Cricket. It goes on for weeks, and when it’s over you play the same team again in a different city. And then again. And you stop every day for tea. And you wear a jumper, and most of the 12 spectators in the stands are dead. It’s sport in the same way that gardening is sport. Or hoovering.
I found out this morning that for centuries there wasn’t even a standard size for a cricket bat. You could turn up with a dustbin lid on a stick and simply park it in front of the stumps. Or you could do what an Australian player called Matthew Hayden did and use Thor’s hammer.
I wish I’d known this when I was at school, because cricket was compulsory. So, twice a week, in the height of the hay fever season, I was forced to play. Which meant standing in front of the stumps while a big boy called Phil threw what was basically a rock at me. And I didn’t have Thor’s hammer or a dustbin lid to hide behind. Just a little plastic box to protect my man vegetables.
After being profoundly uncoordinated — and frightened — for a few minutes, my team would be out for about no runs and we’d have to do fielding. And because I was even more useless at catching, I was forced to stand in the long grass as far away from the action as possible. Which made my hay fever even worse.
Occasionally someone would hit a ball in my direction and I’d be asked to catch it. Which was impossible, partly because it was still hot from re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, but mostly because my eyes were streaming and I was on the cusp of a sneeze so gigantic it would rock seismographs in Hawaii.
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As a result this superheated rock would smash into the end of a finger, causing me to howl in agony and sink to my knees, which meant I couldn’t throw the ball back to the bowler. Which would cause the bigger boys to throw me in the plunge pool the next morning. And hit me with their sharp-cornered Globe-Trotter suitcases.
So today it’s not as though I have a casual dislike of cricket. I actively hate it. I see people playing it sometimes when I’m in Surrey and my lip curls in an involuntary, animalistic display of rage. You know how your dog behaves when it sees a stranger walking past your house? Well, that’s me driving through Chiddingfold. But now I’ve worked out how I can get my own back on these people. I’m going to take all of their money.
For the past 18 months I’ve been engaged in an interesting project at Diddly Squat, trying to monetise bits of the land that don’t normally generate any cash at all. I’ve harvested blackberries and nettles and sent trees off to the local power station and, for the most part, it has all been a complete disaster. But I’ve remained hopeful that if I continue to experiment I will end up with a diamond mine. And so it turned out to be.
Here’s what happened. I received word from the government’s farming police that two of my trees that overhang a footpath for hard-working families in the rambling community might fall over and hit someone on the head. So, at considerable expense, I hired a machine to chop them down. And now I’ve received word from the farming police to say that the machine in question has made a mess of the footpath and that I need to clear it up in case someone falls over. Welcome to farming everyone.
And it really is a big hearty welcome, because the man who came with the second machine looked at the felled trees and said, “They’re nice bat willows, those.”
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Obviously this meant nothing to me, so I checked it out with Cheerful Charlie, who explained that bat willows have nothing to do with squeaky upside-down “bat” bats, but rather leather-on-willow cricket bats. He knew all about this, telling me at length how he and his school friends used to count the grains in their bats and feel proud if there were eight or nine. I had no clue what he was on about. But he did say that my felled trees might produce ten clefts (no idea either). Which might be worth £750 because they could be turned into cricket bats, which might then retail for up to £900. Each.
So stand by, cricketists. I’m going to hurt you, but not like you hurt me. I’m going to hurt you in your wallets. I’m going to become the cricket bat king of Chipping Norton and I’m going to bash your credit cards until they look like Steve Martin’s in Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
I’ve even done a business plan. Demand is huge in India and Pakistan, where cricket has always been popular. But now there’s a game called T20 that can be played in as little as 17 days. In today’s fast-paced life it has really caught on and some say that more than a billion people are playing it at any given moment. Some use bats made from Kashmir willow, but most prefer the English variety because it’s lighter.
And there’s more. Normal cricket has always been too slow and boring for the Americans, and so they decided to play rounders instead. But superfast, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it T20 has caught on over there. It’s not as big yet as Nascar or tractor pulls in Wisconsin, but there are now 6,000 teams and 200,000 players. And with TV coverage now coming on stream, that’s set to explode. And over there they all want bats made from English willow.
Which is why, last weekend, I was to be found in a field we have at Diddly Squat called Cow Ground. It’s littered with springs and, as a result, it’s paradise for anyone who wants to lose a wellie in the ooze. It is, to use the language of AA Milne, a sad and boggy place. And that’s exactly what bat willows love.
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I therefore did a deal with a local supplier for 20 trees, which, even though they’re already six or seven metres tall, cost only 20 quid each. The guy who sold them to me will then maintain them, using sandpaper on emerging branches every year to ensure there are no knots — a bad thing, apparently, if you’re making cricket bats — and then, when I sell them back to him in 20 years’ time, I get a cheque for what, in today’s money, is £15,000.
Well, I won’t get a cheque obviously, because there won’t be cheques then. And there won’t be a Jeremy Clarkson either. But there will be a Jeremy Clarkson’s son, and he loves cricket. So that’s a nice thing I think.
