middlesex innings is a little bit stop, start as it is based mainly on the BBC rolling coverage, patchy commentary and wicket alerts in between continuign to keep an eye on the tennis. And you can't do all that at once on a phone. But it seens the Middlesex innings went something like this: We got off to a flyer: the third over went for something like 17runs. Then Gubbins got a, glancing, blow on the helmet and was out next ball.  Not directly related and he was fine. Malan was out to an over ambitious shot and we were in danger of making a mess of it.

I went underground with Bailey and Morgan rebuilding/consolidating and I was contemplating headlines about Captain Morgan’s rum and Bailey’s liqueur, especially as there were no wicket alerts as I got network coverage off and on in the tube., or at the stations to be precise.  However as we came overground I saw Bailey was out, with Moggie following soon after.  But they had steadied things and upped the run rate to the point that we looked pretty secure and the commentary seemed to have diverted to a bizarre conversation about American pop stars I had never heard off, whether they were in Miami Vice and did they play at Glastonbury this year.  But in between that they did notice that it was getting very gloomy and when Franklin was bowled, I did wonder if were going to have an old style implosion and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. 

I then went into a tunnel, lost all signal and emerged to hear we had won.  It took a combination of the tail end of the commentary to gather that the ball after Franklin was out was a no ball for not having enough fielders in the circle.  See the cricinfo report for the Somerset explanation of how that came about.  Sound familiar? The free hit went for four and then Simmo hit the first ball of the final over for six to win the match.  Sound familiar? And there were ten Somerset no balls. Sound familiar?

Got home to a text from Kev complaining that the result was not close enough and why didn’t he wait until the last ball for the six. Kind of summed up the whole week of playing Somerset in various competitions this week.  And in spite of the vagaries of getting to listen to the match and the vagaries of the commentary it was still a pretty good evening’s work.  Maybe I even dare check T20 Quarter finals dates. Just in case . . .