True tales from cricket’s front line…
Buckinghamshire v Staffordshire
Milton Keynes
June 9-10, 1999
I’d been having a few problems. There were hassles at work and I was scoring too much. Binge scoring. Sometimes I’d do six games in a day, just drifting from one to another with my scorebook and Marlboros. It didn’t matter who was playing. I just needed the rush of a good score.
Things were getting out of hand, and then my wife told me to lay off it or she’d look elsewhere. But I couldn’t stop. The first thing that goes is trust, and I began lying to her, telling her I was in the pub, the bookies, the massage parlour, anywhere that wasn’t a cricket match.
This day I’d snuck off to Milton Keynes. Staffs v Bucks in a two-dayer. I’d told her I was off to Center Parcs. So I’m sitting there, book and a fag, scoring away. No danger.
Then the other scorer, a young bloke with a smart book and a well-leaded pencil, gets a call on his phone and leaves the box. Five minutes later I’m hearing giggles from behind the scorebox.
Ignore it, I say. Head down, good scoring. Another noise, more like a gasp this time. I can’t deal with this, so in the drinks break I go to investigate. And there she is, my wife, leg hitched, in a clinch with the other scorer!
Well, what you do? I lost it. The red mist took over. By the time I got back to the scorebox play had resumed and I’d missed SF Stanway’s fourth wicket. I felt sick.
The events of that nightmare day still haunt me. From that moment I resolved to get my life in order.
I’ve not missed a ball since.
