Cricket with Jean Paul Getty (chaptile 1)

One of the few ways a barely educated dude from the outer suburbs of Melbourne can end up at Jean Paul Getty’s place is through cricket. Luckily for me I write about cricket, and found myself playing at Wormsley, Getty’s cricket ground which replicates the Oval and yet has the Lord’s slope.

Only an hour from London, and yet in the middle of no where, this ground was built when Getty got a jones for cricket from Mick Jagger in rehab.

I was there as part of the Wisden Cricketer’s corporate day. Everything about the ground was classy, soap and shampoo was provided in the showers, well dressed security guards, proper umpires, scorers who didn’t blink, scoreboard operators, and very spacious changing rooms.

The clubhouse had original paintings of Keith Miller in it, out the back is a library with the original Chaucer and Wisdens. Because it was a corporate day there was also free beer, and a marquee.

There was also cricket played, ofcourse, 3 teams in a round robin of 12 over games.

I played in the Jardine team, named after Scott Jardine, and we had Rob Hawk of Hawk cricket bats, a big wig from Adidas, a few writers, designers and photographers, and some guy in black pants.

The first game was pretty ordinary for me, I didn’t get a bat, but was next man in so had to pad up, always hate being padded up and not batting. We made 100, which we would later find out was par, and then we went out to field.

The balls used were the revolutionary orange ones that never quite made it, there is a reason, they swing like fuck, and as I was about to find out, are very hard to bowl legspin with. People said it was the lacquer on the ball, which makes sense, as I was wiping the ball down like it was wet. It was just so slippery, and I bowled like it was 3 times more slippery than it was.

Short crap, wide shit, faecic full tosses, non-spinning nuggets, I had it all.

Some numpty who didn’t look like he had picked up a bat before, hit me for six, which was the fault of me and the captain for bringing in the deep mid wicket, but i bowled him later in the over, our first wicket. It was nothing special, just a straightish ball on a good length and he walked over to off stump and let it bowl him. In the two overs I only bowled 3 good balls, they went for 12 runs. And I had the special honour of having a ball go about 2 metres from the keeper and the batsmen running two at one stage. 1/21 off 2.

I hardly fielded a ball, and when i tried to field one, i fell over. Thanks to the good work of a left arm spinner, and our ginger captain, we found ourselves back in the game. With one over to go they needed about 12 or so. This wasn’t helped by the first ball of the over that went for 4 byes. They struggled for the rest of the over, and off the last ball they needed a 6, instead it was swung into the legside, and they collected 3, the keeper and the bowler were so worried they were both at the strikers end. This left no one at the non-strikers end, so I ran in like a mad man from third man on the rope all the way to the middle of the pitch before they stopped running, and so could i.

We had won by one run, which was great, but i had played like a paraplegic badger, which was shit.

Chaptile 2 coming soon…