To the Oval! …on Wednesday morning for one final jolly of the summer. It was day one of a Championship match for Surrey against Yorkshire - aka how the fuck dis this once proud club go from being a three consecutive Championship winning team to becoming relegation fodder?
The train journey in was, as ever, entertaining. For some reason this season has been scheduled so that when we depart the Weird Wiv Cricket Fun train we are joined by a load of good owd Essex boys on route to watch the Essex Slappers over in Chelmsford.
“Hey, I’m going a little bit further than you.”
Oh the BANTZ we had.
Destination Chelmsford was reached. The good owd Essex boys buggered off to watch the Slappers. I sat back and thought, yep, I’ve got the better deal in heading down to SE11 for the more superior Surrey experience.
Just don’t mention the Surrey Strut, right?
We walked up at The Oval just as play was about to start. It was raining.
Arse.
The transpontine skies up above didn’t look too promising, so what to do with a spare hour when back down in South London?
The first job of the day was to pick up another Surrey Yearbook. I think they’re running on short supplies here. EBay in the morning, etc.
I then surprised my cricketing partner by having a bit of a detour into the Surrey store. I remember years gone by when the Surrey store was but a broom cupboard bolted on to the Members' entrance in the Pavilion. It was where you would buy cricket balls, bats if you could afford them, and even a box if you were feeling brave.
But not so these days. Like everything in the modern sporting world, the Surrey store is of course now a MEGA store - and it bloody is mega in terms of space, not to mention the prices.
My cricketing partner had her eye on a Surrey ice hockey top. Yep I know such a thing really shouldn’t exist. Surrey are also flogging this Surrey Football Club tops. They actually say Surrey Football Club on them.
But the Surrey ice hockey top seemed to appeal to my cricketing partner. Being the kind companion that I am, I snaffled it up as an early birthday present for her. Lucky girl.
We poked our head out around the old ground, looked up above and thought BALLS to this. there’s going to be no play at least until the afternoon session.
A lunchtime of art was then on the agenda. We made our way over to Newport Street Gallery. On route we passed Andy’s wonderful DIY garden pop-up that has been on the corner of Newport Street for the best part of a decade. Sadly the old boy is closing down. I felt a little tearful knowing that another part of old South London is soon to disappear.
A little time was spent at Newport Street with the Jack White exhibition. We then continued our short little journey onto Lambeth Palace Library for another exhibition before winding our way back down Lambeth walk and towards The Oval.
OI!
A very quick scroll of X and yep, the game was back in play. We’d actually missed the first five overs. We had also missed the first three wickets. A very poor Yorkshire team were struggling on 1-3 at one stage.
We wasted no more time and took up the nearest seats in the old OCS. Surrey were clearly getting a shifty on out on the field. You could tell the players knew that possible rain was expected. They weren’t hanging around, racing to change ends after each over. Every ball was more or less appealed for.
It was delightful to clock dear old Jack Russell sitting a few rows in front of us with his canvas and pallet. Can you tell what it is yet?
It then became a little slow going out in the middle. I confess to dozing off for 15 minutes or so. I was soon awoken by the loud guttural roar of Lobby, who was sitting on the other side of the OCS. Some things never change.
It was soon time for the tea interval. We had a brief stroll out the middle. It was good to catch up with F and his young son.
We retreated to the Peter May to try and cancel out the wind trap that was now rattling around The Oval.
I spent most of the evening session focusing on Foakes behind the stumps. Good gosh he is so athletic. An England recall could be a possibility over the winter months.
The wickets kept on falling for Yorkshire. Up stepped Bairstow and then so did the rain. It was only some slight drizzle. For once the Umps showed some common sense and kept the players out there.
This became a slow scoring affair for Yorkshire. I messed around putting on a poncey wind jacket and somehow missed another wicket.
Our conversation then turned towards how utterly naff the new Yorkshire logo is. We actually asked a friendly AI bot if it had been designed by a school kid as part of a local competition. Yep it looked that shit. Apparently it’s part of a professional rebranding which brings all elements of the club together. Yeah right…
Out in the middle and Wharton finally fell for 45. He was Yorkshire’s last hope.
Some dark skies descended over SE11 shortly around 6pm. The Umps took them off for bad light. We managed to see over four hours of play, not bad for what could have been a washout of a day.
