Pigeon Point

Day One Glamorgan v Surrey, Swalec

Well, in a nutshell, it rained. A lot.

It must be very frustrating for all the cricketers, stuck inside, waiting for the precipitation to cease. What do they do? Do they sit and read papers, listen to the rain coming down at Lords via TMS? Do they go to the gym? Do they eat Welsh cakes and drink tea? Or are there marathon sessions of ‘Connect 4’ and ‘Mousetrap?’

And then of course when the rain stops you have to wait for the conditions to improve enough for the pitch to be playable. You don’t want to be running around in the field and suddenly find yourself doing the splits. I speak from experience. The last time I was in Regents Park with the Rampants I attempted the splits (don’t ask) and managed to do myself a mischief when my trainers slipped on the grass. At the risk of smutty remarks I didn’t think my legs could do scissors these days...

I was surprised we got a single over in today, but in the late afternoon both teams took to the field, with Surrey winning the toss and sticking Glamorgan in. Cosgrove survived a couple of reasonable shouts for LBW (I do love the imagery created by Mark Church via the internet commentary of Tim Linley looking ballerina-like as he appealed for the wicket). Then after scoring a total of 19 runs for no loss the heavens opened once more and everyone departed hastily off the field of play.

The forecast looks a little more optimistic for tomorrow and the day after, although I believe Tuesday is not quite as hopeful. This amount of time lost suggests another draw unless a spectacular amount of wickets fall. Nearly every match in the championship lost a sizeable amount of overs to the weather today. It will be interesting to see how this will affect the results.

Of course, weather conditions play such a large part in cricket, to the extent that non-cricket followers don’t understand why players come off after a bit of rain falls. You get the inevitable “why don’t they have grounds with a roof”? It’d have to be one heck of a roof for the Oval, I tell you! And could you imagine the ground staff having to clean the glass? You could have an extra player in the squad, dangle them from the ceiling in a harness to try and take the aerial catches! And what position would they call it?

Probably, given the amount of bird life at the Oval, it would have to be ‘Pigeon Point’.