LEE PAYNE

Tag: old

  • 10 of my favourite photos that I’ve got on my phone

    10 of my favourite photos that I’ve got on my phone

    Most of us have had a camera phone for quite a while now, with hundreds if not thousands of photos taken over the years. I’ve scrolled through mine and picked out ten that have a story behind them.

    1st November 2010 – Dad

    I have told the story about my dad more than once, but in short, he died in 2014 at the age of 69 having been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease six years previously. It’s nice to have this photo on my phone. Dad is in his sheltered housing flat here, on the sofa where we drank bucketloads of tea and watched countless football matches. His cheeky grin is showing off the false tooth he wore. The story goes that it was knocked out by a cricket ball during a match on the playing fields of what is now the Hewett School when he was a young lad.

    1st June 2020 – seeing family for the first time since lockdown

    I think for many of us it was a bit of a shock to go into total lockdown in March 2020. Never before had we faced so many restrictions on our lives, but then it had been a hundred years since the last pandemic of Covid’s scale. It wasn’t until June that the restrictions had been eased enough for me to go and see my mum and her other half Dave (aka Stephen to me). It was strictly outdoors only though – thankfully the weather was lovely. This was also Dave’s birthday and the day my mum presented him with the papers showing that she’d legally changed her surname to his.

    20th July 2021 – sunset at Old Trafford, Manchester

    This was taken at Old Trafford cricket ground as the sun set on a red hot July day in Manchester. The match between England and Pakistan turned out to be the first sporting event to be played in front of a capacity crowd since the pandemic began. England won.

    28th November 2021 – my last day at Sainsbury’s Queens Road

    My first, and so far only, job was at Sainsbury’s and for eleven years Queens Road was all I knew. Then an opportunity came up to move to the Pound Lane store and, despite the terrifying prospect of having to meet a load of new people, I took it. I was blown away by the send-off my friends and colleagues gave me. This was taken on the Sunday, my last day at Queens, before I started at Pound Lane two days later.

    21st January 2022 – Oscar

    My friend Katie’s dog and without a doubt the best boy in the world. On this particular walk on the old railway line near Aylsham I managed to capture the moment he looked at the camera and I’m rather fond of it.

    28th February 2022 – the end of self-isolating with Covid

    Having avoided Covid throughout the lockdowns it finally caught up with me early last year. At the time I was living in a house where my bedroom had an en suite bathroom so I remained in that room for the entirity of my self-isolation, with food being left outside the door. Being stuck within those four walls for over a week was really tough. I took this photo just as I was about to leave the room for the first time. I can remember the feeling of excitement and relief.

    23rd April 2022 – before a Norwich match at Carrow Road

    With mum and Dave before Norwich’s match against Newcastle last year. Our pre-match ritual tends to involve buying pasties from Morrisons and sitting on that wall before going into the ground. Norwich were thrashed 3-0.

    9th June 2022 – The Killers gig at Carrow Road

    The tickets to see The Killers at Carrow Road were actually given to me as a Christmas present in 2019, with the gig due to take place in June 2020. For obvious reasons it was postponed twice before we finally got to see them in June last year. It is rare to have a band as big as The Killers performing in Norwich and they put on a fantastic show, with one of my favourite bands Blossoms as the support act. In June this year a dream will come true when my all time heroes Arctic Monkeys will play at Carrow Road. I can’t wait!

    25th August 2022 – my 30th birthday

    There was something about turning 30 that freaked me out. On the day, plans to go on the heritage railway between Dereham and Wymondham were scuppered by thunderstorms. Then all my friends turned up on the doorstep and we had a barbecue. I didn’t think people cared about me enough to do such a thing! It was a lovely evening and, as it turns out, being 30 is a lot like being 29.

    15th March 2023 – sunrise from my hotel room window in Cromer

    A recent one, but I must have enjoyed my one night stay in Cromer because I’m feeling nostalgic about something that happened only two weeks ago. I had long wanted to stay at the Cliftonville Hotel, as I thought the building was interesting and I was keen to see what the promise of sea views from every room looked like. I scratched that itch during a week’s holiday from work and had a great time relaxing and getting my head together. This was taken from my hotel room window quite early in the morning, with a stunning sunrise over the town and its famous pier.

    There we have it then, a small selection of photos on my phone that bring a smile to my face. Thanks for reading!

  • There’s history everywhere if you look hard enough – my little trip to Mundesley

    I’ve got some much needed time off work this week and, not wanting to waste it sitting around at home (though the snow has rather forced my hand on that one for the last couple of days), on Wednesday mum and I decided to go and see the sea.

    We ended up in Mundesley, a village I hadn’t been to that often and didn’t know that much about. I knew that a teacher I didn’t like at primary school lived in Mudesley, and I knew that Mundesley was the first place mum and dad took me for an outing after I was born. I don’t remember that, obviously, but I’ve been told about it. I’ve also been to Mundesley with my friend and her dog for a walk.

    When we arrived, the village was very quiet indeed, as you might expect in winter with the wind blowing and the temperature hovering just above freezing. Mum and I went to the cafe nearest the car park, where we sat in the window watching a procession of dog walkers heading down and then re-emerging from the ramp that leads to the beach. I had a coffee and a bacon and sausage roll. I’ve become something of a connoiseur of various pig products presented between two slices of bread, as my expanding waistline will attest to – Mundesley’s, for the record, was acceptable. Not the best I’ve ever had, but not too bad.

    After the cafe we went for a walk, taking in the Norfolk coast path and the various sights along the way. Mundesley is actually a very interesting village in an architechtual sense – there are a number of old buildings, quite grand in appearance, that I wish I could find out more about.

    Look at this building, for instance. I’ve had to get this image from Google Maps as I didn’t take many when I was there (my hands were too cold to hold my phone) but I can tell you that it looks exactly like this now. Empty.

    The architecture looks kind of art deco, I would say. It’s attractive, with its curves and big window. Yet it is underused, not being utilised to the extent that I’m sure the people who put it there invisaged.

    The research I’ve done suggests that this building, somewhat surprisingly, isn’t listed and that it was once called Bar Victoriana. Judging by its Instagram account, Bar Victoriana marketed itself as a trendy cocktail bar and occasionally had live music. The bar’s website is now dead, but on Facebook it appears to have closed in July 2019, with the promise of a ‘new seafood & grill restauarant’ on the way, which would explain the signs still on the outside. I can’t find anything about what happened afterwards, but I would suspect that the business may have been a victim of the pandemic.

    The building as it was in September 2008

    Mundesley has plenty of Victorian buildings, probably due to the arrival of the railway (long gone) in that period that turned the village into a holiday resort. Some of them are made out of local stone, given them an unusual appearance, while others are built from the red bricks you would expect of the Victorians.

    There are two imposing former hotels in Mundesley that demonstrate its past glory as a Victorian seaside resort. The photo below shows The Grand Hotel, as it was originally known, in around 1960:

    From what I’ve been able to find out, the hotel was renamed the Hotel Continental at some point after the Second World War. G. Laird, who took the more recent photo below, remembers three summer holidays in Norfolk during the 1960s and said the Hotel Continental ‘was then a very elegant building and was clearly a popular hotel’.

    It would seem the hotel later became apartments.

    Old hotels fascinate me – especially abandoned ones. You see, history isn’t about being nerdy and reeling off dates all the time. My interest in history comes from mentally taking a trip into the past and thinking about what the buildings and the places I can see used to do, and of the scores of people that would have used them in a former life. Think about all of the Victorians who would have come to that hotel for their bucket-and-spade holiday. How excited they must have been to be out of the city for a few days. Imagine them, dining in the hotel with a view over the sea. What would they think of it now? A bit run down, a shadow of its former self. That’s what intrigues me about this kind of thing.

    The other old hotel in Mundesley is the Manor Hotel. It was built in 1900, so slightly newer than the Hotel Continental, and was – as the name suggests – originally a manor house, converted into a hotel as the tourism industry took off. According to this newspaper article, the hotel ceased trading in December 2019 and a month later was up for sale (for what seemed like quite a reasonable £450,000). Of course, the pandemic was on its way shortly after, bringing with it a complete halt to tourism and leisure activities, so I don’t know what happened after that. The building stands empty, still showing evidence of the business that continued there until 3 years or so ago. Below is a photo I found online of the hotel in the month it closed:

    Our walk also took in the impressive All Saints church, which stands alone and imposing on the cliff top. The church has Norman origins, but I learned that it stood virtually in ruins for about a hundred years until being sensitively restored (unusual for the time, I think) between 1899 and 1914 – this coincides with the railway and subsequent tourist trade coming to Mundesley, so they probably felt like they wanted to smarten the place up for all of its new visitors. The church is described in much finer detail than I can manage here.

    The church of All Saints, Mundesley

    On the wall of the church, we noticed a plaque dedicated to the residents of the London borough of Haringey who had died at Clarence House in Mundesley. We found The Clarence House later on in our walk, and it is a care home in what looks like it might have been another former hotel, but even looking online I can’t find anything about this perculiar dedication to people who came there from the capital. My theory is that some elderly residents of Haringey may have been moved out of bombed-out London to calmer, safer surroundings on the Norfolk coast, but I have no idea if I’m thinking along the right lines. If anyone reading this happens to know more, please do let me know.

    Speaking of the war, there is a large amount of evidence of Second World War defences in Mundesley. As well as a few pillboxes, there is a gun emplacement, built in 1940 or 1941. There is a newspaper article here about the community’s efforts to have the gun emplacement protected by Historic England. The gun emplacements are a stark reminder of how worried Britain was during the war about the enemy invading by sea and its extensive efforts to protect the coastline. The guns themselves were removed by 1946, but under the structure remains what would have been an accomodation area complete with bed frames. The future of the gun emplacement is a concern, with the underground section apparently now full of water and coastal erosion bringing the whole thing ever close to the edge of the cliff. I’m not that into war history, but I’d recommend visiting the gun emplacement at Mundesley while you can.

    The gun emplacement at Mundesley, pictured in 2016

    Part of our walk also took in Sea View Road, an untarmacked street separate from the main road. We found the number of seemingly empty but reasonably well-kept properties along this road odd, eventually concluding that this is probably an area of second homes – rich people, coming from outside Norfolk, who own properties on the coast that they only live in for some parts of the year. It’s a growing point of contention around here, and is already a massive problem in places like Cornwall.

    Our walk also took in this old brick kiln, right in the middle of what is now a caravan park and one of Mundesley’s listed buildings, and some evidence of coastal erosion:

    With a little help from a bus, we were back where we started and some (very good) chips for lunch brought a lovely little trip to the seaside to an end. I left knowing more about this small village of the North Norfolk coast, and reminded that everywhere has a story to tell if you look hard enough. I urge you to go out there and explore!

    The route of our walk

  • A sporting break – my July 2022 trip to Manchester

    My view of England v South Africa, Old Trafford, Manchester, 22nd July 2022

    I’ve been back from my holiday for a week now, but as these things often do, it feels like a lot longer!

    I usually go away around my mum’s birthday (19th July) and this year was no different. In 2021, we stayed in Salford to make it easy to get to Old Trafford for a T20 cricket match between England and Pakistan. On this occasion, we actually stayed in a hotel right in the middle of Manchester.

    The Portland Hotel, Manchester

    My room was on the third floor of the hotel, with mum and her other half Dave a couple of doors down. It was clean and comfortable with a Queen size bed. You could hear the trams rumbling through the city centre, but rather than being irritating it was actually quite a pleasant sound.

    On our first night, we walked across the road into Piccadilly Gardens and found a fan park dedicated to the Women’s Euro 2022. There you could buy merchandise, eat and drink, and watch the matches on a big screen. I had been enjoying the tournament and England had North Walsham’s Lauren Hemp in their squad, so it was fun following the progress of the Norfolk girl. Our first night in Manchester happened to be the night of England’s quarter final against Spain, so we sat in the fan park with hundreds of others and cheered the Lionesses on.

    The fan park in Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens

    England went behind – conceding a goal for the first time in the tournament – but battled back to win 2-1 in extra time. The atmosphere was fantastic and it really made you feel part of the event.

    The moment the final whistle went in the fan park

    The next day, we had booked to go to the National Football Museum. I’d been to the museum a couple of times before, but there is so much to see that there’s no chance you’ll ever see it all. We spent two-and-a-half hours browsing the exhibits, which include the original written laws of the game, the ball used in the 1966 World Cup final and a seat from the original Wembley stadium. Afterwards, we did a bit of shopping. I used to hate buying clothes but these days I actually quite enjoy it.

    The National Football Museum

    Friday was the day of the One Day International between England and South Africa – the reason for our trip up north. Now, cricket is obviously the best sport in the world but, famously, it is at the mercy of the weather. You can’t play cricket in the rain. Not because the players are wimps, but because water and a cork ball wrapped in leather don’t mix. Opening the curtains, I was met with typical Manchester weather – grey skies, damp pavements and drizzly rain.

    Undeterred, we were at the ground when the gates opened at 11am. We were well aware that the game wasn’t going to start at the scheduled time of 1pm. We went to the club shop, we had a drink, and then a chance encounter meant my mum got a photo with England’s star batter Jonny Bairstow!

    Mum and Jonny Bairstow

    At one point we thought the match would be abandoned without a ball being bowled, but the weather did eventually relent for long enough for us to get a game on. Play finally began at 4.45pm, reduced to 29 overs per side from the 50 it was supposed to be. England were sent into bat and I didn’t think they played that well, being bowled out for 201 towards the end. It turned out to be more than enough, however, as South Africa were bowled out for just 83 to give England a win by 118 runs.

    We (literally) squeezed onto a tram to make the 15 minute journey back to our hotel, pleased that we’d seen a match despite the rain and that England had won.

    On Saturday afternoon, after a leisurely breakfast we travelled back to Norfolk in the car. On Sunday, it was back to work…

    When’s my next holiday?

  • I bought a 58-year-old football magazine

    Garden centres are usually my idea of hell but a few days ago I went to one that was a bit different. It had all the boring things, of course, like pots and plants, but it also had what they called a ‘retro shop’. An eclectic mix of items for sale with the only thing in common with each other being that they had spent years unused in someone’s house/shed/garage. There were old radios, guitars, weird wooden ornaments; it would take hours to go through it all.

    As a former collector of The Beano and The Dandy, my eyes were drawn to a pile of comics and magazines. While neither of those were anywhere to be seen, there were several Marvel and DC Comics titles, including a couple where the ‘new hero’ Doctor Strange – a character first seen in 1963 and recently played by Benedict Cumberbatch in a film – was mentioned on the front cover. Eventually, I stumbled upon a copy of Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly.

    The August 1964 issue of Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly I bought at the retro shop

    I love this sort of thing. Just like the comics, a magazine is like a time capsule. They quite literally document the time they were published. I have to admit, I’d never heard of Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly. The issue I found in the shop was from August 1964, a full 28 years before I was born.

    The first thing I noticed was that it was in colour. I doubt many people will have seen colour photographs of football matches in 1964. Newspapers were still very much black and white and on the rare occasions a game was televised it would have been in monochrome too, as colour television did not begin broadcasting in Britain until 1967. You can really see this standing out in a newsagent’s.

    I’ve always found something charming about old adverts. They were usually straight to the point and back then there was little regulation of the advertising industry, so the claims made in them were bold to say the least. Look at these two, for example. ‘Actual Tests’ (what actual tests? Who did the tests? What were they testing? How did they do the tests?) prove you can increase your strength 20% in 1 month (how do you measure strength to such degrees?) with astonishing new 6-second exercises! This company even offers to give you your money back if you don’t ‘get the kind of physique girls admire super quick’.

    This one promises to ‘enable to gain up to 6 ins. in height’. I’m pretty sure I get emails about this kind of thing nowadays, but they are usually pledging to help me gain six inches somewhere else.

    I suppose once you had become 20% stronger and 6 inches taller you might then have had the physique that the Manchester City Police were looking for.

    Now for some of the actual football content. As this was a summer issue looking back at the previous season and ahead to the next, the team photographs of the champions of all four English leagues were featured. The Liverpool photo is notable for the presence of both Bill Shankly, who was manager at the time, and Bob Paisley, who was merely ‘trainer’ (first team coach in modern terms) then but would of course go on to take the top job and win six league titles and three European Cups in charge of the Reds.

    Below them are second division champions Leeds, promoted to the top flight under Don Revie. This was the start of a golden period for the club, in which they would be league champions twice and win the FA Cup in 1972. Several of the stars of that side were already present – Billy Bremner, Jack Charlton, Norman Hunter and Johnny Giles.

    This might have been my favourite page in the whole magazine. Readers would write in, offering to exchange, for example, ‘Man. Utd. [programmes] for Sunderland and Arsenal’. Charmingly, many would also seek pen pals so they had someone to talk about their interests with by letter. When you think about it, this was an early form of social media. People have always wanted to reach out to others, it’s just that these days you simply write a tweet and can be bombarded with abuse just seconds later. The best one on this page, for me, was from S. Baird of Accrington, who was offering ‘200 First Division Autographs’ in exchange for ‘Screaming Lord Sutch Wig and Top Hat’. So many questions.

    With my beloved Norwich City dropping like a stone towards the Championship once again, I scoured the magazine for mentions of the team in the hope that things might have been going slightly better in 1964. Alas, the second division table has us sixth from bottom.

    Now we come to the letters page. Paul Carter from Liverpool wanted football to do more for charity. The Charity (now Community) Shield had been going for decades by this point, so he can’t claim the credit for that, but football is certainly used for fundraising purposes on a frequent basis now.

    Finally, I give you D. Kilbride, who doubted Bobby Moore’s suitability to be the captain of England and suggested Jimmy Armfield be given the job instead.

    Two years later…

    Thanks for reading.

  • I went to a sporting event for the first time since the pandemic began

    Me, mum and Dave at the cricket

    I don’t mind big crowds. They afford a certain anonymity, and I like that. I would prefer to be in a crowd than in a room with one other person. I’m used to them, too – I’ve had a season ticket at Norwich City for 13 years, I’ve seen the England cricket team a few times, I’ve been to a play-off final at Wembley.

    On 4th March 2020 I went to see Norwich play Spurs at their magnificent new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. There were 58,000 people there to see City win on penalties and progress to the FA Cup quarter finals. Covid-19 was most definitely around at that point – it had been over a month since the first confirmed case in the UK and businesses were starting to ask their employees how they would feel about working from home. But it would be another nineteen days before the country went into full lockdown.

    There was no indication that it would be a full 503 days until I would be watching sport in the flesh again. On Tuesday 20th July, a day after almost all legal restrictions related to coronavirus had been lifted in England, I was at a packed Old Trafford cricket ground to see England play Pakistan in a T20 match.

    I was unsure of how I’d feel about being back in a capacity crowd, but I was surprised how normal it felt. Getting into the ground, having walked from the hotel, was quick and easy. The only sign that there was a pandemic at all was the ground staff wearing masks. I wore mine when I was moving around the ground, having only had one vaccine dose so far it seemed a reasonable precaution. With mask wearing now a personal choice rather than a legal requirement, however, I was among a minority who donned a face covering. We were almost always outside and it was a scorching hot afternoon but it jarred a little, it must be said.

    My mum, her partner and I had seats right on the back row of the top tier of the stand next to the pavilion so we didn’t have people breathing on the back of our necks for four hours, thankfully. The PA announcer gave semi-regular reminders to wash your hands, try to keep a safe distance from other people and respect their choices regarding face coverings but, again, without those you wouldn’t have even known what had been going on for the last eighteen months.

    Old Trafford was full

    There is a large population of British Asians in the north west and Old Trafford had a lot of Pakistan fans in attendance, proudly showing off their green shirts, waving the Pakistani flag and blowing horns at deafening volume. There can’t have been much difference in numbers between England and Pakistan supporters, and the Pakistan fans were certainly louder than their English counterparts. It made for a fantastic atmosphere and it got the intriguing game of cricket it deserved.

    This game was the last in a series of three T20 matches between the two countries. The first, at Trent Bridge in Nottingham, was a very high scoring affair with England falling 31 runs short of chasing Pakistan’s mammoth 232-6. Liam Livingstone smashed 103 off just 43 balls, the fastest century for England in T20 Internationals, but it wasn’t quite enough. Headingley in Leeds was the venue for the second match, with England 200 all out with one ball remaining in their innings and defending it comfortably thanks to their spinners to win by 45 runs. That meant the Old Trafford match was a decider and a chance to see where both sides were at ahead of the World Cup that starts in October.

    In case you didn’t know…

    When you think of Old Trafford, you probably think of the home of Manchester United, but the football ground and cricket ground are different places. They are a short distance from each other, but the cricket ground was actually there first.

    My mum was hoping to see sixes flying all over the place, but the pitch was slow and difficult to bat on. Pakistan won the toss and batted first, posting a total of 154-6. Wicketkeeper and opening batsman Mohammad Rizwan top scored with an unbeaten 76 but that took a relatively sedate 57 balls and it quickly became apparent that there was nothing in the pitch for the seamers. Most of the bowling was done by the spinners, with England’s Adil Rashid taking 4-35 from his four overs.

    This sort of slow, dry, spinning pitch is just the sort of thing that England might have to play on in the World Cup, which is being held in the United Arab Emirates and Oman, so it is possible that such conditions were deliberately concocted to give them some experience of how to deal with them.

    England’s opening batsman Jason Roy found it easier than most to find the boundary, scoring 64 from 36 balls with 12 fours and 1 six, an innings which proved decisive in the match and enough to earn Roy the player of the match award. Star man Jos Buttler couldn’t really get going – much to my mother’s chagrin – and whenever anyone tried to go big they were usually caught in the deep.

    A wonderful sunset as a hot day came to an end

    A regular fall of wickets left England behind the required run rate and needing 33 from 19 balls and 12 from 8 when the fifth wicket went down. Liam Livingstone, player of the series and Lancashire favourite, strode out and promptly whacked his first ball for six to put England back in the driving seat. He was caught next ball (also trying to hit it into next week) and the captain Eoin Morgan was still to go but the home team scrambled a two to seal victory with two balls to spare. Not a high scoring match, but a last over thriller satisfied the crowd.

    Getting out of the ground was no problem as we stayed to watch the trophy presentation while most of the deflated Pakistan supporters were leaving. And that was that – my first sporting event attended in person since the pandemic began. It shouldn’t – and I really hope it isn’t – another 503 days before the next one.

    England collect the trophy after winning the series 2-1

    All photos in this post were taken by me.

  • We walked 14 miles… because we wanted to

    We walked 14 miles… because we wanted to

    A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you just the way you are.

    Unknown

    There have been two major additions to my life in the last five years.

    One, taking up walking. Following trails, exploring new places and getting different perspectives of scenes familiar from the window of a car. Walking has subconsciously kept me reasonably fit and healthy, both mentally and physically. I used to do a lot of walking alone, usually on old railway lines. I am also often joined by my mum, who I have a bit of fun with by interviewing her at the end of one of our adventures. Nowadays, I tend to be joined on my walks by the second major addition to my life: friends.

    Walking in the Norfolk countryside offers some stunning scenery

    I will readily admit that I have never found forming friendships easy. I am crippled by self doubt – I am not good enough, not worthy of anyone’s attention. I had a few school friends, as must of us do, and at university I had one friend that helped make being in a new town that bit easier. I am glad to say that friendship remains, albeit long distance, today.

    But in the last few years I have found myself with what I believe are the best group of friends anyone could wish for. Four people who I have laughed with, shared with and tackled life’s hurdles with. They have made me a better person. It’s not exaggerating to say that my life has been utterly changed by them.

    One of these friends, Katie, is my regular walking buddy. We’ve been heading out with her dog Oscar for more than two years now, exploring the Norfolk countryside. Walking with someone else is now such a desirable thing for me that I find walking alone dull. Katie and I have mostly used the disused railway lines towards the north of Norfolk to chew the fat, have a laugh and talk over something that’s bothering us.

    Oscar was yawning before we had even set off

    Our walks are usually between four and six miles, but on a few occasions we have gone, quite literally, the extra mile. In early 2018 we walked from Aylsham to North Walsham and back, a distance of 14 miles, and later on in that year we did a 10 miler.

    Yesterday, we did the Aylsham to North Walsham trek again, this time learning from the errors we had made the first time around. We made sure we had enough fluids with us to avoid becoming as dehydrated, Katie had organised for her mum and her daughter to be waiting at the halfway point so we could have a ‘pit stop’ of sandwiches, and Katie also went through three pairs of socks and two pairs of boots in an effort to avoid the blister hell her wet feet had caused her the first time.

    Oscar enjoys the walks as much as we do

    The weather was just about perfect for the occasion – dry, not too hot and not too cold. We had been building up to this with several walks in the weeks before so we were in decent shape to hammer through the miles.

    Four hours and forty nine minutes after we had set off, we had done it.

    When we had told people what we were planning, the most common question was ‘why?’.

    Well – why not?

  • This is how England could win back the Ashes

    Craig Overton was the last man out at Old Trafford as Australia retained the Ashes

    Australia arrived in England as holders of the Ashes urn and will leave with it still in their possession. Taking the last of the eight wickets they needed to win on the final day of the Old Trafford Test saw them go 2-1 up in what has been a thrilling series with one match left to play.

    The England team captained by Andrew Strauss in 2010-11 was the last visiting side to claim the urn. Should they avoid defeat at The Oval, Australia will have won an Ashes series in England for the first time since 2001 and in doing so inflict England’s first defeat in any home Test series since 2014.

    This is how England can go about winning the Ashes back next time.

    Read the rest of this article on Read Cricket.

  • Having a Blast: my trip to Old Trafford

    On Sunday I went to Old Trafford for the T20 Blast match between Lancashire and Durham.

    Me, my mum and her partner at Old Trafford

    A week on from England becoming world champions (I will never get tired of saying that), cricket is enjoying a boost in popularity. The Cricket Paper reports that counties have noticed an increase in ticket sales for the T20 Blast as people who maybe haven’t been to a match for a while, or indeed at all, seize the opportunity to see the game in the flesh.

    This includes – crucially – children. Most of the crowd in Manchester, which was huge for a domestic game, were families with youngsters. I’m not a big fan of kids – they are noisy, carry illnesses and can’t sit still for five minutes – but they are vitally important for the future of cricket. They all seemed to be having a great time, and that’s key. Children need to think of going to a cricket match as a normal thing to do, and something to look forward to. They will be the next generation of players and fans and will hopefully pass on their enthusiam to their own kids in years to come.

    The players warm up at Old Trafford, Manchester about an hour before the start of play

    I had been to Old Trafford before, for the Test match between England and India in 2014, and enjoyed the laid back atmosphere and friendly stewards. This makes it the ideal venue for 20 over cricket compared to, say, Lord’s which I find stuffy and inaccessible. The emphasis was on fun, with the Lancashire mascot Lanky the Giraffe dancing on the boundary before play began.

    As for the match itself, T20 is perfect for those who are unfamiliar with cricket. It’s short and sharp and you get to see plenty of big sixes and wickets. Lancashire batted first in their opening home game of the tournament and amassed 189-3, opener Steven Croft top scoring with an unbeaten 65 from 43 balls. The star of the show, however, was Australia international Glenn Maxwell. The world number one ranked all rounder in T20s hit 58 off 33 balls with four sixes. Each boundary was received with loud cheers and a burst of pop music. It was interesting to see how partisan the crowd was, a lot of the people there seemed to feel for the Lancashire cricket team the same way I feel for Norwich City Football Club. They weren’t just there to enjoy a day out, they were there to see the home side win.

    Australia international Glenn Maxwell bats for Lancashire in front of a huge crowd at Old Trafford

    Durham never looked like chasing the 190 they needed to win and were all out for 117 within 17 overs. Scott Steel had scored 58 from 46 balls but the next highest score for the visitors was 12. Lancashire won by 72 runs and a couple of run outs were enough to secure Maxwell the player of the match award.

    Maxwell played for Australia in the World Cup (having won it in 2015) so he was the main attraction for the kids. They gathered round to watch him be interviewed at the end of the match, taking photos and hoping for an autograph. The occasion was slightly lacking in big names. Both sides were packed with solid professionals and the standard was high but aside from Maxwell only D’Arcy Short, another Australian, would have been recognisable to most of the crowd. Short was not involved in the World Cup but has played for his country, as well as in T20 leagues around the world. Also on show was Keaton Jennings, who has scored a Test century for England but has otherwise struggled at the highest level and has been dropped from the most recent squad.

    Player of the match Maxwell is interviewed after Lancashire’s 72 run win

    The majority of the England players involved in the victorious World Cup campaign were getting a well deserved rest, with the seven week long tournament soon to be followed by a Test match against Ireland and the five match Ashes series against Australia. Part of me, though, wished that there could have been a way to get those stars involved in the first couple of rounds of T20 Blast fixtures to really capitalise on the current popularity of cricket in this country.

    Had those England players been available, the Lancashire side would have featured Jos Buttler and Durham’s side would have boasted Ben Stokes, who was player of the match in the World Cup final. Mark Wood is also a Durham player but is injured and out until September. It would have been fantastic for the crowd to have been able to see their new heroes, but I understand that with a packed schedule it was almost impossible. Wood and Stokes paraded the World Cup trophy around Durham’s home ground the Riverside on Saturday, as captain Eoin Morgan had done around Lord’s, where he plays for Middlesex, on Thursday. I had a faint hope that Buttler might have done the same around Old Trafford on Sunday but it was not to be.

    The T20 Blast is a fantastic product. Now in its 17th season, the crowds are big, the standard is high and overseas stars want to play in it. If some of it was on Free-to-air television instead of it all being on Sky Sports I have no doubt it would be a massive annual summer event.

    Walking away from Old Trafford, I couldn’t for the life of me fathom why the authorities have felt the need to invent an entirely new format of the game to try to attract new fans. Next year will see the launch of The Hundred, a convoluted version of the game with the simplest part being one hundred balls per innings. Eight completely new teams, based around the major cities and with awful names like London Spirt and Leeds Superchargers, will take part. These teams will have to start from scratch, with none of the existing loyal following of the county sides. The only thing going for it is that some of it will be on BBC TV. It makes absolutely no sense and from what I can see it is doomed to fail.

    My visit to Manchester on Sunday was conclusive proof for me that the England and Wales Cricket Board already has everything it needs to make cricket the undisputed second sport of the nation again. I can only hope that their seemingly muddled thinking doesn’t mean they miss the opportunity.