True tales from cricket’s front line…
Essex v Kent
County Championship
County Ground, Chelmsford
May 2-4, 1979
Back then, it was still all that winter of discontent stuff. Fair to say your average Essex man weren’t too happy with the government of the day.
All you ever heard round Chelmsford way was stuff like “Commie Callaghan!” and “Bolshy Bennites!” My favourite was “Stick your unions up your Khyber!”
Come May 4,1979, there was a few voices round the county ground chirping up about this Maggie T. Saying it was her time. Said she had a bit about her. Mind, I couldn’t see it myself.
I’d seen her the night before on TV with her hubby, and he was looking at her all soppy-eyed. I thought then, I thought, “You can’t fool me Dennis.” Yet here she was, fooling the whole country!
So May 4, Gen Election, and it’s anybody’s. As for them Essex lads, they were all over her like a spray job on a nicked Capri. Goochie said he was well up for a bit less discord and a bit more harmony.
Problem was, the boys hadn’t voted that morning, and the polling station closed at 6pm – times were hard in ‘79.
Now I’m not saying our batsmen chucked their wickets away that day. But at 5.15 when our Jamaican Norbert Phillip walked out, the boys were 26-7. Some of them was already changed and ready. The captain even had a blue rosette in his brown-flared suit.
I was still tidying my fall-of-wicket column when the next wicket fell. 26-8. But Norbert was still there, blocking away. Now I knew Norbert a bit, seen him round the bars and that, and I can tell you he couldn’t give a toss for politics.
Said he liked Reds, but the club down Baddow Road by the snooker hall, not some politics party.
He just blocked away. He just smiled and blocked and thought of Reds. I marked up the dots, and watched the Essex boys shuffle about in their whistles. Finally, at bang on six, Norbert swaggered off, three not out, with Essex nine down.
“Me off to Reds man!” he said.
That night, no one bought a round in the pavilion. Norbert went Reds.
Click here to read a tale of skullduggery at Milton Keynes in more Confessions Of A Statistician
