Hurricane Bertha and Higgins make a delayed appearance

Our loyal stalwart Rogers and Out reports on a curtailed day of cricket. We hear how he killed time with some culture between close and his designated train back.  

Middlesex registered a season’s best run of two limited overs games unbeaten after a ‘no result’ against Durham at the Emirates ICG on Sunday. The much expected bad weather materialised and allowed only 14 overs of play, leaving us with hope of qualifying for the Royal London Cup quarter finals, although I’d imagine we’d need to beat both Notts and Kent for that to happen.

I’d purchased flight and train tickets plus hotel that were all non-refundable. Therefore, the news that the back end of Hurricane Bertha was likely to preclude a full match was somewhat unfortunate, but nevertheless I still flew out to Newcastle on Saturday evening.

Sunday morning in the north east started brightly as I made my way to Chester-le-street via Durham, and I was hopeful that the game might last until around 2 or 3 o’clock. I arrived to find that we had won the toss and inserted Durham. Would there be enough time for us to skittle them cheaply and knock off the runs before the rain ?

I took a seat in the lower section of the Don Robson pavilion and was subjected to some rather loud music throughout the hour or so of play, none of which was really to my taste. Nothing by Lieutenant Pigeon nor Whistling Jack Smith, although we were regaled by the predictable ‘Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head’ and ‘Umbrella’ as the heavens opened later.

After his jaded looking performance against Sussex on Friday, I was surprised to see Tim Murtagh opening the bowling for us from the Finchale End. I later discovered that Tom Helm had failed a late fitness test  and was replaced by Ryan Higgins, otherwise I think Murts might have been rested.

However, Murts delivered a fine opening maiden over to Mark Stoneman,  and  he continued to bowl with zest throughout his entire spell. Toby Roland-Jones bowled the second over from the Lumley End, and after Phil Mustard nudged a single, Stoneman pulled the next three balls behind square for six, with twenty runs coming from his first six balls.

Stoneman, who had scored heavily here against us in the County Championship game in early June, was looking to score quickly and in addition to pulling anything short, was proficient through the off side as well. Mustard was not as prolific as his colleague and he was out in TR-J’s next over, driving at a full delivery and taken by Ollie at second slip. Durham were now 24/1 in the fourth over.

Glaswegian Calum MacLeod came in at number three for Durham and failed to trouble the scorers, with Dial M trapping him leg before with the score on 31/2, with Stoneman having made 28 of them.  Test hopeful Ben Stokes was next up for the men from the north, but he suffered an identical fate to Mustard, edging Tobias to Ollie for zero and Durham were 38/3.

Stoneman, who incidentally was captain today, continued scoring freely and was joined in the middle by Paul Collingwood. Toby was eventually replaced by Harry Podmore at the Lumley end whilst Murts toiled on at the other end. However, the sky was getting increasingly gloomy and soon rain started to fall with increasing intensity.

After 14 overs (almost exactly an hour’s play), the umpires took the teams off and I was fairly sure that would be it for the day. Durham ended up on 56/3, with Stoneman unbeaten on 46 from 48 balls. Murts took 1/13 from 7 overs, TR-J 2/37 from 5 and Poddy 0/6 from 2 for us.

The problem I now had was that my return train from Newcastle wasn’t until 8.30 in the evening and it was now 11.30 ! It was a toss up between spending the day in Durham or Newcastle. Newcastle got the nod as the train there from Chester-le-street was first, so I spent a few hours at the Laing gallery there, which had a small exhibition of art from the First World War.

It also had a series of pictures and articles involving Adrian Street, a wrestler from the early Seventies, who was wrestling’s answer to ‘glam rock’ at the time. What I didn’t realise is that he was an ex-miner from South Wales who went to London to make his fortune, became a body builder then went into wrestling. Or, to be more accurate, that form of the sport watched by millions of ‘grapple fans’ on ITV’s World of Sport every Saturday afternoon, overseen by the king of grapple himself, Kent Walton.

The best picture was of the local boy returning to his roots.  Street, in his ‘regalia’ at the pithead with his dad appearing slightly embarassed and a load of other miners in the background looking equally bemused.

After a couple of hostelries were visited, I enquired at Newcastle station how much it would cost for me to come back on an earlier train. After the response of ‘£93’ , I toughed it out, waited until 8.30, eventually arriving home at 01:00. Still, it’ll all have been worthwhile if we qualify for the quarter finals.