Robin Williams once described the oh so British game of cricket like this, “It’s like baseball on Valium,” and I have to say I agree with him.  I can safely say I’ve never ever watched a game from start to finish, well I do have a life!  How anyone can get exited over a simple game made to sound so complex is beyond me.   May be I’m an oik, a bit off riff raff if you will, I really don’t give a monkeys it’s just so boring.  And when boredom sets in I can feel my humour tissues priming themselves for a workout.  After listening to two of my friends rant on and on about a game between the English and the West Indians, which we always seem to lose, I devised a whole new breakdown of the pompous game called cricket just to wind them up, so here it is folks, Walton’s almanac of Sticks and Twigs.

Let’s start with the name of the sport, aah haa haa haa harrrrrrrrrr sport – that’s priceless.  I know what a football is but what is a rugby and with that in mind what the hell’s a cricket?  Tis neither bat nor ball nor stump is it?  Back in the day there was little or no equipment and lathes hadn’t been invented so the man of sport was really up against it.  In 1346  a committee member of the MCC made plans to employ what fell from the Oak and Ash and the humble Box wood and it was then that the name, Stick and Twigs were first used.  Three sticks were stuck in the ground and then two sets of twigs were laid across them. 

Now, during the global warming of the day the Woodford county side, The old Fartonians noticed when the weather change (got bloody windy) both sets of twigs blew off the sticks, something had to be done.  A female street urchin said, “Use straw bound with string.”  This was a rubbish idea as string hadn’t been invented.  The urchin spoke again, “Use a bail of hay.”  “Don’t be a twatbag,” the captain said and threw his ball at her knocking the young lady to the ground.  In years to come this would be known as, bowling a maiden over.  Interestingly the word ‘bail’ has survived until this very day.   My that is interesting!

Eventually the problem was solved by using Ebony which was imported from Leytonstone and these bails are still known as the ‘heavy set.’  They are a permanent fixture in ‘blowy’ games today and in ‘non blowy’ games the captain of the home team can ask for the ‘light set’ if he so wishes – how exciting!  Like the game this decision can take days.  The lighter set of bails today are all made from the discarded remnants from the Keil Craft range, 1956 to 1973.  These have been collected over the years from projects that were smashed up out of sheer frustration when son and father alike couldn’t get their model plane to fly.  Aaah yes I well remember the great balsa wood mountain of 1968.

Lunch I think chaps…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 at 5:05 pm and is filed under Neils Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.