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Apr 2020
7:29am, 3 Apr 2020
2,202 posts
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Pothunter
DRS could do away with on-field umpires all together.
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Apr 2020
8:12am, 3 Apr 2020
5,446 posts
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57.5 Degrees of Pain
Replaced by a coat rack? 😉
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Apr 2020
8:32am, 3 Apr 2020
26,094 posts
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Wriggling Snake
Along with the others, my home pitch was the concrete path up the side of the house, you batted at the front gate (the middle three pickets were the stumps), The house covered Mid wicket to Mid on, Dad's Roses were at short mid-wicket.
Your run up would be from the back garden into the front, through a large gate, but it was at a slight angle, so pace bowling was difficult, accuracy more useful.
Scoring shots were hitting the fence square, 1, cover to mid off, 2, back fence 4, back fence without bouncing 6, 6 and out over any fence.
Our Ball was a round stone, wrapped in layers of paper, elastic bands and sellotape, added to a concrete surface, this was occasionally lively depending on who built the ball and the numbers of elastic bands.
We played (2 brothers), limited overs, 2 overs each 10 balls. The tactic was generally to bowl short on leg stump (so you could not score), or full to try and bowl 'im.
Scores and games were generally low and negative, lots of prodding to leg, with the odd straight or cover drive (past the only fielder). Occasionally you would hook down the road for 6.
Genreally speaking it helped my bowling, I could bowl a good yorker and tie people down, but lacked pace. Batting, I could hang about and prod with the occasional thrash through the off side and a hoik to leg.
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Apr 2020
8:49am, 3 Apr 2020
20,112 posts
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Nicholls595
We used to make cricket balls too. It evolved into quite an art form involving the leather palms from old gardening gloves. Never managed to get them very round though, so bowler always had an advantage.
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Apr 2020
9:30am, 3 Apr 2020
5,449 posts
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57.5 Degrees of Pain
We had quite a successful 'net' setup at my friends' house. They had about a 40ft x 10ft space between the side wall of the house and a tall fence. Stumps could be chalked at the end of the 'net' where the fence ran behind the house. Run up over the road, hop a low retaining wall and deliver the ball from the front garden through the gate.
Always with a well worn tennis ball as we all played tennis too.
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Apr 2020
11:09am, 3 Apr 2020
3,136 posts
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Goofee
Utilising my awful carpentry 'skills' I fashioned a bat out of a piece of wood I found, taping an old duster around the handle to prevent splinters. Being quite a solitary lad, playing involved underarming a golf or tennis ball against a wall and then nudging and deflecting the delivery around whichever space I was using, there was never any room for big hitting. This probably had a big influence on my later batting style which tended to be more about finding gaps rather than big hits.
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Apr 2020
1:35pm, 3 Apr 2020
31,807 posts
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♪♫ Synge ♪♫
I’ve been meaning to ask this for some time and this flurry of childhood cricketing memories seems like a good opportunity. Did anyone else play Dot Cricket?
It was widespread in my school when we were around 11 or 12. Essentially you created a grid of squares on a page torn carefully from the centre of a maths exercise book and populated the squares with 1s, 2s, 4s, 6s, “dots”, extras and wickets. You would fill out two teams in your scorebook and determine the outcome of each ball bowled by jabbing a pencil onto the grid. (If you were clever, you would push a small pin into the flat end of the pencil and see where the head of the pin landed as you jabbed the pencil down upside down, so no lead marks on your “pitch”.). We had different grids to represent different test grounds - loaded towards more wickets or more runs as we saw fit. Some players used a supplementary grid to determine the outcome of an appeal and I am sure there were other variations too. It was essentially a solo game, but somehow a communal activity.
Or were we the only ones ... ?
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Apr 2020
1:46pm, 3 Apr 2020
17,289 posts
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Chrisity
I was a Howzat man Synge, less trouble.
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Apr 2020
1:48pm, 3 Apr 2020
31,810 posts
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♪♫ Synge ♪♫
One friend played a whole summer's West Indian tour of England this way. Filled a seriously big scorebook (the hardback cloth-covered type most of us could never have afforded to buy). This was in the days when touring teams played most of the counties.
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Apr 2020
2:01pm, 3 Apr 2020
26,112 posts
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Wriggling Snake
Goofee, every thought of chnaging your fetch name to NudgeAndNurdle?
We did play French Cricket too, in the park, gangs of people.
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The Ashes 2009
Jun 2022