Low life
Squiffy at square leg
Jeffrey Bernard
We said goodbye to the cricket sea- son last week when The Spectator played the Coach and Horses at the Oval. It was a miracle that we managed to get the Surrey and Test match ground for the second year running when you consider how the prop- rietor of the Colony Room Club, Ian Board, abused the groundsman's wife last year, but he was on his best behaviour, whatever that is, this time. The Spectator won rather easily. By seven wickets, if I remember correctly. And I should do because I was umpiring while The Specta- for were batting.
Just to annoy Norman's customers I said that it was not surprising since all the drones at Doughty Street had been to public schools. In fact I believe the Patel brothers who run the corner shop on Shaftesbury Avenue once played for the India Schoolboys XI but, good' stroke- makers as they are, they didn't come off this year. How odd in a way that they should play for the pub since they have the good sense not to use it. But then Indians, apart from the film-makers in Bombay, are not into drinking.
Anyway, I am giving up umpiring. It isn't just that my legs won't take an afternoon in the field any more, it is also that I can't bear dissent. I gave one of our blokes, Douglas McIsaac, out lbw. He was out all right, blatantly, but he disagreed with my decision. Tough tit, but when the umpire's finger goes up 'tis bootless to exclaim, as someone told the Duke of Buckingham. You simply walk. Even to the scaffold. You don't argue with Richard III. (Come to think of it Norman would look like Richard III if you cut his legs off.) But there was nearly a disaster. When we arrived at the ground the bar was closed and that isn't cricket in anybody's Ian guage. My brother Bruce, I was told later, set out to walk down the road to Kenning ton in search of a drink but we found a pub next door to the ground and Norman treated four of us very generously. It is odd that publicans are usually so civilised when they are away from their own patch. He bought us some excellent pork sandwiches and I shall have to report him to his local synagogue. Rather like giving someone out lbw really.
Eventually the Oval people managed to man a bar so that a stampede back to the West End was averted. Then, when play commenced and the Coach and Horses went in to bat, I began to find it difficult to distinguish one player from another from a distance. They were, after all, dressed in white and my mate and fellow umpire Gordon and I had been at it since opening 'They're more likely to talk to the agony aunt.' time that morning. Some of the Coach and Horses batting wasn't bad but they just didn't make enough and their best man Patel was out to a lazy shot. When The Spectator went in to bat and I put on the umpire's white coat I thought for a mo- ment that I was a doctor.
While I was standing at square leg somebody ran out from the pavilion and handed me an enormous vodka. I was getting a little squiffy by this time and thought I could see six stumps when I was at the bowler's end. It now occurs to me that perhaps Mr McIsaac was not quite so blatantly out when I gave him so. Late at night it is sometimes necessary to watch television with a hand over one eye and if I have to umpire again next year, 'God forbid, I shall wear a patch over one eye a la Admiral Nelson. The outcome of the game never concerned me. My loyalty lies here but I wouldn't have minded seeing Norman go mad if his merry men had won. But it was not to be.
And now I am off to France and I shall be worrying about the whereabouts of Mr McIsaac's legs last Saturday all the way to Antibes.
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