The Secret Cricketer: Sledging Our Biggest Rivals

There has been a lot of pressure this week to take part in nets thanks to an upcoming set of games against ‘hated’ local rivals. I’m not sure who decides the severity of the dislike for local rivals, but it can certainly quickly spark a feverish atmosphere in matches.

One of our players, who has been stirring up a storm in the nets against a rival club, was asked by one of the more inquisitive stallions, inventively nicknamed ‘Ginger’, where it all started.

He had to go back about 15 years where one of the opposition didn’t go for an afterthought and the subjective old favorite “their referee is a fraud”.

I’m not sure there is much forensic or geographic evidence for some rivalries and sometimes the other team may not even know that there are such deep-seated feelings surrounding the match.

But these historical events can be passed on for generations, rather than grown men having sensible conversations.

I once overheard a ‘rival’ captain through the dressing room wall giving his team pep talk, which consisted mainly of invective about what an unpleasant character I was and how they all had to let me know. The strongest terms were used in a venomous tone, as I can certainly imagine.

A few minutes later he happily came out to hang out with me and greeted me with a hearty “hey buddy how are you?”. It was tempting to say “a bit demoralized 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 of a great sled or response. I regularly played against a small wicketkeeper who every time I played against him asked if he was “standing up”.

After a few seasons this eventually led to an aggressive disdain on the field where personal traits were exchanged. Several years later I randomly sat down next to him at a sports dinner and after an initial period of frostiness, we hit it off like a house on fire. If I see him now, we half-jokingly greet each other like long-lost friends.

It is around this time that some players start quoting their stats for the first part of games. One of our first team players, nicknamed ‘Tommy’, is proud of his fitness level and grooms himself, often naked in the mirror for as long as he sees fit.

He was put back in his box by Ginger. After posting his impressive early season batting stats on the ubiquitous Whatsapp group, he was quickly slammed by the stat-obsessed colt who said it was significantly more than his total for the whole of last season.

Ouch!

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

Most of the chat on Saturday was about the upcoming election, which caused some friction between those on the left and the right. It didn’t have much in the way of knowledgeable or insightful political commentary, but the Doctor pointed out that many of the policies of the Monster Raving Loony Party have now been enshrined in law, such as 24-hour television and all-day drinking.

He also pointed out that for many years their headquarters, where they held their conferences, was in the now defunct Golden Lion in Ashburton. Quick as lightning, Steve said “half of them were playing in their first team at the time”.

This then led to a large list making bets on 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 ‘quick’.