When I was a lad

TerryAlderman

Club Captain
I may have posted this in the wrong thread...I'm sure someone will move it if required. I'm an old bloke who has been thinking and reminiscing of when I played cricket at the age of around 12 years of age. A little gang of mates used to call on each other or arrange to meet at 'Lords' (an area of the local municipal rugby/football pitches that we tried to find a decent track on for our day of cricket).
We all turned up with a piece of cricket kit. Someone had the bat and ball....others had stumps, a pair of his (dads) pads, a pair of batting gloves (the ones that had spikey rubber for protection) and I possessed a pair of cheap wicket keeper gloves (I wanted the red Sl*z**ger ones that Alan Knott used at the time...but couldn't afford them).
We all rotated batting bowling keeping and fielding. We all chose our fave players names....Me...Knotty when keeping and batting and Bishen Bedi when bowling and fielding. No DRS or Snicko way back in the day....we just 'discussed' marginal LBW decisions and thin edges. Sometimes argued! Happy days.
 

Cricmad

Club Cricketer
Joined
Jan 6, 2019
Thank you very much sir for sharing your past moments with us. Everyone has his/ her past moments by recalling whom he/she feels rejoiced . We also used to play cricket in a nearby ground or sometimes even in streets. At that time, T20 cricket had changed the complete mindset of youngsters and they had begun to feel 4s and 6s far more valuable than 1s and 2s. We were also not indifferent to it. We all boys( and sometimes 2 or 3 girls who also wanted to play) used to concentrate more on 4s and 6s ( but not more than what happened in World Cup 2019 finals) and less on 1s and 2s. At that time, we even used to play some matches in which only 4s and 6s were allowed and most of the times the batting side would get success in making 200-300 runs with the help of boundaries only as streets were coated with cement and boundaries used to be very small. If you are a bowler only then it was troublesome because we used to hit at least one six in an over. But in ground, 1s and 2s remain always on. I recall once I played an inning of 314 runs in which I had smashed about 22 fours 27 sixes and due to it, we defeated our opponents( kids of same or 2 years elder or smaller) by about 400 runs. It became my high score and I remembers how much I celebrated it with my team. There was no jealousy or discord among us. There was no umpire and so no LBW. A run out was hard to detect and was the cause of quarrel. We had 1 bat only which used to be rotated. Wickets were made of bricks. Helmets were absent and ball was mostly of rubber. We had no pads as there was no LBW and we used to wear jeans.
Though after some time, we came to know about the importance of 1s and 2s and leaving the ball when we played in bigger grounds against more decent bowling attack. We had nothing to worry about. Life was all a bed of roses at that time. In holidays, we used to collect at 08:00 AM till 02:00 PM. And then again at evening.
I wish if those days could be returned anyhow.
 
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Princess Saffron

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I may have posted this in the wrong thread...I'm sure someone will move it if required. I'm an old bloke who has been thinking and reminiscing of when I played cricket at the age of around 12 years of age. A little gang of mates used to call on each other or arrange to meet at 'Lords' (an area of the local municipal rugby/football pitches that we tried to find a decent track on for our day of cricket).
We all turned up with a piece of cricket kit. Someone had the bat and ball....others had stumps, a pair of his (dads) pads, a pair of batting gloves (the ones that had spikey rubber for protection) and I possessed a pair of cheap wicket keeper gloves (I wanted the red Sl*z**ger ones that Alan Knott used at the time...but couldn't afford them).
We all rotated batting bowling keeping and fielding. We all chose our fave players names....Me...Knotty when keeping and batting and Bishen Bedi when bowling and fielding. No DRS or Snicko way back in the day....we just 'discussed' marginal LBW decisions and thin edges. Sometimes argued! Happy days.
You're as young as you feel! ;)
 

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