The Great Indoors

I see The Ashes is starting; I'd best get a cricket post up.... here's something about indoor 6-a-side stuff at South North, involving Tynemouth, Newcastle & Stocksfield -:

I’ve not been well all autumn you realise. Like a tragic pre Raphaelite heroine, I caught a chill at my mother’s graveside during her funeral in late September and haven’t been myself since. Frankly, my head and upper respiratory system have felt like a large, fraying, overstuffed bag of malign bacteria for a couple of months now. Frontal headache, increased temperature, persistent clammy perspiration, vertiginous pussy conjunctivitis, pustular complexion, atrophied ear wax leading to dizziness, ringing and deafness, viscous lakes of belligerent mucus and, worst of all, a seal bark meets machine gun dry cough. It hasn’t been fun to say the least.

Of course my malaise could have another provenance; the disappearance of cricket from my life on September 17^th when rain curtailed Hebburn 2nds v Stobswood 2nds with the home side labouring on 84/6 being the most likely cause. The lack of cricket is a painful blow to recover from. Indeed, the only news that has stirred me from my emotional sick bed of late was tidings of Josh Phillippe’s 82 for Western Australia versus England in a tour warm-up game. By all accounts it was a sparkling knock, warmly recognised and richly applauded by all corners of the NEPL savvy social media milieu.  He may be an Aussie, but he’s our Aussie, if you see what I’m saying.

However, I didn’t get to see that game in the flesh and, whatever happens during The Ashes, which I’ll be content to follow on radio than television as I refuse to have Sky in the house, I clearly won’t be present at any of the forthcoming test matches either. Also, let’s face it; while The Ashes are alright, they aren’t the NEPL are they? However, there was a fecund bloom to be found in the barren, arid fields of winter. Courtesy of a welcome DM on Twitter by my pal Martin Pollard, I was alerted to the second qualifying round of Northumberland Cricket Indoor 6-a-side tournament, that feeds into a national competition, where the finals are played at Lords, no less. The ECB are great; they don’t care how counties get their winners, as long as there are some. Northumberland winners meet Durham winners and then move on to Northern championships and thence the grand finals at Lords.  It isn’t exhaustively complex, but clubs need to find 6 players prepared to have a go on Sunday afternoons.

Now when it comes to the indoor game, Polly is a bit of a specialist or even theorist and his Brearleyesque temperament and deep, philosophical thinking about the game in general, and this arcane cultivar in particular, made him ideal captaincy material.  The Douglas Jardine of the sports hall, as nobody has ever called him.  He selected a squad of Sam Dinning, Chris Fairley, Finn Longberg, Sam Robson, Andrew Smith and himself. However, Finn’s recuperation from a season-ending appendectomy wasn’t complete, so he dropped out, with young Will Perry stepping up. The location was the South North indoor centre, a place I’d only visited previously for the 2015 Beer Festival, when Laura, Gary, Ginger Dave and me were more concerned with forcing gallons of drink and freebie curry down our necks, while the home side demolished Boldon in a Friday evening 20/20 group game; 213/2 v 41 all out or thereabouts.  In Tynemouth’s group, the opponents were Stocksfield and Newcastle, for a round robin format. The date was Sunday November 18^th at 4pm, with the games being 12 overs a side.

When I arrived, I could see Tynemouth were taking this seriously, as Polly and Smudger  were already warming up, though finding a way in to watch them was a difficult task. Eventually, after trying a dozen locked doors, I affected ingress at the same time as the Stocksfield lads arrived. There was some semi-serious pondering among those present whether Newcastle were on the late shift as Josh Phillippe’s plane had been delayed…

Tynemouth batted first and accumulated 142 runs from 12 overs, with Sam Dinning and Smudger leading the way. As the innings progressed, I picked up the scoring system and rules in general, while I’ll not bore you with here, by concentrating on the comments of the NEPL’s number one James Ellroy lookalike umpire Eddy Collins, who was standing. The other umpire was sat on a comfy chair at square leg, outside the netting, as all the overs are bowled from one end. The indoor game seems to have been considerably more codified than my previous exposure to in PE lessons 40 years back. Not that these modifications have brought the crowds in; at the start of proceedings there were literally two men and a dog watching, and that was only once Gordon Halliday and his Labrador showed up. Eventually Vince arrived to double the Tynemouth Balcony Massive, roaring the lads on to a 60 run victory.

As our game ended, it was clear Newcastle had arrived and were ready to take on Stocksfield. At this point, most of the Tynemouth team made a beeline for Costa, while Vince and I headed to The County for a pair of Rivet Catchers and a giggle at West Ham’s capitulation in Moyes’s first game. Of course, it wouldn’t be Tynemouth Cricket Club if there wasn’t a minor panic in the wings; Will Perry had gone home, believing there was only 1 game to be played, so an emergency call went out to The Hallams to save the day. Cometh the hour, cometh the man; Graeme, who’d probably imagined he’d a nice afternoon on the sofa watching Blue Planet ahead of him, rather than top scoring in an innings of 99/5 in a winner takes all contest against Newcastle, captained by Oli McGee, who’d squeezed past Stocksfield. Young Patrick now swelled the Tynemouth Massive to 3. Sadly, we were to be disappointed as Newcastle reached 100/5 with 3 balls to go.

However, any sadness at our elimination was deflected when we discovered that Newcastle’s wicketkeeper Alan Brown wasn’t eligible. As a result, Tynemouth were reinstated and go forward into the regional finals on December 10^th against heat 1 winners Benwell Hill and the side to emerge from up and coming heat 3 involving Tynedale, Backworth and Blagdon, again at South North. I can’t wait.