“Tour Diary: Tennis Balls in the Park”

I wake up. It’s 8am. I go back to sleep.

I wake up. James is still asleep. I look at my watch. “Dude, we’ve got five minutes to make breakfast!”

“Oh… better get up then… what happened to my alarm?” Followed by more cobbing and grumbling about his phone being far too quiet.

Mr. Howarth and Mr. Smith strut their stuff on the Courtlands Hotel catwalk.

In the dining hall cellar, I check 9.29 isn’t too late for the 9.30 shut-off. “No that’s fine.” Surprisingly unsarcastic from our waitress.

I notice Gary has arrived, bright and early, and even seems to have got a free breakfast. I utter a greeting, but still haven’t woken up yet.

Forty minutes later, I’ve choked down some bread, coffee and eggs, and go out for a fag. Light drizzle. Haven’t even thought about the weather up till now.

Steve’s hamstring injury hasn’t shown much improvement, despite eight litres of muscle relaxant in the last twelve hours, so he deserts us and heads home.

Steve. On the right. Alright?

Today’s pre-match warm-up is a round of crazy golf, or, as it would turn out, ‘adventure golf’: rope bridges across fake water; realistic-looking rocks with life-size plastic pirates clambering all over them. It’s about a 20 minute walk, the other side of the pier, or a 20 minute drive. We drive. There, it’s also raining lightly, the golf is £4.50, and there aren’t many on the course yet….

We check the amusement arcade. A couple of games of Air Hockey. Dave, today’s skipper, beats John; I help Zac defeat sister Tash with lack of assistance from Dave. Then the real game begins: crane operated grabbers to pick up cuddly toys. Sometime after James has changed his second £20, we figure the hydraulic fingers aren’t actually up to the job of even picking up the poodles or Chihuahuas or whatever they’re supposed to be, so we move on to Bob the Builder who has a much more substantial winch. Soon Bob is on his way to freedom – only to catch his ankle on the exit wall, and fall back into the mire. But another Bob does make it… and is quickly recruited for employment by Dave the Builder.

D. Shorten (right) sticks his arm up Bob’s arse, much to J. Hoskin’s amusement.

Outside, the weather has failed to deteriorate sufficiently to prevent the golf. There’s some Wild West thing with a shotgun to shoot at targets and make things happen, with the advantage of shelter for the player and a seat for the non-player. Dave cheats, clambering into enemy territory, before getting shot by a water pistol disguised as a cannon.

I’m in the second group on the course, with Ant, Zac and Mike. The first hole has a right angle bend and seems to require a precise calculation of angles. Zac tees off and gets a hole in one. In the end he finishes two shots behind us pros – not bad for an eight year old at a game dubbed (on the till receipt) as ‘ADULT GOLF’, especially considering he beats most of the numpties (Ian, Thorn, Nick, etc.) from the third group who even by the 18^th hole still think they’re on the driving range. I’m trying to take photos – I think they’re trying to take me out. Of our group, Ant has the only other and somewhat flukier hole-in-one on the 15^th, and is marginally best with a round of 50. Martin wins overall by five shots with an impressive par 44, Geoff taking the silver.

A sailor (background) takes a shit on T. Smith as he hits a 3-iron.

Meanwhile the message arrives that today’s proper cricket is off. Gary is also now heading home. Ironically, the rain now seems willing to hold off, so some improper cricket with a tennis ball in the park is planned. Dave’s insistence on us all taking a swim in the sea hasn’t met with much enthusiasm (possibly not even from himself), so he takes revenge by denying us lunch until after the game. Ant, Jude & family take lunch anyway.

Ball games aren’t allowed on the strip of green behind the hotel, so we don our club hats, shirts and boots, and head off on foot to a nearby park. I’m carrying my shirt and boots to change into; after some distance I realize I’ve picked up whites instead of a shirt. Eventually we find the park in a nearby town. A six-a-side format is devised whereby three pairs of bats take four overs each, with the opposition players bowling two overs each in rotation. Players from the batting team must also field (and make an effort). Runs can only be scored if the ball is hit in front of square, and at least one run must be attempted. A wicket costs five runs, as does a dropped catch (or lack of attempt) by a fielder from the batting side. A no-ball is followed by a free hit. The stumps at the bowler’s end are replaced by a jumper, so run-outs can only be taken at the keepers end, where a stick acts as both bails.

Dave and I are elected captains, and we pick teams is schoolyard fashion. With Dave, the opposition are Martin, Thorn, James, Matt and Geoff. On my side are Ian, John, Mike and Nick. Dan has arrived but is miles away the other side of the pier, where we were playing golf, so he’ll join our team later. There is no scorer; we’ll have to keep track of it in our collective heads.

“Fuckin’ hell, Geoff – has it really come to this…?”

Dave wins the toss and elects to bat. Thorn and Matt open and soon the score is below zero, though I have to give the bail extra help for the bowled and the stumping. Another stumping attempt leads to some dispute, not on who owns the line, but where it actually is. As Geoff and James take over, a steady supply of wickets continues keeps the run rate just below zero, but in the end they get the hang of it and push the score into positive double figures. Dave and Martin complete the innings, Ant arriving with kids in tow just in time to bowl the last two overs. Another line-call dispute erupts; this time on whether the whole of the path counts as the boundary rope at long on. Apparently it does, so Martin hits the only six of the game.

A perfectly gettable 34 required.

I open with Ian, and after four balls we are on -19… a couple of catches, a stumping, and a run-out going for a second – four wickets in four balls. Despite my attempts at extreme backing up from the completely safe end, we continue to throw our wickets away and recover only slightly to -12. By this time a crowd has amassed on the cover boundary. I look over and find they are all sat with their backs to us, looking at something more interesting in the next field, or the lake, or something. Nick and Zac take over. Despite the bat weighing more than him, Zac manages to smear a healthy supply of singles and the pair finish with the score just short of zero. Finally, John and Mike need nearly 40 in four overs. They manage to find the boundary quite a few times and mostly avoid getting out, but 24 off the last over seems unlikely….

Four off the first ball… another boundary… an all-ran six from the last ball!

But it’s not enough, we lose by 15 runs.

We trek back to the hotel. James, Ian, Thorn and I have no particular need to go to the hotel – I’ve managed to lumber most of what I was carrying on Geoff and Thorn – so look for a pub for late lunch. We settle on one which doesn’t serve food on a Sunday – today being a Sunday – but it does serve Stowford Press. The others arrive in the area; James has finished his drink so he joins them as they select the Slug and Lettuce. It’s a fake pub but it does do food.

The Red Arrows did their stuff all weekend in Eastbourne.

After a brief search we also find it. Matt is drinking coke because they don’t sell any beer which isn’t lager or Guinness, which is a plausible excuse. Ian is told to take his ‘baseball’ cap off, has a sulky cob, so he and Thorn leave their pints and get sandwiches from Subway. James continues to wear his cricket cap. I order food and am told it’ll be quite a wait. We’re all still waiting when Ian and Thorn return, singing the praises of Subway. Eventually a meal arrives and we think its Dave’s; he’s busy on the phone to the AA trying to organize a lift from the pub to his car. But no, he didn’t order the same as I did, and I’m rewarded for avoiding the rush and ordering after everyone else. When I come back in after a cigarette after, the rest of the meals have finally started to arrive. Dave’s has just made it before the AA; he leaves £20 on the table and bids us farewell. Meanwhile it seems Dan has also headed back after a 450 mile round trip to take Joe for a swim in the sea – in an (almost) complete reversal of normality, Joe is the only one to have obeyed captain’s orders today. Another challenger for tomorrow’s captaincy emerges in John. It is to be decided by seven rounds of tic-tac-toe. I win in four straight rounds. Ian, Thorn and I are ready to move on to a pub, perhaps one showing the Chelsea v Liverpool game. Matt has researched a CAMRA pub a short walk away; he and John are almost ready.

“We do like a walk beside the seaside, oh we do….”

We incline 1,700ft along a mountain pass through the beautiful Sussex countryside – on the one side, eighteenth century Ideal Home homes; the other, run-down flats. On arrival at base camp, we rejuvenate ourselves with Harvey’s and Stowford, and settle down to watch the second half: Liverpool are 1-0 up.

James is first to arrive of the others, and is hysterical. Having been given Dave’s £20 to gamble at double-or-nothing on behalf of the club and lost two £5 bets on the toss of a coin with Nick, he’s gone to the bookies with the remaining £10, won on a horse and a dog, and finally put £10 at 7-1 on Chelsea winning. As he walks in Chelsea score a penalty and it looks like this one might be coming in as well. And he got a taxi up and beat the others. The betting slip is given to the club, which could gain another £80 if Chelsea win. Meanwhile James has also made fifty quid and Nick is up a tenner too.

The game ends in a draw.

Paul Newman wouldn’t stand a chance against The MAD.

The pub has a pool table, and soon a game of Killer Pool is established. With a life to be gained for potting the black, Martin takes an early lead. But Mike doesn’t miss many and after a 30 move endgame takes the drinks money. The second game sees Ian storming ahead and ultimately winning with five lives still left – as if he doesn’t get enough lives batting anyway. We think about a third game.…

It’s 8pm. There are some fireworks later to celebrate the end of the air show; James and Thorn want to call in at the hotel to change into their evening wear, so take a taxi there. The rest of us are quite happy to try another pub ‘on the way back’ (round the corner). Then, round another corner past ‘Pizza Stop’, another pub, The Lamb, which has a well inside it. We think about pizza. Pizza Stop doesn’t do Scotch Bonnet pizzas, but their ‘Jalapeño Stop’ is probably the best in the world so we insist Ian has it. John passes him a slice, which he promptly drops it on the floor, butter side down.

We stroll down the hill as the fireworks begin, to general grumbling that not quite enough pizza was ordered. Ian invents a new animal for the club mascot: the giranha. Apparently, one can ‘have a giranha’ like one can ‘have a giraffe.’ As the fireworks finish, we’re passing the Wetherspoon’s pub back in town, so we drop in to discuss what a giranha is, what it looks like, what colour it is, etc. After a round of beers, Nick suggests a round of Jägermeisters. It sounds like a German beer to me, all good. It turns out to be an aniseed spirit. James and Thorn re-join us. It’s decided that any ‘fineable’ comment should be rewarded with a Jägermeister. We drink the bar dry of it and switch to Sambuca, pink for those who dropped catches, and strong rum. As captain for tomorrow, I’m slightly worried by this excessive drinking the night before a game, but the weather forecast was for rain anyway.

“Thish is my besht friend. I fackin’ love him.”

Back at the ranch, I tackle the kettle for the first time on a cricket tour since that fateful incident of 2004. James uses his video-camera-phone to interview me about kettle safety; I suggest that the jaws of a kettle could be like the jaws of a giranha – neck like a giraffe, teeth like a piranha… venomous spit…

We catch a weather forecast. A belt of dry weather will be passing over tomorrow. Game on. But what state will this group of piss heads formerly known as a cricket team be in?

‘Judge Mental’