I have the pleasure of saying the had by the biggest highlight of my trip over the weekend. (For those cricket non-lovers/people who’ve got no idea what the game in all about, you might not appreciate this as much, but that’s the lot in life you’ve choosen by not following the noble game : )
For those of you who bothered to read my last email, you’ll remember me describing how I landed a job working at Lords Cricket Ground doing basic bar work. Well, on Saturday I had my first days work there for a One Day series final game between England and South Africa.
After working a full-time week I was required to be a the ground by 7am on a Saturday morning, so by the time my alarm went off that morning at 5.00am I wasn’t exactly the most chipper camper. But by the end of the day my tiredness had been well and trully forgotten.
When I arrived there, I lined up with the rest of the match day workforce of 1-200 people to be allocated the area I’d be working in for the day.
I ended up being told I’d be working as the barman in the Media Centre, which to refresh peoples memopry is the big blimp looking thing at one end of the ground where the TV Commentators, Journalists, photographers, etc are based.
To get to the point, I spent the day surving the whole host of England/Sth African ex-players/greats of the game that I’d grown up watching, who now make up the media. Let me give you a list of some of the names to put you in the picture:
Gower, Atherton, Gatting, Botham, Michael Holding, Michael Slater (the only Aussie), Gus Fraser, Henry Olonga, Alan Donald, the English selectors, among others.
I’m even able to say that I had the pleasure of being getting Michael Slater and a few others quite drunk by the end of the day.
It’s a pity it wasn’t an Australian game otherwise there would have been the entire Aussie media contingent there….although, if Ritchie Bennau had of been there I’d would have been kicked out before long for endlessly quoting 12th Man sayings at him (”Ritchie, Ritchie!, How ’bout an autograph”).
On top of all this, I was able to spend the day getting paid to watch a game of cricket from the best view point in the ground.
As I said, by the end of the day I’d forgotten all about how tired I should have been, had I not have been so excited.
There’s also a test match coming up at Lord’s in two weeks so I’m going to have to see if there’s any chance of getting myself put back in the bar for that as well. The only problem is that I’d have to take a few days of my full-time work to do it. But I’m thinking that it might well be worth working my arse off and sacrificing the money for. I’m just going to have to see what I can scam….