Opened batting. Slain by a terrible lbw decision; made by our umpire Harry Carnegy(not his real name). The appeal was weak, so weak the ‘h’ in howzat was barely audible. At one stage I thought the bowler was going apologise for asking. He did say sorry when I walked past him. “Mate, that was going down the Bakerloo,” he said.
Umpires stuff things up. They make mistakes. But our umpire’s biggest error was his fashion sense. Firstly he didn’t wear a white coat. Secondly he was draped in raving toff kit; baby blue jeans, checked shirt, red, black and yellow striped I Zingari tie with ancestral suede loafers. So he didn’t stand out then and wasn’t a distraction.
Bloody show off; flaunting his IZ tie at a match of another club. An act of ‘One Upmanship’ known as the “two club forcing approach”. Shades of Hugo Coating at the Studio Arts club dressed like a member of the Artillery club and Hugo Coating at the Artillery dressed as a member of the Studio Arts in HC’s gambit.
In 2005, I was batting at Ditchling and riding my luck. HC heckled “chuck him a piano, see if he can play that.” Sledged by your own side; sadly not a first. When I got past fifty, he hurled more abuse. I got out on 70 odd. Did he cost me a hundred? No he didn’t. No grudges.
No If I were still bitter I would use this blog to tell the world HC once bragged about discovering a priest hole and concreting it to avoid more restrictions on his grade listed pile.