The Secret Cricketer: Sledging our biggest rivals

There’s been a big push this week to attend nets thanks to an upcoming set of fixtures against ‘hated’ local rivals. I’m not sure who decides the severity of dislike for local rivals but it can certainly quickly spark a febrile atmosphere in matches.

One of our players, who has been whipping up a storm at nets against a rival club, was asked by one of the more inquisitive colts, inventively nicknamed ‘Ginger’, where this all started.

He had to go back around 15 years where one of the opposition didn’t walk for a caught behind and that subjective old favourite ‘their umpire is a cheat’.

I’m not sure there is a lot of forensic, or geographical evidence to some rivalries and sometimes the other team might not even know there is such deep seated emotion around the fixture.

However, these historical events can get passed on along generations, rather than grown men having sensible conversations.

I once heard a ‘rival’ captain through the changing room wall giving his team talk, which mainly consisted of an invective about what an unpleasant character I was and how they must all let me know. The strongest terms were used in a venomous tone, as I’m sure you can imagine.

A few minutes later he was cheerily walking out to toss up with me, greeting me with a heartfelt ‘hello mate how are you?’. It was tempting to say ‘bit demoralised after that team talk’ but I didn’t.

Much of this unreasonable partisan nonsense is often played out as ‘sledging’. Most cricketers have a story about a great sledge or response. I regularly played against a diminutive wicketkeeper who every time I played against him, I asked if he was ‘standing up’.

After a few seasons, this eventually led to an aggressive contretemps on the pitch where personal characteristic were exchanged. Years later, I was randomly seated next to him at a sportsman dinner and, after an initial period of frostiness, we got on like a house on fire. If I see him now, we half-jokingly greet each other like long lost friends.

It’s about now that some players are starting to quote their stats for the first tranche of games. One of our first-teamers, nicknamed ‘Tommy’, prides himself on his level of fitness and preens himself, often naked in the mirror for as long as he sees fit.

He was put back in his box by Ginger. Having put his impressive early season batting stats on the ubiquitous Whatsapp group, he was swiftly put down by the stat-obsessed colt stating it was significantly more than his total for all of last season.

Ouch!

Now that everything is digitalised, you can’t amplify your performances like in the past. 20 odd became 30 odd and two wickets became four. You had to be careful though because the ultimate statto was the local reporter, who rang around every Devon League club and inserted in brackets any runs over 30 or anything above a three-wicket haul for the bowlers. It used to be every player’s aspiration to make it in the brackets.

Most of the chat on Saturday was about the upcoming election, which caused some friction between those on the left and right. Not much in the way of erudite or perceptive political commentary took place, but Doctor did point put that many of the Monster Raving Loony Party’s policies have now become enshrined in law, such as 24-hour television and all-day drinking.

He also pointed out that their head office, where they held their conferences was for many years in the now defunct Golden Lion in Ashburton. Quick as a flash, Steve piped up that ‘half of them played in their first team at the time’.

This then led to a great list making effort about famous people who have played Devon cricket. Ade Edmonson may have played for Chagford but I’m pretty sure Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay, never opened the bowling for North Devon, or was ‘rapid’.