French and Spanish Cricket

[Mike Kelleher]

My book 'French and Spanish Cricket' has finally been published. It is available on Amazon. It's an amusing tale of travelling and holidaying while trying to listen to Test Matches and staying sane. Not always successfully! The sort of stuff is on frenchandaussiecricket.blogspot.com. See what you think. It should give you a laugh if nothing else.

 

[cover drive man]

Well done mate. Little tip though this forum doesn't allow advertising it's counted as spam.

 

[Mike Kelleher]

Apologies

Sorry about that. Over enthusiasm. Had to tell somebody

 

[skipper]

French cricket is a version of cricket played for fun, init?

 

[Mike Kelleher]

French and Spanish cricket- an interpretation

You are dead right . French and Spanish cricket are strictly for fun, though some families playing the french version on the beach take it deadly serious. Salvadore Dali gives us some insight into the Spanish version.
In one of his paintings called ‘Elephants’ which Dali painted in the same year I was born, he’s recorded a cricket match on a flat pitch between what looks like an angel and one other player. French cricket as I said all beach combers know about. Maybe this was the Real El McCoy Spanish cricket. The long shadows and red sky show that it was early evening. There’s a stencilled pavilion in the background, and two of the mammoth stilted elephants are towering over the ground. Each has an obelisk shaped press box on its back with a cricket ball on top. The angel is bowling left arm over and appears to have delivered an illegal bouncer that’s almost taken the other player’s head off. The elephants on their stork legs will flood light the whole plain if it turns out to be a day night game, with enough left over for a light spread at tea time or rather supper time being in Spain.
There’s a double’s version of Spanish cricket going on in Dali’s ‘Portrait of a Passionate Woman’ which he completed three years earlier. This time there are four players in their whites, two at each end of the wicket. One of them has got a bat and is sweeping the ball to leg. The bowler seems to have a sling, so El Muri would have been able to play. The picture mirrors many of those seen in books celebrating the history of cricket featuring games played at Hambledon and Suchlike when the game was in its infancy in England. Two giant female hands form an archway over the ground. Remember this is Salvador Dali not Jack Russell, so they are adorned in gold with red painted nails rather than wicket keeping gloves as they await a possible catch. There’s a scoreboard hanging off one wrist. An ant is keeping an eye on the game from a vantage point on a lump of chalk just beyond the boundary. He appears ready to six leg it back to L’Escala to avoid being hit for six. An early Roses match is depicted in Dali’s ‘Meditative Rose’. Lancashire’s last remaining pair are having a mid wicket conference. Everybody else has gone home, thinking that the red rose meant it was a Labour Party conference. Perhaps it was some sort of last man stand protest against the light. It may have worked as you can just make out a Douglas Herd of elephants charging up in the distance at peak rate. A conservative estimate would be about fifty elephants. SDLP subscriber trunk dialling confirmed later there to be less than twenty in a TV ad lib.
Has this cleared it up?

 

[Mike Kelleher]

Google for 'Googlie'

Some bloke confused me once over a googlie. It was a while ago at a lunchtime do at a colleague’s place in Meopham , Kent. Most there were journalists, so I was lost for words. I left the missus who was enjoying their company to go inside to watch some cricket on the telly. For some reason the googlie came up. Probably because they were talking about spin. Knowing that it had been invented by a broadcaster’s dad B.J. Bosanquet, I asked this bloke who was also watching it, whether he had come across Reginald, the son. I’d actually been introduced to him years ago at a book signing. George Melly was also there, as was the author Margaret Drabble. I think it was her book. When we talked to her she said’ At last some real people.’ Perhaps she was being kind. Anyway this bloke got quite uppity. He was adamant that it was not B.J.B who had invented the googlie; it was the father of the bloke who had gone off with his wife. It had happened quite a few years ago but he was still sore about it. I didn’t know what to say. I asked him if he was sure about it as well as being sore about it. He said yes, and he was. He talked more about the matrimonial difficulty, rather than of the father in whom I was more interested. I had come in from the garden to get away from the gossip columnists, and I got all this. I did get his name but I’ve seen All the President’s Men and I’m not going to say anything until I see that teacher next term. For confirmation!! Deep Throat was never in my mind. They weren’t all tabloid press at the do! I never did find out who it could have been. Anybody know?

 

[neville cardus]

Congrats.

 

[neville cardus]

And allow me to be the first to inform you (if, indeed, you need informing) that is not the innocent little bugger he looks.

 

[Shaggy Alfresco]

It's a spam bot.