Spirit On The Water (19 page)

It was now that Jeremy played his trump card. He approached Chris and said that as our ‘strike bowler’ had bowled ten overs, it was only fair that some of their bowlers were allowed more than six overs. Chris had little option but to concede. Back came the opening bowlers, including the former Somerset colt bowler who had been difficult to get away in his first spell.

Crawford was out, trying to force the pace, and James took his place. He was soon out in a similar fashion. Wickets were falling but more importantly, the run rate had slowed. 25 runs were needed off two overs and Chris was facing the ex-Somerset colt. Despite seeing the ball like the proverbial melon, Chris played and missed at several deliveries before being bowled trying to hit the ball somewhere in the direction of Mallorca. He had scored 95, an Ash Tree record that is likely to stand forever.

Tony, from Somerset himself and who probably went to school with the bowler’s grandfather, came out to face. Still 25 needed off one and a bit overs so victory was in the bag for Ibiza. Surely, a gentle one to let Tony get off the mark? No, a fierce beamer that Tony fended off with his glove. Two days later he was still going up to complete strangers in the street and showing them the bruise!
Our innings eventually finished at 162 for 6, 21 runs short of the target. Defeat with honour.

Chris had hit nine sixes and seven fours. He had missed his century by 5 runs but he was genuinely much more disappointed that we had lost. The Ibizan team went into a huddle at the end of the game, pleasure mixed with relief. We had a few beers after the match and then it was back to Santa Eulalia in the mini-buses.

That evening, half the touring party opted for tapas and the Champions League Final and the other half for tapas and not the Champions League Final. The Special One duly did the business for Inter Milan and then immediately moved onto his next challenge at Real Madrid. If Mourinho really wants to test himself, why doesn’t he try managing England? Inter Milan were so impressed with the job that Rafael Benitez had done at Liverpool that, a week after he ‘left by mutual consent’, they offered him
£
2.5 million a year to be their new manager. Benitez’s disappointment at leaving Liverpool was eased by being given a
£
4 million severance pay off. He lasted six months at Inter Milan before being sacked and getting another
£
2.5 million in compensation. Football is a funny old game isn’t it?

Our evening ended, perhaps appropriately, in a bar called the Mirage where a band was just starting their encore of
Wild Thing
. Paul was tempted to enter the dance floor but resisted. Tony (“I can resist everything except temptation”) was tempted and succumbed immediately. Again, I can do no better than to quote Crawford’s tour report: “Tony prowled the dance floor with a glint in his eye that was part child in a sweet shop and part lion stalking a herd of wildebeest.”

Sunday was the day after the night before and we had a gentle stroll along the sea front, reflecting on what might have been in the match against Ibiza and what never was going to be in the Mirage bar. It was soon time for lunch. Mark, using his local knowledge,
booked us into The Gallery restaurant in Santa Eulalia. The food was brilliant and great value at 15 euro for a three-course meal. Sea bass and Yorkshire pudding made a surprisingly tasty combination for those that tried it.

The touring party, at this point feeling rather glad that Ibiza CC had not taken us up on our offer of a second game, moved on to a bar overlooking the harbour. Some sport was necessary even if cricket was not on the agenda so I suggested a friendly game of Spoof. For those that don’t know the game, the rules are pretty simple.

Basically it is a guessing game involving coins. Each player takes a number of coins, between zero and three, from their pocket and holds them concealed within a clenched fist. The denomination of the coin is irrelevant, it’s just the number that counts. The idea is then to guess the combined total number contained in all the players’ hands.

One person starts by making a guess and then the play proceeds clockwise until everyone playing has guessed a number that hasn’t previously been taken. This is a single round of the game. All players then reveal their coins and someone is ‘out’ if they chose the exact number. If this happens, the ‘winner’ (or non-loser) will then sit out the remaining rounds of this particular game and the others will play more rounds in the same way until only two players are left. This is ‘the final’, or crunch time, that decides the outcome of the contest.

Spoof can be a ‘sociable’ game to pass the time. Or it can be used to decide who buys the next round. Or, if you have someone like Mark, the organiser, in your party, it can escalate into something potentially unpleasant.

He decided that the ‘winner’, i.e. the last person left, would have to drink a forfeit. For reasons best known to himself, he went to the
bar and asked for Baileys with a dash of cider. Baileys is a pretty dire drink on its own but when you add cider to it under the heat of the Ibizan sun, it becomes a rather unpalatable proposition.

Given his pulled hamstring and single figure score when batting, it was more or less preordained that David would complete a memorable twenty-four hours by having to drink the Baileys concoction. And so it proved.

Two more rounds followed, both ‘won’ by Crawford. The first forfeit was tequila and Tabasco with a peach schnapps chaser. The second was whisky and a raw egg. To the amusement of the other customers and the barely concealed admiration of the waitresses, he took them like a man (or words to that effect), probably glad of the three Yorkshire puddings he had consumed at lunchtime.

Crawford was keen to continue but the rest of us had seen enough. Relieved that we had escaped so far and worried what concoction Mark might come up with next, we made our excuses and left.

After freshening up at the hotel, it was time for our last night in Ibiza, volcanic ash permitting. Ending up in the bar that we had started in at the beginning of the tour (nice bit of symmetry for those who like that sort of thing), I found myself embroiled in one of those discussions that only happen in bars, late in the evening. The other participants, unfortunately for them, were Crawford and Nick.

The topic for discussion was who are your favourite Top Five musical artists? Or put another way, if you could only take the music of five performing artists to your desert island, who would they be? Now clearly, in this sort of debate, there can be no right or wrong answer. It is purely a question of personal choice. This did not prevent me from erupting at Nick’s first selection of ………… Queen.

“Queen! You can’t be serious? They’re so ephemeral.”

Nick, somewhat taken aback by the vehemence of my response then suggested U2 as his second choice. Before I could launch into a tirade about U2 being the most overrated band in the universe and Bono being inordinately pleased with himself with very little justification, Crawford intervened to come up with his own somewhat ‘left of field’ choices. Alabama 3 was closely followed by the Proclaimers.

At this point Mark, the Chairman, joined us. When told of the subject of our discussion and asked for his musical choices, he thought for a moment and then started with ......... Queen.

“Queen? But they’re so ephemeral!” I spluttered.

Paul joined us and, sure enough, Queen featured in his Top Five. By this time, I had said ‘ephemeral’ so many times that I was no longer sure what it meant. I began to doubt my own sanity and had to go back to the hotel for a lie down.
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All the tour arrangements had gone so well that the next day, after an extended lunch at a pleasant beach-side restaurant, we headed for the airport in good spirits, confident that all would continue to go according to plan. The volcanic ash had stayed away, the flight out had been on time, the mini-buses were waiting as ordered and the hotel had been excellent. All the bases had been covered.

What we had not counted on was some climate change protesters cutting through the perimeter fence at Manchester Airport and chaining themselves to an aeroplane. The delay at Manchester had a knock on effect that meant we were stuck at Ibiza airport for several hours. After sitting in Ibiza’s huge but
soulless airport terminal for four hours, even the most liberal members of our touring party were all in favour of whichever plane the protesters had tied themselves to, just taking off and letting them have a closer look at the ozone layer. We eventually arrived home sometime after midnight.

After only a day’s rest at home for me, it was down to Lords for the first Test against Bangladesh. I don’t think everyone fully appreciates what a tough life being a cricket follower can be. Bangladesh won the toss and, possibly not wanting the game to be over too quickly, put England in. Maybe they were taking a leaf out of the Ash Tree’s book by putting stronger opposition in to bat or, being more generous, maybe they were hoping to exploit the overhead conditions.

Alastair Cook certainly would have wished that they had been playing the Ash Tree ‘no LBW rule’ when he was adjudged leg before to a ball that Hawk-Eye subsequently showed was comfortably missing the stumps. This brought Jonathan Trott to the crease. It’s difficult to get excited about Trott coming in to bat and I don’t think it’s just that he is South African. I was grateful that he had helped us win the Ashes with his century at the Oval in 2009 but he is somewhat uninspiring as a batsman. His
pre-shot
preparation is tedious and borderline obsessive compulsive behaviour. Quite why the umpires or match referee don’t have a word with him about it is a mystery.

Strauss was supposed to be out of form but looked pretty good for his 83. Pietersen played a quirky innings and appeared to be still in Twenty:20 mode but without his usual number of runs in that form of the game. Bell flattered to deceive as he sometimes used to do, until he finally came of age on the 2010/11 Ashes tour. Notwithstanding the weight of Alastair Cook’s runs, Ian Bell looked England’s most fluent batsman in the series. Watching Trott bat, as
we had to for the rest of the day, my immediate thoughts were that he tends to play the ball too far away from his body and that would be his downfall. Sure enough, that is how he was out, caught at backward point, but by then he had scored 226!

Except for perhaps Jonathan Trott’s close relatives and the England bowlers, most of those watching at Lords on that first day, had been disappointed that Bangladesh had chosen to put England in as it had deprived us of the opportunity of seeing Tamim Iqbal bat. He is almost the antithesis of Trott as a batsman. Mercurial, entertaining, inventive, adventurous and a joy to watch.

Tamim scored 55 in the first innings and then hit a scintillating run-a-ball century in the second innings when Bangladesh followed on. He got through the ‘nervous nineties’ without too much trouble, moving from 87 to his century in four balls.

Despite Tamim’s efforts, England won the match on the fifth day. It fell to Trott to hit the winning run and as the other players were leaving the field, he was still checking his mark at the crease. If his behaviour up to that point had been potentially OCD, this definitely crossed the line, so to speak. Very strange!

I tried my luck again with the first day of the second Test at Old Trafford, hoping to see Tamim in action. Unfortunately, England won the toss and chose to bat. When Strauss was out fairly early on, I thought I would have to sit through another day of watching Trott interminably making his mark at the crease. He only lasted five balls this time. Shafiul Islam, who hadn’t played at Lords, bowled him between bat and pad. It is a terrible thing to say about someone batting for England but I was rather glad. In what must have been a pre-arranged tactic, Shafiul waited until Trott had gone through his laborious procedure and then, halfway through his run up, aborted it and started again. Trott was not able to go through his whole routine again and his concentration was broken. Trott’s
batting wasn’t up to scratch this time and maybe he will have to rethink his approach, although it seemed to work OK when he helped England win the Ashes in Australia on the 2010/11 tour. Most of the rest of the day was taken up with a typically audacious innings from Pietersen and an elegant one from Bell.

When Bangladesh eventually batted on the second day, Tamim scored another run-a-ball century. A lucrative IPL contract next time around must be a formality and the first-class counties should be forming an orderly queue for his signature. Geoffrey Boycott and others don’t think Bangladesh should be playing Test cricket but how else are they going to improve? No doubt people said the same thing when India were beaten 5 – 0 by England in 1959, but probably not Fred Trueman,
29
who took 24 wickets, or Brian Statham who topped both the batting and the bowling averages!

Bangladesh may have been given Test status a little too early, but when you see someone like Tamim Iqbal light up world cricket you know that the game is alive and well. Bangladesh tours will undoubtedly help the team to develop. A tour is an opportunity to play some cricket in unfamiliar surroundings. It is also a chance to meet new people and have new experiences. Not every player sees it that way. As Phil Tufnell put it so succinctly during England’s tour of India in 1993: “I’ve done the elephant. I’ve done the poverty. I might as well go home.”

I’m glad to say that the Ash Tree CC take a somewhat broader view. We have already planned our next tour. Having completed the Balearic hat trick we are starting all over again with another trip to Menorca. Our playing schedule is longer than usual: two games instead of the customary one. Following in England’s
successful footsteps, our pre-tour preparations will be exhaustive and, to ensure that we focus on the cricket, once again no WAGs will be coming on tour. We may not come back with the Ashes but we might well add the Sprinkler Dance to our repertoire.