“I love it when a plan comes together.” So said the third most famous Hannibal.
This well-worn catchphrase sprang to mind last
week. I realised that I could combine a
visit to the second day of the Ashes Test at Old Trafford with a trip to
Headingley the following day to report for Deep
Extra Cover on the second day of the vital Championship match between
Yorkshire and my own county of Warwickshire.
I seem to recall that, for the A Team’s Hannibal Smith, the
plan always did come together, despite a few scary moments. And so it proved for me. Mind you, I don’t suppose that the
cigar-chomping Hannibal ever had to queue for a tram outside Old Trafford for
an hour with a mob of noisy drunken supporters with bursting bladders and loud
voices. Nor will he have experienced the joys of trains that don’t quite
connect, followed by signal failures so that a 45 mile journey from Old
Trafford to Colne took six hours.
Never mind. There
were some good bits too, both at the cricket and elsewhere. Here are the many highs and a few lows from
my two day trip:
1. HIGH - Michael
Clarke’s innings brought back memories of Greg Chappell’s ruthless elegance. Maybe he and Darren Lehmann are managing,
more by chance than careful planning, to create a half-decent team. Certainly, their pace attack of Siddle,
Harris, Starc and Watson were able to maintain a challenging line and length
throughout the second day.
2. LOW – at
Old Trafford I realised just how out of tune I am with the norms of modern Test
Match crowd behaviour. We sat with a
walkway right in front of us, so no problems of leg-room. But it soon became obvious that these days,
the average spectator has a sitting time of around ten minutes before feeling
compelled to stand up and walk across our eye-line to buy beer, visit the
toilet or create a beer snake. Oh well, I’m getting old and I guess it’s case
of autres temps, autres mouers as
they say at the Statham End.
3. HIGH - After
the horrors of returning from Old Trafford by public transport, it was a
delight to drive across the moors to Headingley in my good friend Keith’s Aston
Martin DB9 Volante with the top down on a sunny morning. Many years ago, Keith and I worked together
as very junior HR and training people in Birmingham. Now Keith drives the said Aston Martin and I
have a Skoda Fabia. Now where was it
that I went wrong?
4. LOW - if
you are looking for somewhere to spend your Friday night, I can personally
recommend that you avoid the area around Blackburn railway station. If last Friday is anything to go by, you will
have the opportunity to enjoy the company of a large number of big, aggressive,
hairy, drunken Lancastrians. And the men
are pretty scary too.
5. HIGH - at
Headingley, there were parallels with the Test match in that Yorkshire’s pace
bowling attack of Sidebottom, Brooks, Plunkett and Patterson bowled the same
unrelenting line and length as their Australian counterparts. It has to be said that Warwickshire came back
later in the game and were, like the Australians, unlucky that the rain ruined
their victory hopes.
6. HIGH - I
can’t say that the sandwiches delivered to the Headingley press box excited my
taste buds. So at lunchtime, we followed
in the footsteps of the legendary John Arlott and took a brief walk to Bretts
Fish Restaurant to sample their equally legendary fish and chips. In homage to Mr. Arlott, we felt obliged also
to sample their wine list. OK, I admit
that we missed the first twenty minutes of the afternoon session but we made
the right decision with no need for a review.
7. HIGH - it
was good to see Laurie Evans of Warwickshire batting so confidently for his
88. His opportunities have been limited
since he joined the Bears from Surrey; and this season, when his place seemed
assured, he suffered a broken hand early in the season. Now, despite having dislocated a finger
dropping a key catch in Warwickshire’s final T20 Group match against Somerset,
he was in fluent form.
8. LOW – my friend Keith
(yes, the one with the Aston Martin) is the least pretentious of men but he did
manage, accidentally, to achieve the ultimate in one-up-manship. On our journey to Headingley, he embarked
upon a long anecdote about cars, in the course of which he dropped in the
killer line, “when I had my first Ferrari.”
I could have tried to counter this with something like “when I was on my
first date with Sophia Loren” but he knows me too well.
9. HIGH –
it’s a bonus when you discover pleasures in the most unlikely places. So it was when, within a cricket ball’s throw
or two from Headingley we discovered
Meanwood Park and a memorial to Laurence Oates, he of the famous last words, “I
am just going outside and may be some time.”
Meanwood was the Oates family
seat and the memorial was put in place in 2012 on the centenary of the
ill-fated Scott expedition.
10. HIGH
– I had never even
heard of a Panopticon before I was introduced, again on the return journey from
Headingley, to Pendle’s Atom Panopticon, a piece of art that stands above the
village of Wycoller. The original
Panopticon was apparently designed by the 18th century philosopher Jeremy
Bentham as a kind of roundhouse that would enable guards to watch inmates of
prisons, asylums, hospitals or other institutions. Or, as he so charmingly put it, “a mill for
grinding rogues honest”. The Pendle
version has the less ambitious aim of providing some visual stimulation to
visitors.
There you have it, many
more highs than lows. Yes, Hannibal, I
do love it when a plan comes together.
