Home videos from Hell (well, Chelmsford)

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Pro40: Essex v Yorkshire, Chelmsford – 16th July

Televised games offer a great opportunity for the unsung county pro to get some recognition. As nothing boosts your standing amongst family and friends, as well as the nations cricket fans, quite like being praised on the goggle-box.

The great thing about Sky’s coverage of course, is that they employ so many commentators that couldn’t give a rat’s arse about county cricket. Even if you’ve spent the entire season playing like your feet are stapled together and last time at the wicket hit yourself in the face with your own bat, don’t worry, they’ll never know. So a couple of pretty looking cover drives later, you can have Bob Willis demanding to know why you’re not in England’s 30-man development squad. If you’re lucky, Mike Atherton might glance up from playing Internet poker on his blackberry long enough to join in too.

It’s that easy to become an overnight county cricket sensation. Just ask Graham Napier.

But televised games also bring a less welcome opportunity. The opportunity to cock things up for the nations amusement. With the additional chance that a piss taking mate or malevolent nephew has captured it all on sky plus, ready to be edited into a ‘You’ve Been Framed’ style clip compilation that will be a star turn during your best man’s speech. When people talk about the extra pressure of a televised game, that’s what they mean.

Some players cope with that better than others. That’s one of the reasons Simon Guy featured in our televised Twenty/20 games. He could walk out to the middle with a line of toilet paper trailing from the back of his trousers and it wouldn’t phase him. Even if it knocked a bail off before he faced a ball.

That’s one of Simon’s great strengths – he’s missing the gene that causes embarrassment. For instance, there’s a video doing the rounds at the moment of last year’s end of season party. There he is, underpants on his head, bestriding the Leeds Hilton’s restaurant carvery, declaring war on France with a bow and arrow he’d swiped from the earlier fancy dress party. If you want to see it, you know who to ask. Simon. He’s got it stored on his portable DVD player.

Leeds Hilton’s carvery: Was subsequently hosed down.

There’d be plenty of footage for future embarrassment from this match too, as it made our performance at the same ground eleven days earlier look professional in comparison. With the coach speaking a few home truths afterwards to the media about our batting in particular. Not quite the same as DoubleM letting rip with the full Alex Ferguson hairdryer treatment, but that would be fairly pointless with a team containing Adam Lyth and Rana’n’Henry.

But something had to be said about arguably our worst one day batting performance of the season. All out for 157 is bad enough, but when 90 of those runs come from your two senior seam bowlers it’s time to hold your hand up. What makes it worse is we struggled against a bowling attack that, Danish Kaneria apart, is less of a ‘who’s who’ than a ‘who the hell are they’?

With such a small total to defend, Yorkshire barely had time for another of their players to injure themselves. But somehow we managed it anyway, with Darren Gough getting through all of 2 deliveries before coming to a grinding halt. Still, with cricket going the way it is, it won’t be long before that’s the maximum bowling allocation allowed in one-day games.

Even when he limped back on to the field later in the evening, it was only to oversee the last rights as Essex cruised past our total with seven overs to spare. The only real consolation being that now he’s been given a chance at last, Wainwright has shown what a canny one-day player he is. He should stay in the side for the rest of the competition now and probably play a fair few of the championship games too.

As for me, I’m going to have to make another offering at the shrine to Len Hutton I have in my potting shed. If he can’t help out or batting line-up, no one can

Si’thee later,

Len

~ by lentheyorkshirekitman on 17 July, 2008.