I’ve not seen much cricket this season.
Apart from one day of the pre-season friendly against Gloucestershire, I’ve only seen Somerset play three times – their loss to Glamorgan in a T20 group phase game, their semi-final defeat at Finals Day, and Day 3 of the recent championship game against Essex when they took just three opposition wickets and made a draw seem the likeliest outcome in a game they subsequently won – but only when I was absent from the ground.
Which is why, yesterday, for the good of the team, I worked from home.
Not that I believe such superstitious nonsense, you understand – but it’s not worth tempting fate when it comes to our chances of winning the four-day competition this year – something that I’ve got my fingers crossed you all believe too!
Luckily – and I say this lest the boss should ever read this – those in hand were largely mundane administrative tasks, allowing me to free up some of even my all too limited cognitive capacities to have the livestream running alongside the Excel spreadsheets and Word documents that were open on my computer. So don’t anyone jump to any irrational conclusions about my work ethic!
Especially as, so absorbed was I in composing a number of emails, it was a little after 11.15am before I realised that the game had begun. And my stay away policy seemed to be working when Josh Thomas reached his fifty. Sadly, though, he was out shortly after but, rather than blaming my tuning in to the broadcast, I like to think the blame lies fairly and squarely on Pete Trego’s jumper that livestream viewers were ‘treated’ to during that short phase of play.
This seemed a much more likely cause of Thomas’s downfall – and all the more so when, moments after Trego left the commentary box to ‘rethink his fashion choices’, Tom Lammonby reached his half-century and Somerset looked pretty comfortable on 125-1.
With my being gainfully employed yesterday evening, and therefore having to leave the house before we normally eat, I was forced to have my dinner at lunchtime. As far as I’m aware this shouldn’t have had any cosmic consequences but just to be sure I mitigated any risk by eating with my lucky knife and fork – a precaution seemingly well worth taking given how, on returning to my study, Somerset had passed Glamorgan’s first innings total having lost only two wickets – Goldsworthy, significantly, having fallen whilst I was away from my desk.
Not that it has anything to do with the game being played in Taunton, but over lunch, whilst discussing the matter with my domestic batting partner, we were reassured that the holiday cottage we’re staying in next week is further from a major thoroughfare than our own peacefully located home which is just 44.739 cricket pitches away from the M5 – a fascinating fact that astonishingly meant nothing to her!
Distressing though that was, it was early in the afternoon session that my increasingly inconsistent worldview was turned upside down in an even more dramatic manner.
Because seconds after Trego took up commentary again, still sporting his eye-catching knitwear, Lammonby, now in his 90s, was given out leg before wicket – only to be reinstated when a no ball was called as a result of the fielding side having three men behind square on the leg side.
But having for a second doubted the malevolent influence of lurid pullovers, and being forced therefore to rethink my own culpability for Thomas’ earlier dismissal, I decided that the cause of Lammonby’s good fortune was indeed my absence from the ground.
Which seemed a reasonable conclusion when Lammonby again escaped when he was caught behind off another, more conventional, no ball.
But, as we all know, bad things come in threes, which probably accounts for why, still five runs short of a century, Lammonby fell – caught and bowled by Dan Douthwaite.
After all the excitement, and the subsequent wicket of Nicholls – sorry, I failed to find a four-leaf clover in my back garden during the lunch interval – the afternoon session continued with me sending more emails than Rew and Abell scored runs as they reached their fifty partnership. But not, I confess, as many as the 76 they’d put on by tea.
Meanwhile, a long, long way from where I sat, something remarkable was taking place in Headingley. For it was there that Yorkshire women, chasing Somerset Women’s 130, went from 121-5 to 125 all out – a Somerset victory every bit as remarkable as the one secured by the men at the same ground earlier in the season.
And it should be noted that the turnaround, brought about by Craig Overton’s heroics, took place whilst I again was at work – entering the church I was speaking at with the team seemingly having no chance of victory, only to emerge a couple of hours later with the win and a place in T20 Finals Day secured.
After tea, Rew completed his half-century, before Abell was out five runs short of his, and Archie Vaughan was as fortuitous as Lammonby had been previously when he too was caught off a no ball. And then Rew was out – a little ‘unluckily’ according to the ever-so-cosy Trego who remained seemingly oblivious to how he was almost certainly accountable for the young wicketkeeper’s downfall.
At which point I had to leave for my evening meeting, but I set off confident that with Craig O at the crease, and me driving even further away from the ground, nothing could possibly go wrong. And as I found out later, very little did – with the team narrowly missing out on full batting points when, with a first innings lead of 247, Vaughan was last man out for an excellent run-a-ball 68. And the cherry on the already iced cake was Glamorgan losing one of their openers off the very last ball of the day!
All of which leaves me on the horns of a particularly spiky dilemma – because having done so well with me watching from afar, I really would love to go to the game today and watch the team play live. But with the weather set to be a little cooler, and Trego liable to need to wrap up warm, perhaps it’s best if I stay at home.
Because as I say, it is just possible that the boss will indeed read this!
Other cricket related posts:
Cricketing blogs from 2026
To read ‘A quiet day at the cricket’, click here
To read ‘Why the unimportant matters’, click here
To read ‘With four-day cricket in mind’, click here
To read ‘The true meaning of cricket’, click here
Cricketing blogs from 2025:
To read ‘The Untold Story of Finals’ Day’, click here
To read ‘Only A Day Away’, click here
To read ‘No smoke without fire’, click here
To read ‘Importantly, why cricket doesn’t matter’, click here
To read ‘I Spy Somerset’s 150th Anniversary Season’, click here
To read ‘A Spring Watch’, click here
Cricketing blogs from 2024:
To read ‘Reasons to be cheerful’, click here
To read ‘First of the Summer Wine’, click here
To read ‘Safe and Sound at the County Ground, Taunton’, click here
To read ‘Is Cricket Amusing Itself to Death’, click here
To read ‘A Purr-fect day at the cricket’, click here
To read ‘Worth Every Penny’, click here
To read ‘The Somerset Cricket Emporium – 2024’, click here
To read ‘One Fine Day’, click here
To read ‘WWFD – what would Freddie do?’, click here
To read ‘A Shady News Story’, click here
To read ‘The Abolition of County Cricket’, click here
Cricketing blogs from 2023:
To read ‘20 Things we have learnt this summer’, click here
To read ‘When rain stops play’, click here
To read ‘Only a game’, click here
To read ‘The Hundred: is cricket amusing itself to death?’, click here
To read ‘The Somerset Cricket Emporium – 2023’, click here
To read ‘for the third time of asking, CRICKET’S COMING HOME…surely’, click here
To read ‘Twas the week of the final’, click here
To read ‘Sharing the important things: on introducing your grandchild to cricket’, click here
To read ‘Somerset v Nottinghamshire T20 Quarter Final 2023’, click here
To read ‘Breaking News’, click here
To read ‘Lewis Calpaldi – Retired Hurt?’, click here
To read ‘Cricket: It’s All About Good Timing’, click here
To read ‘Bazball, Bazchess, Bazlife’, click here
To read ‘Online criticism: it’s just not cricket’, click here
To read ‘Cigarettes, Singles, and Sipping Tea with Ian Botham: Signs of a Well Spent Youth!’, click here
To read ‘A Historic Day’, click here
To read ‘Cricket – through thick and thin’, click here
To read ‘Stumpy: A Legend Reborn’, click here
To read ‘my love is NOT a red, red rose’, click here
Cricketing blogs from previous years:
To read ‘A Cricketing Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story’, click here
To read ‘Scooby Doo and the Mystery of the Deseted Cricket Ground’, click here
To read ‘Brian and Stumpy visit The Repair Shop’, click here
To read ‘A Tale of Two Tons’, click here
To read ‘A Song for Brian’, click here
To read ‘A Somerset Cricket Players Emporium 2022’ click here
To read ‘A Cricket Taunt’, click here
To read ‘A Song for Brian’, click here
To read ‘At Season’s End’, click here
To read ‘A Day at the Cricket’, click here
To read ‘The Great Cricket Sell Off’, click here
To read ‘On passing a village cricket club at dusk one late November afternoon’ click here
To read ‘How the Grinch stole from county cricket…or at least tried to’. click here
To read ‘How Covid-19 stole the the cricket season’, click here
To read ‘A Cricket Tea Kind of a Day’, click here
To read ‘Life in the slow lane’, click here
To read ‘Frodo and the Format of Power’, click here
To read ‘If Only’, click here
To read ‘I’ve got a little CRICKET list’, click here
To read ‘Eve of the RLODC limericks’ click here
To read ‘It’s coming home…’, click here
To read ‘A Song for Ben Green’, click here
To read ‘Enough Said…’, the last section of which is cricket related, click here
A Jack Leach Trilogy:
To read ‘For when we can’t see why’, click here
To read ‘WWJD – What would Jack Do?’, click here
To read ‘On Playing a Blinder’, click here
To read ‘Coping with Disappointment’, click here
And to finish – a couple with a theological flavour
To read ‘Somerset CCC – Good for the soul’, click here
To read ‘Longing for the pavilion whilst enjoying a good innings’, click here
Some musings 