T20 blasted

A rare night out at the cricket tonight when 10 of our villagers, including myself, went to the County Ground (or whatever it’s called these days) to watch Gloucestershire play Durham. It was part of the T20 Blast cricket tournament and the winners would proceed to finals day. The corporate and generic matchday host told us constantly how we could get tickets to the final, at least until it was obvious that Glos would lose. By the end, there was no need to advertise it at all.

Firstly, the cricket ground. There is a new side to the ground which consists of apartments for very rich people. Some owners watched from their balconies including one of them which was covered by a gazebo. “Hmm, said Tarquin. “What is this luxury apartment missing? Oh yes…”

Anyway, Durham batted first and rattled up a big score. There were a few token chants of “Gloucestershire La La La” but the atmosphere was generally quite flat. So was the overpriced beer. I knew very few of the home team players – the captain Klinger and the fuzzy-haired Hamish Marshall, but that was it. They did very little to encourage me to learn details of any more of them.

When Glos batted, chasing an unlikely target of 180-odd, they kept getting out. Klinger looked amazing and then got out and another player, whose name I did not catch, scored 80-odd. The scores looked close at the end but the game never was.

The highlight for me was the half-time entertainment where groups of men performed a relay race with inflated apples. But not just any old apples: Thatcher’s cider apples. “And here we go. And the THATCHER’S apple is leading the THATCHER’S apple by the width of the THATCHER’S apple”, went the commentary, just in case we had forgotten THATCHER’S cider, which was on sale for a mere £4 a pint in the bars, as flat and insipid as cider can get. And I speak as a fan of THATCHER’S.

There was a good crowd in what is a very odd cricket ground. Posh flats one side, a large enclosure on another, a stand located way back beyond the boundary and nothing at all for at least 80 yards.

It was a limited overs game so there were the usual flame-throwers and fireworks, as well as dire music in between overs, played at a volume that Sky viewers would have heard better than we did. That was a positive.

And despite the fact that my team were hammered, I enjoyed it because it didn’t really matter that much. No one else seemed that bothered either, as we finally gave up with a comedy run out with both remaining batsmen at one end and the ball at the other. “Only Gloucestershire!” said everyone, laughing at our ineptitude.

We did not wait for the presentation ceremony at the end because, frankly, we didn’t care and anyway we’d have had to stay for ages whilst Sky had an ad break. (I swear I saw what appeared to be a Sky person waving at the umpire to restart play between some overs.)

Great fun and only a tenner. Apart from the terrible beer and cider and the £7 grease burgers, that is. I hadn’t been to a game in many years but I feel encouraged to go again. Maybe in many years time.