I don’t like cricket, I love it (From The Northern Echo)

I don’t like cricket, I love it

9:03am Tuesday 7th July 2009 in

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ONE singer one song, David Walsh in Redcar draws attention to a Sunday Times feature on what’s perhaps unsurprisingly said to be the first pop music album devoted entirely to cricket.

Called The Duckworth Lewis Method – a grateful columnist might suppose it something for a rainy day – it’s by bishop’s son Neil Hannon, lead singer with Divine Comedy, and Thomas Walsh from the Irish band Pugwash.

“Barking mad and brilliant,”

says the Sunday Times, one track devoted to the ball, Lord’s 1993, which heralded the arrival of whippersnapper Warne – I took the crease to great applause And focused on me dinner I knew that I had little cause To fear their young leg spinner – Though it’s Gatting’s subsequent response which David supposes sublime: It was jiggery pokery, trickery jokery How did he open me up?

Robbery, muggery, Aussie skullduggery Out for a buggering duck.

While guessing that readers will have a much greater repertoire, David can call to mind just four other songs – “aside from all those national side and football club chants and dirges” – devoted to sport.

One’s Tour de France by “minimalist” German band Kraftwerk, all reckoned keen cyclists, a second the affectionately remembered Futba’ Crazy, Futba’ Mad by Robin Hall and Jimmy McGregor and the third They’re Orl Playing Dommies in the Bar by Alan Smethurst, the Singing Postman.

The fourth is Cricket Lovely Cricket by West Indian calypso singer Lord Beginner, and thereby hangs a tale.

EVEN by the familiarly forlorn standards of English sport, Thursday June 29 1950 may have been distinctly dismal.

It was the day that our fabled footballers lost 1-0 to the USA in the World Cup qualifiers – “probably the worst display ever by an English side,” the Echo concluded – that British No. 1 Tony Mottram went out to an ambidextrous Australian in the last 32 at Wimbledon and that the West Indies won the second test at Lord’s by 326 runs, their first victory in this country.

In three previous tours they’d fail to win a test, far less a series. In 1950, they were to win the remaining two.

England’s destroyers were spin twins Alf Valentine, 20, and 21-year-old Sonny Ramadhin (inexplicably identified as K T Ramadhin on the scorecard, because MCC considered that all cricketers should have initials.) “I never did find out what my new names were supposed to be,” he once recalled.

Neither had played first class cricket before being called into the touring squad. By the time of the tests they had four firstclass matches between them, Valentine’s two wickets having cost 95 apiece.

Ramadhin, who bowled off-breaks and leg-breaks with no discernible change of action – “mysterious,”

said the Echo, not unreasonably – claimed 11-152 from 115 overs.

The short-sighted Valentine, who’d taken the first eight wickets in the first test – five of them before lunch – bagged 7-128 in the second.

Calypsos by Lord Kitchener (an impostor, presumably) and Lord Beginner – otherwise Egbert Moore – were said to have been spontaneous.

Though the verses suggest as much, the Beardless Wonder – consulted – at once recalls the chorus: Those remarkable little pals of mine Ramadhin and Valentine Alf Valentine was 74 when he died in Orlanda, USA in 2004. Sonny Ramadhin is 80 and lives in Lancashire, the county for which Kyle Hogg, his grandson, now plays.

JOHN BRIGGS in Darlington adds a few more to sport’s greatest hits: Snooker Loopy reached No 6 in 1986 when Chas and Dave joined the Matchroom Mob, Pool Hall Richard by The Faces made No 8 in 1973 and Footie, Footie, Footie by The Badgers was a minor hit in 2003. High notes or low, readers – old pals’ act – are invited to suggest others.

Eddie marks 50th anniversary

EDDIE ROBERTS, among the column’s best and oldest friends, has marked 50 years’ utter dedication to schools football with a presentation from colleagues and a characteristic reticence.

In terms of personal publicity, he is distinctly old school. “I’d rather you didn’t put too much in,” he says and so, of course, it will be.

Martyn Coombs, secretary of Hambleton and Richmondshire Schools FA, is less circumspect. “I don’t think fifty years devotion to schools football will ever be achieved again,” he says.

“Teachers can’t give as much time to out-of-school sports as they used to, and you certainly can’t imagine someone going on all that time after retiring.

“Eddie is absolutely amazing.

We will never see his like again.”

Eddie, Welsh and proud of it – and no matter what it says on that bottle – is secretary of North Riding Schools FA and has held many others offices – from Duck Club to Conservative Club – in Richmond, the town where long he’s lived.

He was also chairman of Richmond Town FC, in which capacity 20 years ago he hosted a dinner with the late Alan Ball and, yet more memorably, Fr Michael McKenna – a Roman Catholic priest – as guests.

“I don’t know about saving souls,” said Eddie, “but I once heard him save a sportsman’s dinner where Emlyn Hughes was the main speaker.”

The only time he really get his name in the paper, however, was after a Boxing Day heart attack in 1993 when ambulancemen resusciated him three times before taking him to hospital.

“I owe my life to them,” he said.

He’d started his school football involvement at South Bank, on Teesside – “God’s own country, it was wonderful” – ended 15 or more years ago at Risedale school, Catterick.

Now he’s 75, lives happily to tell the tales, a lesson and a mentor to future generations.

“He still does everything, never eased up for a moment,” says Martyn Coombs. “There are thousands who chiefly owe their love of football to Eddie.”

AS we observed a couple of weeks back, the Maharajah Jam Singh of Nawangar – Ranji to his friends – was both the first Indian to play test cricket for England and a regular visitor to the village of Gilling East, near Helmsley.

Ever the innocent, we had assumed that it was purely because of his love of the North Yorkshire countryside and affection for the rector, his former tutor at Cambridge.

Cherchez la femme, as probably they say in those parts, the real attraction – insists cricket writer Simon Wilde – appears to have been Edith Borissow, the rector’s beautiful eldest daughter.

We’ve also had a letter from John Calvert in Hutton Rudby who provides more details of the two-day village match in 1907 in which Ranji’s team of all-stars helped raise more than £100 for a new church clock.

The side included England men like Charles Burgess Fry, Willie Quaife (who hit a century on his last appearance for Warwickshire, aged 56) and Archie MacLaren, who at 52 scored an undefeated 200 for the MCC.

Prince Ranji, at any rate, was invited officially to set the clock back in motion – and showed he had a sense of humour, too. “Fancy,” he said, “a Christian clock started by a heathen.”

NOTING Alan Adamthwaite’s forthcoming biography of amateur football legend Bob Hardisty, another recent column wondered about the blazer badge “ISSECC 1946: India, Burma, Malaya” found among the Bishop Auckland man’s belongings.

Both Tom Purvis in Sunderland and John Briggs in Darlington have been helpful.

ISSECC was a military medium for Inter Sports and Entertainment Command Control.

ISSECC men included Denis Compton, former world boxing champion Freddie Mills and Tommy Walker, the footballer for whom Hearts rejected a world record bid – £12,000 – from Arsenal in 1936.

Walker, who’s wanted to be a Church of Scotland minister, carried love for his fellow man onto the football field.

Never once booked in a long career with Hearts and Chelsea, he was known as The Gentleman. JRE Hardisty was a gentleman, too, of course.

...and finally

SATURDAY’S column listed three triple-century cricket scores – Bradman, Hutton, Sobers and Lara and wondered what was unique about them. None included a six.

Readers are today invited to suggest what is unusual – perhaps unique – about the UEFA Cup qualifier between Motherwell and Llanelli, the second leg of which will be played in Wales on Thursday.

Cross-border as always, the column returns on Saturday