Night And Day

“Night and Day, you are the one. Only you beneath the moon and under the sun.”

Well obviously the great Cole Porter had high hopes for the T20 Blast, when he wrote Night and Day back in the 1930’s. Envisaging glorious evenings under floodlights and balmy sunny afternoons. That bit about “Only you beneath..” obviously didn’t envisage the the rise of The Hundred though. The lyric would have become much more complicated if he had.

So, as spring turns to summer, it’s time to pack away 4 day cricket for a while. This is the time of year when the keys words are: faster, harder, further and that isn’t just about those racy holiday novels that fill the airport bookstores. In cricketing terms, its all about faster games, harder hitting, sending the ball as far as possible. And much like those books, this cricket can raise the blood pressure temporarily, it may not provide lasting satisfaction though. Much like the plot lines of those summer reads, the games can appear to merge into each other. 

The first Glos game in the Blast this season, had promising signs. A reasonable crowd gathered to see a throughly professional performance from the banana yellow Glos players and Essex were dispatched without too much drama. We had our first look of the season at David Payne and Matt Taylor when they opened the bowling for Glos. Pretty good they were as well, both of them picking up 4 wickets for not many runs. Indeed the whole Glos attack was pretty stingy, restricting Essex to just 141. Importantly that was achieved with not a single no-ball and only 1 wide. So often extras, and especially the runs from those additional balls, can be so damaging. This new look Glos team appeared to have this side of the game under control.

After losing Hammond early on, the inform Glos batters made straightforward work of chasing down the total. Glos were in fine form, and it was lovely to be watching the sunset glow starting to form to the west of the ground as we eased our way to victory. We were off to a flying start, the early season optimism was still at high levels.

Since then, it’s been a slightly different story. We lost a game at Sussex, which we probably should have won. Then back to back home games, saw pretty comprehensive defeats to Hampshire and Sussex. One of these was under lights, and one on the Sunday afternoon. Hence the Night and Day title of this piece. We still have a couple more games against Sussex later in the summer. They have beaten us 3 times already this season. We still have a couple more games against them to come. Time to end that particular jinx, we hope!

I write this piece on the morning after a thrilling Tied match at The Oval, against the mighty Surrey. It’s turning into quite a rollercoaster season.

First up in this run of fixtures, was the evening game against Hampshire. For that initial blast game, our little fan group saw a bit of squad rotation. The Minister for Rain was rested, allowing him more time to lose himself on his wanders in the Wye Valley. His replacement “S” made his first appearance of the season. He’s had a fairly traumatic period of injury and illness, so it was good to see him already in the ground when I arrived. As often is the way these days when meeting up with old friends, we spent the first few minutes catching up on the health of an ever increasing number of pals. “J” was sitting a few rows in front of us and there were plenty of familiar faces amongst the larger than usual Bristol crowd. 

Glos batted first and after losing a couple of early wickets, were looking reasonable at 60 – 2 in the 8th over. Sadly though wickets fell as quickly as the frequency of flyers from The Green Party dropping through our letterbox (we live in one of their key target seats) and we had slipped to 74 – 7. Despite some lusty blows (back to the summer reading!) from Matt Taylor we were all out for just 124. Failing to bat through the 20 overs.

Once again David Payne bowled brilliantly to take 3 early wickets. Hampshire though calmly weathered the storm and cruised to a straightforward victory. Alongside the performance of David Payne the other highlight for us, was a magnificent fast, swinging Yorker from Ajeet Sigh Dale to dismiss James Fuller. it was the sort of ball that can change the course of innings, set fear into the mind of the batters and lift the bowlers to new heights. Tragic then, that only 1 more run was needed to victory with more than 3 overs to go.

The Friday night crowd was boisterous , but not too out of control. Our squad had been shuffled, “S” dropping out again, The Minister for Rain, and his wife were in attendance. Although he didn’t bring his customary rain clouds, it was unseasonably cold, prompting him to wear a scarf. A chap to our right had virtually gone into full Tom Baker/ Dr Who scarf mode, achieving a impressive number of twirls around his neck. I could only conclude that his neck was considerably long than the Glos tail.

We were grateful for the input of our friend “J”, his young mind helped us solve a mystery that confused the older folk. Late on in the Hampshire innings on Friday, I noticed something on the temporary “Big Screen” Scoreboard that was new to me. The letters WASP and the figure 98%. We were initially confused, the best that we could come up with was the suggestion from the Minister for Rain. He thought that maybe he referred to the Glos kit, as it was mainly yellow, with a small element of black. Therefore we were 98% wasp. Seemed reasonable to me.

“J” then pointed out that it stood for: Win And Score Predictor . For the team batting first it will the predicted final total, then in the 2nd innings, the % chance of the batting side winning the game. Whilst this is very clever, this new information did not provide us with very happy viewing over the course of these two games.

Aside from Cricket it was a busy few days for me. On Thursday evening my wife and I had watched the wonderful Richard Hawley in action at the Bristol Beacon. It was fabulous evening quite a few friends were there as well, including one who happened to be sitting right next to us, What were the chances of that?

Well maybe it’s not that unusual. On Saturday we returned to The Beacon, but this went to the smaller room (The Lantern) to see Bernard Butler and Annie Dressner. Prior to the show we bumped into a few friends. When the gig started 2 of them were sitting next to us, with 2 other directly in front!

Maybe the Bristol Beacon has some sort of incredible algorithm built into its ticketing software, that puts you alongside your friends. I don’t think Glos need to worry about investing in such a (imaginary) system, as it usually quite easy to find enough space to sit with your mates. It’s one of the great attractions of watching cricket for me. Sitting together with your friends is easy so, it doesn’t require coordinated booking of seats.

Maybe it could be something for the future though, especially for people who may be coming along for the first time. Key in some key bits of information, then the system could allocate you a seat alongside some kindred spirits. Are you a glass half full or half empty sort? Was it all better in the old days, or are there some exciting young players coming through? Do you like a quiet drink whilst watching the game, or do you prefer to have a multitude, even if that involves spilling most of it on the people around you? Does your mood lift or fall when the inevitable chorus of “Sweet Caroline” booms out of the speakers? Do you prefer to talk about Military literature or Kylie Minogue?

Funny you should ask that last one, as “P”, who joined us for the 2nd of the weekends game always has an interesting story to tell. He would be equally at home with both topics, often providing excellent updates on his recent reading material, and on Sunday a couple of excellent Kylie anecdotes.

Aside from the music interludes between cricket matches, I spent an interesting Saturday at The Glenside Hospital Museum, which is opposite my old school in Fishponds. There are many fascinating things to see in this place, as it charts the history of care for those with mental health difficulties. A key part of the initial thinking around treatment was the idea of a keeping patients occupied and engaged, so the patients were able to try out, and watch many artistic and sporting activities. It was fascinating to see this postcard with a picture from 1904 of a cricket match in the grounds between Officers and Attendants

The Sunday match against Sussex was part of a double header of daytime games, having a 2:30pm start. Prior to that was a game between Western Storm and Southern Vipers, which I had hoped to get along to watch. Sadly though some things had to be done around the house, so I missed out seeing the Western Storm Game.

The Glos game against Sussex was the reversal of the Hampshire one. Sussex batted first and despite an encouraging opening spell by David Payne and Josh Shaw, Sussex simply raced away. There were a couple of highlights in the field for Glos, a brilliant catch by Ajeet Sigh Dale to remove Ward, and a fine piece of fielding from Hammond to run out Hudson-Prentice. Other than those moments, it was pretty painful viewing especially in the final overs.

Just pondering on the Night and day theme. There are many, many versions of the song, Frank Sinatra alone had at least five attempts at it, Ella Fitzgerald and Fred Astaire made notable recordings. The strength of the song can be shown by the way it fits many different styles. It can sound effortlessly breezy or slightly menacing, as though the person singing it is overwhelmed by the presence of their ever-present, inescapable love interest. For a distinctly uncomfortable, angst ridden version you can try giving the version by San Francisco experimentalists Tuxedomoon a listen. I picked up a self released copy of it back I’m 1978, which had somehow made it’s way from the West Coast of America into the legendary Revolver Records in Bristol. Much like the Glos performance in these two games, it’s a challenging experience. After a chance conversation with a friend who happened to meet one of Tuxedomoon in San Francisco many years ago, I dug out my 12″ single featuring Nite & Day (as they called it) , it has something of the manic fairground feel to it. Industrial and off-kilter it’s certainly not easy listening. It’s probably the most appropriate version for those Glos weekend games.

Unusually for the Day game in this Night and Day sequence, Glos were sporting a purple kit. This lead to some speculation that the WASP showing on the scoreboard for this game, could have represented We Are Super Purples.

Sadly though, the reality was shown in the percentage figure, as Glos chased down their unlikely target. For much of the innings it hovered around the 2% or 3% figure. I think that briefly our victory chances were as high a 9%. Those cold hard figures, tend to remove the romance of unlikely possibility from a run chase. Simply highlighting the inevitable reality of the defeat.

Then again, I wonder how the WASP performed in the game against Surrey last night. I was unable to either watch or listen to the most of the game, as I was on a throwback to Covid times, by being on a video chat with a family member. When I did check the latest score I could see that Glos had made a reasonable sounding 170, and although Surrey were going pretty well, victory for them was far from certain.

The obvious thing to do at this stage, would have been to watch the Surrey live stream on youTube or listen to the radio commentary. Of course, I could neither of those, as my late attendance to the game would undoubtedly result in the game swinging away from Glos. I retired to the kitchen and put on some music whilst washing up. A couple of times I checked my phone and saw messages from mates indicating how tight the game was. Surrey still looked favourites though.

I looked again. 6 balls to go, 6 runs to win, surely Surrey would claim a victory. The incredible David Payne though had other ideas. Restricting them to just 5 runs and claiming 2 wickets, plus a run out completed by himself to clinch a tie. What a brilliant effort from him, and the rest of the team. Obviously I have to take some of the credit as well, for my brave decision to neither watch to listen to it live!

Glos have a couple of away fixtures coming up now, again split between day and night. Then a home evening fixture against a Somerset side who are once again looking very strong in this format. Sadly, I’ll missing that one. Maybe my absence can help the team though, as it undoubtedly did last night.

They can thank me later.

Do you have a favourite version of Night and Day?