Joe Austin: Joe hasn't acquired a nickname. Don't know why. Perhaps because Joe sounds quite nicknamey anyway and Austin is impossible to nicknamise. If he DID have a nickname it might be, for reasons that will become clear, Will O' the Wisp. Mainly because the first bit sounds like Willy, which is automatically funny, but also because of his unique fielding style.
If we were comparing Ightham CC to a Panzer Division in 1941 we'd be wildly off the mark as they were professional, well equipped and could hit stuff they aimed at but if we were to ignore that and press on with this unlikely metaphor that we so foolishly embarked on, Joe would be the division's reserve. ie held back until we'd had all had our tanks blown up underneath us by T34's or we'd hidden behind a tree or run away. Joe then steps into the breach.
In short he can't play every week but will climb into his "Tiger" (a German tank - but in this metaphor, "play cricket") every now and then to save the day.
Joe never bowls. Why this should be so is a mystery but maybe the contraption that holds his body together perhaps goes someway to explain. Before every game Joe clambers into the complicated web of elasticated strapping, rope and pulley systems, ratchets and torque returns that hold his body together long enough to play a game of cricket, eat some cake, launch his bat with a blood curdling cry at the bowling of the enemy and sit around talking shit with idiots.
Batting. Textbook Ightham batting technique. Has more than once saved the day when batting low in the order. He deceives the oppo into thinking he's rubbish by basically being rubbish for a bit, then becoming, in the blink of an eye, brilliant and launching a six or two back over the bowler's head with drives of a straightness rarely seen at ICC headquarters.
But it is Joe's fielding that sets him apart from the rest of the team. Literally. Sometimes by many miles.
It's known as the Austin Drift and it is this idiosyncratic but effective style of fielding that would earn him the nickname Willy O' the Wisp if we could be arsed to think of one.
Don't get me wrong. Joe's fielding is as brave, foolhardy and hilarious as the rest of us, it's just that Joe's compass is on the blink.
Let me explain. Usually fielders are carefully placed by our skipper according to some nonsensical plan he has made up in his head and once placed, we are meant to stay there. However Joe is a free spirit. Not one to be tied down, as soon as you take your eyes off him he will wander far and wide, appearing and disappearing like a woodland nymph. At once here and not here. Matter and anti-matter at the same time.
Of course in a higher standard of cricket where fielders are placed specifically according to the delivery the bowler plans to bowl, a fielder wandering off from his position would be a problem. But since none of our bowlers seem to know what day it is, let alone what they plan to bowl, it actually becomes a tactical advantage. Becoming visible and invisible at will, it sometimes appears to the opposition batsman that we have 27 players on the field, 3 on the pavilion roof, 1 in Cherbourg and another one peeing in the orchard.
Joe Austin: Tiger. Drifter. Woodland nympher.
Tuesday 14 May 2013
Monday 13 May 2013
The Might.....you know the rest.
Modesty prevents me profiling myself, except to say that I'm the wicket keeper. As such I get to wear gloves and thick pads on my legs. Which is very useful in the chill of a British summer such as we are experiencing right now. And so we move on to the next in the line up....
Joe: Joe has only been in the team for a year and as such has yet to acquire a nickname though he has, using a natural flair and by doing the opposite of what we advise him, acquired something of a reputation with the ladies.
Joe is only 16 or 17 (not sure). But it doesn't matter. Suffice to say he brings down the average age, not to mention average weight, of the team significantly. Joe had never partaken in the noble art of cricket before the late summer of 2011. Hard as it is to imagine, the character building humiliations of the game of cricket have been completely absent from this whippersnapper's life experiences. No more. Now he has joined the ranks of Ightham CC, his proper education can begin. Each fixture, not just a game of cricket, but a grounding in life and how to live it. If he is wise he will listen, absorb and learn from the non-stop out-pouring of ill-formed opinions, hare-brained theories, hilarious nonsense and irrelevant observations about the other team and become, not just a noble cricketing warrior, but a man. A man with stupid theories, an eye for a cake, a complete lack of cricketing technique and an almighty thirst it goes without saying but a man nonetheless.
What better time to turn to Joe's cricketing technique?
Joe is an all rounder in that he hasn't played long enough to know if he's a batter or a bowler or neither, like the rest of us. Sadly for me he hasn't shown any great desire to don the gloves of honour and pads of duty and learn the art of glovemanship (wicket keeping). And judging by the throwing skills on display so far this season, he's very wise.
Having never been taught how to bat or bowl in his formative years, Joe's techniques are unhindered by centuries of learning and he bats bowls and fields in a refreshingly abstract way. Whereas batters like Moodos, bowlers like Millsy and fielders like Pete Fryer have thrown away the rule book, Joe never knew there was one. And it's to his credit.
When bowling he is impossible to bat against because everyone who faces him has been brought up in the traditional way. How to play each type of delivery has been drummed into them since first they picked up a bat. The trouble with this is that when Joe bowls a delivery that has never been seen before in the entire history of cricket, they are unequipped with the appropriate shot to play it.
For example we've all faced a Yorker before. It's fast, flat and pitched so that it bounces just in front of the batsman's feet. So we jam the bat down as quick as we can, shut our eyes (it goes without saying) and hop in the air like a frightened deer. Not so a Joe Yorker. No textbook has yet been written on how to deal with the one I witnessed last year.
Counter-intuitively this Yorker was neither fast nor flat. It was indeed very slow and very high. It was the highest delivery I've ever seen. On delivery it went almost vertically in the air. Almost. It had enough of an angle on it for it to have some forward momentum. It's high, arcing parabola conveniently took it EXACTLY the same distance as a cricket pitch.
In other words the batsman found it dropping vertically on the top of his head.
What does one do? Getting the foot to the pitch of the ball is irrelevant for it is about to pitch on your head. Watching the ball onto the bat is impossible without resting the bat on your eyes. This was going to be interesting, I mused as I retired a few steps in order to enjoy the fun.
In the end the batsman chose to do this:
He hopped about from one foot to the other, shouted "Fuck!" swished at it as one might swish at a angry wasp (ie swishing like fuckerio), alarm the wicket keeper, kick at it, take cover and finally, simply twirl round and round on the spot hoping the ball might hit his bat.
Luck was with him. Miraculously making contact with neither his cranium nor bat, the ball didn't have enough momentum to knock the bails off.
Joe's batting however is textbook. If the textbook is entitled "How to bat the Ightham way."
You know the technique pretty well by now but I'll tell you the essentials once again.
Eyes: Shut.
Bat: Aimed like a warhammer.
Foot placement: Who cares?
Balance: For sissies.
Concentration: Nice to have but a bit of a luxury.
Soundtrack playing in one's head "The Ride of the Valkyries" by Wagner.
Which leaves nothing more to do than emit an audible shriek as the bat is deployed at Warp speed and then the slow trudge back to the pav with the bat tucked under one arm as the umpire attempts to reassemble the scattered remnants of what were once a nice orderly set of stumps.
Batter. Bowler. We simply don't know.
Joe: Joe has only been in the team for a year and as such has yet to acquire a nickname though he has, using a natural flair and by doing the opposite of what we advise him, acquired something of a reputation with the ladies.
Joe is only 16 or 17 (not sure). But it doesn't matter. Suffice to say he brings down the average age, not to mention average weight, of the team significantly. Joe had never partaken in the noble art of cricket before the late summer of 2011. Hard as it is to imagine, the character building humiliations of the game of cricket have been completely absent from this whippersnapper's life experiences. No more. Now he has joined the ranks of Ightham CC, his proper education can begin. Each fixture, not just a game of cricket, but a grounding in life and how to live it. If he is wise he will listen, absorb and learn from the non-stop out-pouring of ill-formed opinions, hare-brained theories, hilarious nonsense and irrelevant observations about the other team and become, not just a noble cricketing warrior, but a man. A man with stupid theories, an eye for a cake, a complete lack of cricketing technique and an almighty thirst it goes without saying but a man nonetheless.
What better time to turn to Joe's cricketing technique?
Joe is an all rounder in that he hasn't played long enough to know if he's a batter or a bowler or neither, like the rest of us. Sadly for me he hasn't shown any great desire to don the gloves of honour and pads of duty and learn the art of glovemanship (wicket keeping). And judging by the throwing skills on display so far this season, he's very wise.
Having never been taught how to bat or bowl in his formative years, Joe's techniques are unhindered by centuries of learning and he bats bowls and fields in a refreshingly abstract way. Whereas batters like Moodos, bowlers like Millsy and fielders like Pete Fryer have thrown away the rule book, Joe never knew there was one. And it's to his credit.
When bowling he is impossible to bat against because everyone who faces him has been brought up in the traditional way. How to play each type of delivery has been drummed into them since first they picked up a bat. The trouble with this is that when Joe bowls a delivery that has never been seen before in the entire history of cricket, they are unequipped with the appropriate shot to play it.
For example we've all faced a Yorker before. It's fast, flat and pitched so that it bounces just in front of the batsman's feet. So we jam the bat down as quick as we can, shut our eyes (it goes without saying) and hop in the air like a frightened deer. Not so a Joe Yorker. No textbook has yet been written on how to deal with the one I witnessed last year.
Counter-intuitively this Yorker was neither fast nor flat. It was indeed very slow and very high. It was the highest delivery I've ever seen. On delivery it went almost vertically in the air. Almost. It had enough of an angle on it for it to have some forward momentum. It's high, arcing parabola conveniently took it EXACTLY the same distance as a cricket pitch.
In other words the batsman found it dropping vertically on the top of his head.
What does one do? Getting the foot to the pitch of the ball is irrelevant for it is about to pitch on your head. Watching the ball onto the bat is impossible without resting the bat on your eyes. This was going to be interesting, I mused as I retired a few steps in order to enjoy the fun.
In the end the batsman chose to do this:
He hopped about from one foot to the other, shouted "Fuck!" swished at it as one might swish at a angry wasp (ie swishing like fuckerio), alarm the wicket keeper, kick at it, take cover and finally, simply twirl round and round on the spot hoping the ball might hit his bat.
Luck was with him. Miraculously making contact with neither his cranium nor bat, the ball didn't have enough momentum to knock the bails off.
Joe's batting however is textbook. If the textbook is entitled "How to bat the Ightham way."
You know the technique pretty well by now but I'll tell you the essentials once again.
Eyes: Shut.
Bat: Aimed like a warhammer.
Foot placement: Who cares?
Balance: For sissies.
Concentration: Nice to have but a bit of a luxury.
Soundtrack playing in one's head "The Ride of the Valkyries" by Wagner.
Which leaves nothing more to do than emit an audible shriek as the bat is deployed at Warp speed and then the slow trudge back to the pav with the bat tucked under one arm as the umpire attempts to reassemble the scattered remnants of what were once a nice orderly set of stumps.
Batter. Bowler. We simply don't know.
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