The Most Beautiful Game

 Last week, I published a long cricket blog. This week's, from issue #19 of the brilliant North Ferriby fanzine View from the Allotment End is much shorter. It is, however, a heartfelt love letter to my beloved Tynemouth CC -:

Regular readers will no doubt be used to skim-reading my small-minded, petty, smug opinions and observations about football at all levels and standards. Indeed, I think I’ve been in all bar 2 issues of VFTAE since its inception and made a pilgrimage from my Tyneside home to what I’m now supposed to call The Dransfield Stadium, in November 2019 to see an abandoned game against Swallownest, when the floodlights began to malfunction somewhat spectacularly while the Villagers held a comfortable 2-0 lead.

Bearing these facts in mind, it may surprise you that I did not make it to either Hillheads in August 2021 or Grounsell Park in August 2022 when Ferriby were drawn away to firstly Whitley Bay and then Heaton Stannington in the Extra and Preliminary Rounds of the FA Cup at clubs almost on my doorstep. Not only did I avowedly turn my back on the Maoist approach to glory, by eschewing the single step that started the 1,000-mile journey to Wembley, I didn’t even glance at a ball being kicked anywhere on those days. Not by Newcastle United. Not even by my beloved Percy Main Amateurs. You see, on both occasions, I was watching the sport and the side that are now dearer to my heart than any pampered, preening soccer stars: Tynemouth Cricket Club of the North East Premier League.

We lost both games, by 42 to Chester le Street in 2021 and by 16 runs via the Duckworth Lewis Method at Whitburn in 2022. Cricket enthusiasts and those of a meteorological mien may not be surprised at that last result, considering the whole of Tyneside was stricken by monsoon conditions that day. However, the point I have to make is that, given the choice between grassroots or professional cricket and grassroots or professional football, I would opt for the sound of leather on willow every single time. Preferably at the amateur level, of course. Now, there are many reasons for that, both aesthetic and ideological, but I’ll try to sum the differences up in a single pretentious phrase; cricket is poetry, while football is prose. I’m attempting to communicate the idea that cricket, when played properly (ie not The Hundred or a boozy T20 game) is beautiful, elusive and almost always a distinctly personal pleasure, whereas football is solid, down to earth and, except in rare moments of sublime aestheticism by Messi, Cruyff or Pat Heard, easy to comprehend.

I do love football but, at various times and in various ways over the years, it has come close to killing me, whether that be the severe battering I took at the hands of Merseyside Police in The Stanley Park next to Goodison before a 4-0 trouncing in February 1985, or by irate followers of several local sides in clubhouses before, during and after games in the past couple of decades, not to mention the bona drag popinjays of the socknocenti getting all riled up on social media. By contrast, cricket saved my life. I don’t mean to exaggerate the importance of Tynemouth CC to me, but when I mentally reached rock bottom in 2015 and felt like suicide was the only way out of the stagnant pond of despair I was drowning in, the comradeship and support of people I’m now very proud to call some of my closest friends and, quite remarkably, team mates as well, kept me from doing myself in.

Initially, emerging from the clutches of an utter emotional breakdown at the start of the 2015 season, I visited Preston Avenue, as much for the solitude as for the sport. Once there, I sat alone, spectating on the far side of the ground from the pavilion at Tynemouth, observing the complexities and intricacies of the game at close quarters. As a kid, I loved cricket, supporting Leicestershire, simply because Carlisle United’s captain Chris Balderstone played for them. I was delighted when they won the County Championship in 1975 when I was 11 and, inspired by events I’d followed mainly from the sports pages of The Daily Mirror, the next year I started playing for my local side, Felling, who I stuck with each summer until I went to university in 1983. Choosing to study in County Derry was perhaps not the wisest move for my burgeoning cricketing career, on account of the near incessant rain and scarcity of opposition in an area where the Gaelic Athletic Association (formed in 1884 by one Michael cusack, interestingly enough) held sway, but at least the utter indifference of local students and the attendant shrinkage of the pool of potential players ensured I got regular games for our woeful varsity team. Even back then, I realised availability was more important than ability at the lowest levels of the game. After graduation, I rarely played again for 30 years, though I always missed it. I wasn’t any use as a batter but having been beguiled by free-to-air BBC2 test match coverage of the Indian bowlers on their 1974 tour, I desperately wanted to be a spinner. I suppose I still do. In my mind’s eye, I can still recall the few wickets I bought in the dim and distant past, but I’d assumed those days were gone.

At the end of that first season watching Tynemouth, I headed to Eppleton in the wilds of County Durham on a glorious Sunday afternoon to see Tynemouth play in the Banks Cup final. I went by bus. It took almost 3 hours, door to door. Perhaps the best news that day was, as the clock reached 7.30 on a September evening, a car pulled up to offer me a lift. Now, as you’ll remember from my previous profile photos, dreadlocks down to my arse and a beard Topol would have been proud of meant I was difficult to miss. That said Vince Howe, Tynemouth’s Director of Cricket, didn’t need to offer me a lift, but I’m so glad he did. Despite the season ending that day, his friendly overtures gave me the confidence to take my place in front of the Pavilion with the regular gang from the start of 2016 and I’ve not moved on Saturdays from April to September since. Until this year at least…

For two years, I was simply a spectator at TCC until, having taken voluntary redundancy from my job as a lecturer, I ended up working behind the bar as a stopgap while I got fixed up with something else. I loved the atmosphere and the laughs, which is probably why, when a midweek social side was set up, I volunteered immediately. I still couldn’t bat and sometimes I couldn’t bowl properly, but I loved it. The feeling of taking 4-19 (all bowled) against Benwell & Walbottle will never be bettered, but just having a laugh and a few pints on a Thursday night with the lads made it all worthwhile. Of course, it couldn’t last and the effects of COVID and family commitments meant that because many of my fellow players were turning 30 and discovering parenthood or promotion at work for the first time, so they were almost forced by circumstances to give the game up. It meant the midweek team folded, but also that the Saturday 3s were consequently short of players. Cometh the hour; cometh the man…

By the end of the season, I  had played in 15 of Tynemouth CC’s third XI’s 21 games which, considering I turned 58 on 11 August, is pretty good. Unlike my average, which is just under 2, and that only on account of several not outs, but as any good batter will tell you, it’s all about the red inkers. On the positive side, I hit a boundary; my first one this millennium. I’d like to pretend it was a flashing square cut, but it wasn’t. A tentative prod to a rapid bowler whose deliveries I didn’t even see saw the ball hit the edge and fly over the slips. Rather better was my bowling; well, that wouldn’t be difficult, would it? My “mystery ball” against Civil Service, so called as it is a mystery to everyone how it doesn’t get clattered into the next county every time, where my victim took a huge swish, missed the thing and saw it hid middle stump halfway up. I’d like to pretend it was my googly, but it wasn’t. I did enjoy him skulking off and moaning that I was bowling too slow, mind.

Perhaps my finest moment this season was being asked to play for the first XI in a Friday T20 game away to Shotley Bridge: the home club of the great Paul Collingwood no less. Having lost a player to work commitments, it was either me or the skipper’s 72-year-old mother who would be press ganged into service. I got the nod as it was in coloured clothing, and I turned up in a pair of New Balance that matched our dark blue kit. Not that I had any kit of course. I ended up squeezed into some cast-offs that fitted me like a Cotton Traders gimp suit. However, I played; ensconced at short fine leg, I fielded the ball once and manage to remain relatively inconspicuous as we roared to a 10-wicket win in double quick time. Well, 9 wickets actually, as I’d taken the precaution of telling the umpires I’d retired out, just to be on the safe side. In all seriousness, this was one of my most precious sporting memories; the night I was a teammate of former Ireland and Durham player, Stuart Poynter.

As I’ve said, I still love football, but from mid-April to mid-September every single Saturday, weather permitting, I dedicate myself to cricket. It’s just a shame Ferriby managed to get knocked out of the FA Cup at the first hurdle, so I couldn’t see them play.