39. 11 Cricket Songs

This isn't one I'd recommend downloading many of the songs from ...

When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease - Roy Harper
Dreadlock Holiday - 10 CC
N-N-Nineteen Not Out - The Commentators
Howzat - Sherbet
Jiggery Pokery - The Duckworth Lewis Method
Soul Limbo - Booker T and the MGs
Cricket, Lovely Cricket - Lord Beginner
You're Never Gone - Mark Butcher
You're the One for Me - Brett Lee and Asha Bhosle
Mr Carbohydrate - Manic Street Preachers
All Over the World - Dave Stewart
Marvellous - The Twelfth Man

Soon, there will be no need for a compilation like this, as The Duckworth Lewis Method are this month releasing their very own concept album all about cricket. Sounds awful, doesn't it, except it's Neil Hannon, so could well be somewhat awesome.
As for the rest, there is awfulness and funny stories mainly, though the Roy Harper song is pretty good, and Soul Limbo is just the old BBC theme to the cricket. The Mark Butcher song is a tribute to his former team-mate Ben Hollioake, who died in 2002 (and I can't fail to mention I once got out ... after he'd hit me for two sixes), Cricket, Lovely Cricket is a pretty famous song in the West Indies, written as a victory calypso after they came to England and won for the first time with the great spinners Ramadhin and Valentine. The Brett Lee song was a big hit in India and South Africa and Asha Bhosle is Asha of A Brimful of Asha. The Manics song makes reference to a Glamorgan player called Matthew Maynard, The Twelfth Man is an Australian comedy tape we used to think was hilarious when we were younger, but the funniest one is the Dave Stewart song, which was the theme to the 1999 cricket World Cup, was released the day England were knocked out of the tournament and apparently sold less than 100 copies. I haven't heard it. Might be good. Might not.

I love cricket. This is well known. I've always loved cricket. I could go on about it forever. I could sit here and write about cricket till this computer's run out of memory. I won't. In brief -I own every Wisden Cricketer's Almanack since 1984 and every Wisden Cricket Monthly since August 1984 (apart from September 1984 - the obsession must have been slow to germinate in this six-year old). 1984 is significant. It's the first year I was aware of a year having a name, the first year of putting time in context, and the reason I knew it was 1984 was because it was the West Indies' 1984 Tour of England, and they were playing left-handed captain David Gower's England, and they had Viv Richards, who my brother told me was the best batsman in the world and Malcolm Marshall, who my brother told me was the best bowler in the world.
He was right about both. That West Indies team - Greenidge, Haynes, Gomes, Richards, Lloyd, Dujon, Harper, Baptiste, Marshall, Holding, Garner, with Milton Small and Winston Davis playing one test each (I didn't have to look that up) crushed England 5-0 and is a fair contender for the greatest cricket team ever.
Their violent glory (several England players were struck severe blows to the head by their famous quartet of quicks), their maroon headwear, the BBC Graphics - all imprinted on my mind.
They called it the summer of Blackwash. I didn't get the pun at the time. As a consequence of all this, I've always had a particular feeling for West Indies cricket. The greatest cricket book of all time is 'Beyond a Boundary' by Trinidadian academic CLR James, about the rise of West Indian cricket and it's role in West Indian self-determination. It's most famous quote is "What knows he of cricket who only cricket knows" - for sure, and vice versa.
So, about cricket, I have two little verses. The first is about my own little memories of the nepotistic world of the Middlesex Colts Cricket Leagues, when we played our own after-school Twenty20 (though it wasn't called Twenty20 then, just plain cricket) starting at 6 without the aid of floodlights, and my dad wasn't there coaching or umpiring and making sure i opened the batting and bowling and wasn't out unless all three stumps were knocked out - I seemed almost unique in that regard

HIT OUT OR GET OUT
Under daylight reluctantly fading
Small boundaries seemed so easy to cross,
time to grab a chance rarely offered
by coaches and umpires and fathers and fans.
I still remember "the word is, young man,
hit out or get out" -the opening shuts.
The purest manifestation of evil
I heard in those days of bullies and cheats.

And this is my shockingly gauche attempt to get to grips with some of the issues detailed above
BLACKWASH
Blackwash came from before I knew what
Black was, that was before I knew what Empire
was, though I read 'Our Empire Story'
written by some tory, before i knew what
a tory was, before he knew what it was
to be a tory in our empire story; no, I
didn't know the entire storywhen I blanched
at Blackwash;
Viv chomped on his cigar, before I knew about
tobacco, before I loved Curtley and Maco,
didn't know much about Walter Raleigh,
hadn't heard the one about the batsman Willey,
the bowler Holding, didn't know just what was
unfolding
Obscured by the Blackwash.
Lara kissed the ground before Garry, and I
should have grasped the weight of the pull,
the scale of the drive, the backlift
from heaven, the three the seven,
the five ... the five
In Antigua, St Kitts, Guyana, Grenada,
Barbados, Tobago, Trinidad, Jamaica,
isn't it great to be alive?

on second thoughts, i quite like that, the words tumble out excitedly. I wrote it before I went to play cricket in Barbados, when I bowled at Desmond Haynes, he was dropped twice off me, then drove me to hospital when I got a cricket ball smack in the eye. Aah, the circle of life ...

NB I almost forgot this - this is the reason I did this post. I remember it from Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing which I saw recently, and thought it was rather tremendous

HENRY: Shut up and listen. This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dancefloor. It's for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you've done is give it a knock like you're knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly [CLUCK].
What we're trying to do is write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might ... travel [CLUCK, picks up script].
Now what we've got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about 10 feet and you'll drop the bat and dance about shouting "OUCH!" with your hands stuck into your armpits.
This isn't better because there's a conspiracy by the MCC to keep cudgels out of the Lord's. It's better because it's better. You don't believe me, so i suggest you go out to bat with this and see how you get on.
"You're a strange boy, Billy, how old are you?"
"20, but i've lived more than you'll ever live."
Ooh, ouch!

One of the best arguments for good stuff being better than bad stuff you'll ever hear. Also quite shaming. Best i've ever managed is one of those Gunn and Moore Scoremasters which cost £15 and hid at the bottom of the school kitbag for kids who didn't like cricket enough to own their own bat. Every time you hit a ball hard with it you thought it might break ...