FORMER England cricket captain Michael Vaughan turned out for a village cricket match the other day, disguised by a "fatsuit", a rubber face mask and a wig. The 36-year-old scored 28 for Goldsborough against Dishforth, hitting the winning runs before he removed the disguise and revealed his true identity – to the astonishment of the Dishforth players.
But the Dishforth men took it in good part. It turns out Vaughan was part of a stunt to raise £20 million for the promotion of cricket at village level.
I find this fatsuit, rubber face mask and wig idea rather unnerving though. What if it spreads? How do you know what it is you're really grabbing on the dance floor? Who wants nasty surprises?
But maybe we have to just go with the flow – fatsuits, rubber face masks and wigs for the Friday night knees-up at La Bella and similar establishments. It's known as a masque ball. It could catch on.
Keeping it quiet
IT SEEMS Goldsborough were chosen for the Vaughan promotional stunt because they had recorded the lowest-ever score in modern cricket. They were all-out for 5 in a previous match (against Dishworth, natch!) – 10 batsmen going for a duck, one carrying his bat on 0, the runs coming from four byes and a leg-bye.
This is fascinating because it means South Africa has the world record low score. At Kwambonambi in the 70s, a side went all-out for 0 – not a bye, not a leg-bye, not a wide, not a no-ball, not a snick through the slips, nuttink!
The match was between a Durban-based trucking company called Natal United Transport, and their Zululand sister company. What made it remarkable was that both sides played regularly in a social league. The NUT skipper, Garth Joyner, was considered rather a hot cricketer (in spite of a background at DHS). But there you are.
So embarrassing was it that Joyner – who was also MD – encouraged us for years to keep it quiet by sponsoring the Durban Press XI with a full bag of cricket kit – pads, bats everything – and keeping it topped up.
I've done my best over the years to keep it quiet about the zero score. Who has read a mention over the past decade?
But when a South African side takes a world title, it has to be shouted from the rooftops. Step forward, Garth Joyner and his merry band! Next to be arranged should be a match against Goldsborough, preferably at Lord's. It'll be a sell-out!
Six in byes
STANDS the Church clock at ten to three? The idyll of village cricket is nowhere as wonderfully captured as in AG Macdonell's classic, England Their England.
His chapter on the village cricket match has just about everything: the blacksmith opening bowler whose first ball is a six in byes; the American student who throws the ball at the batsman's shoulder blades, chanting: "Rah, rah, rah!"; the dramatic run-out when the fielder flings the ball in blind fury at the batsman whose cover drive has disturbed his after-lunch snooze behind a gorse bush ...
Yes, that's cricket at its essential level. That's where the game has become part of our way of life. I'd tell you more about the exploits of the Durban Press XI except that natural reticence prevents my analysing in detail the time I took 4 for 32 against the RAF Red Arrows with my artful leg-breaks.
I'm glad they're promoting village cricket in England. In its way it's just as important as in the rarified climes. That Goldsborough-Natal United Transport fixture should be a cracker.
Legal notes
A LEGAL fundi informs me that in the former British colony of Hong Kong a betrayed wife is legally allowed to kill her adulterous husband, but may do so only with her bare hands.
The husband's illicit lover, on the other hand, may be killed in any manner desired.
Is this some quaint colonial residue? As Noel Coward put it:
In Hong-Kong they strike a gong and fire the noonday gun,
But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun …
Tailpiece
Tourist (in an Irish village): "What's the quickest way to Killarney?"
Paddy: "Are yez walkin' or drivin'?"
Tourist: "Driving."
Paddy: "Ah good, dat's definitely de quickest way."
Last word
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
This blog will be an archive for my writings including myCaptain Cook and Idler's columns, which are carried in the Mercury newspaper in Durban, South Africa.
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