GOOD cricket scorers need many qualities. They must possess an intense level of concentration as well as being patient, observant, numerate, neat and organised. In pre-laptop days, the best ones always had the ability to write clearly. In modern parlance, they have to be able to multi-task because there are always a dozen things that have to be done at once.
It’s immediately obvious that I lack such skills, but that didn’t stop me being called upon to score for Hyde Cricket Club over a number of years in the 1980s and 1990s in the Central Lancashire and Cheshire County leagues.
Given that I spent so much time in scoreboxes, I can say with some authority that the best scorers also need social skills. When you’re cooped up with someone for five or six hours in what amounts to little more than a rickety shed, it’s not too different to being stuck in a lift with them. If you can’t get on with them, or if they have a habit that annoys you, it can drive you mad. Fortunately, I encountered few scorers that I didn’t like. On the other hand, I met many who were, well, a little strange.
At a minor cup game in Stockport I suddenly found myself choking on a smell that was so bad I wondered if I was the victim of a poison-gas attack. As I struggled to breathe, or indeed see (I’ll swear there was a green mist), my opposite number asked: “Can you smell that?” without even lifting his eyes from the book but with a clear note of pride in his voice. “Yes,” I coughed. “Thought so,” he replied nodding slowly. “I’ve just farted.” And with a look of achievement on his face he continued to record the dots. I’m sure he believed he’d shared something special with me.
On a visit to Radcliffe, the fair was in town. The home scorer and his friends on the tins were all aged around 11 and at one point my weak powers of concentration were tested to the limit as a fight began. The owner of a goldfish won at one of the sideshows was not too happy when one of the others snatched the little plastic bag it came in, hung it out of a window and threatened to drop it 15ft or so.
I even found the Hyde wicketkeeper accused of causing a death at one club. I always found former skipper Andy Swain to be a very affable man but my co-scorer — who reminded me of an old-school corporation alderman — informed me very definitely that Andy’s “false” claims to have taken a catch the previous season had so upset the batsman’s father that he had suffered a heart attack and died. Later, when Andy was hopping about, the home man harrumphed away my explanations that the ball had hit him on the toes and accused him of having brown underpants disease.
As a scorer, I was from what might be termed the Tippex-school. I made so many mistakes, and had to apply the stuff so liberally to cover them up, that by the end of the season the book was twice as thick as it should have been, and there were lots of little white bits falling off. No matter what the game or where it was played, there was always something that I missed. After one game at Hyde, as the two of us desperately tried to work out a minor discrepancy in our totals, the Werneth Low equivalent of Coronation Street’s Norris Cole — every ground has one — scampered about the outfield, frantically announcing to anyone who passed that “the scorers have messed everything up. They can’t get anything to balance”.
This was the same man who was genuinely surprised by the reaction he received when he loudly criticised a returning Hyde opener for falling victim to a slow bowler, cheerfully ignoring the fact said batsman had previously weathered five fiery overs from Ezra Moseley.
The best scorer I ever met was a man at Milnrow. While I struggled to do the most basic job he completed two books, cartwheel charts of every stroke and even managed to conduct a conversation. What’s more, he could instantly pull career averages and records from a battered briefcase by his side. I could only look on in awesome appreciation.
By this point you’re possibly wondering why someone with as little ability as myself was ever asked to be scorer for Hyde’s first XI. The sad fact is, there was no one else and, as a reporter for the now defunct North Cheshire Herald, it was known that I would be at every game. My error was to let it be known in the bar one night that I had briefly been scorer for the under-15s team at Hyde Grammar School. My fate was sealed and I was led to my domain opposite the pavilion.
Nowadays, Werneth Lowe Road boasts a large electronic scorebox. Back in the 1980s it had a small, brick-built structure. It was the sort of place where it was much easier to stand than sit and whenever you moved the tins above your head — rotating drums bearing the numbers — you and the book would be showered with dead insects and flecks of rust. You’d be removing he stuff from your hair for days.
When I was asked to score, it was one of those offers that you can’t refuse. It’s true that I loved Werneth Low Road, a hilltop ground which commands stunning views. However, the club also has several characters with whom one does not argue. They are part of its charm.
Take Peter Hardman, who has served in the club in just about every capacity including captain, manager, chairman and groundsman. He is known as hard by name and hard by nature, although I occasionally suspect there is a heart beating somewhere deep beneath his rhino-like exterior. Ten or so years ago, when the microphone wasn’t working before a quiz night, he disappeared into near-by Gee Cross to buy some batteries. And he returned with them. Trouble was he lost the mic en-route. We all thought it hilarious but no one dared say so.
Alongside Peter were others such as Merv Riley, a Desperate Dan lookalike, and Tony Ghilks. Ghilksy is the man who once missed a game because the dog had eaten his false teeth. A fast bowler himself, he had no fear of Ezra Moseley, and would happily face the scourge of the Central Lancashire League without a helmet and using a packet of 20 Park Drive in his hip pocket as a thigh pad.
Bad as I was, I enjoyed my days as club scorer although I wouldn’t have admitted the fact until fairly recently. There were, however, one or two frightening occasions when players were held up by traffic and the skipper would talk about dragooning me in as a reserve, or better still a forlorn hope. These scenarios always began with that most ridiculous of questions “have you got your kit with you?” Well of course I didn’t — I didn’t own any. The reason I wrote about cricket and bumbled about as a scorer was that I wasn’t good enough to play it, although I did once clip the off-handle of a dustbin being defended by Jeff Hammond’s son Ashley on an Adelaide lawn in 1991 (after he had hit me for 28 off the previous five deliveries). The thought of me facing a Central Lancashire League professional was farcical in the extreme. Fortunately, the missing players always turned up.
My most memorable day occurred at Crompton in 1992, in what I think was Hyde’s last game in the CLL. I found myself sharing the box with a very talkative lady who worked as a nurse in the heart transplant unit at Wythenshawe Hospital in south Manchester. She was very keen to share her experiences.
I learned that the ward staff enjoyed Chinese food and often displayed what appeared to be a rather chilling calmness and detachment in response to emergencies. Looking back, I suppose they were taking refuge in their own brand of macabre humour. What made the conversation even more bizarre, however, was that it took place against the backdrop of a cricket match. Talk of haemorrhages, blood transfusions and stents was interspersed with questions about whether the ball had crossed the boundary rope or been stopped by a fielder, or whether the umpire had signalled byes or leg byes. Our heads were bobbing up and down continually.
After completing her do-it-yourself crash course in cardiovascular surgery, my colleague finally drew breath and confided in me that despite all her life-saving work, she would have struggled to undergo a heart transplant herself, no matter how ill she was. As I raised my eyebrows in response — there was no time to get a word in edgeways or otherwise — she added: “Oh it would be so creepy, waking up in the middle of the night to hear someone else’s heart beating.”
I hardly had time to ponder this opinion before she went on: “But I certainly could never, ever have a heart-lung transplant.” “Why’s that?” I interjected, recording a four and waving to the umpires to acknowledge their signal. “Would that be because it’s a very dangerous operation with little chance of success?”
“No, no,” she chirped back. “Survival rates are getting better all the time. What I couldn’t bear would be coughing up somebody else’s greb.”
Howzat?