Facing Flintoff in the nets
Let’s get this straight: I’m no batsman. True, I once played quite a good standard of cricket, but this was years ago when a leaner, fitter, more agile Kemp stood before you. Even then I was always inked in the scorebook at number 11. Now, even on a beach, with a fielder in the sea and another in a deckchair, I struggle to get it off the square. So it’s with a feeling of dread that I greet my latest challenge: face the England bowlers…
I am told the day before that I will be facing an over each from Andrew Flintoff and Jon Lewis, and that it will be proper net conditions and neither will be holding back. I’m also told to buy a box. I buy three. And face up to the prospect of 90+ mile an hour bowling from two cricketers who, if I know anything about professional sportsmen, won’t rest until they’re dancing joyously around my stretcher and singing some special victory song as I’m carried out to the waiting ambulance.
I’m given a load of England cricket gear by the PR lady from Vodafone, who have invited me down for the day, and, as I walk out of the changing room with the three lions on my shirt and an expensive bat in my hand, I start to feel rather more confident. I feel I look the part. I ask Mike, the photographer, to send a few balls down to me to get some practice before the -England lot get here. He says he hasn’t played since school and won’t be very good. I tell him not to worry. It’s only to get my eye in…
He runs up. And clean bowls me first ball. And then the time comes. Flintoff and Lewis amble in to greet the condemned man in a friendly enough fashion. Perhaps this won’t be so bad. Maybe they’ll go easy on me. As I fumble with my pads, I watch Flintoff send down some looseners in the adjacent net. I’ve never seen bowling as fast as this, not up close at any rate. Each one crashes into the back of the net with a stomach-churning thud.
My morbid fascination is broken by Jon Lewis coming up behind me and leading me reluctantly towards the batting end, telling me: “It’s okay. I won’t go as fast as that. I’m the Good Cop, he’s the Bad Cop.” I take my stance. And Good Cop proceeds to ping one off the wicket right into my cobblers. After this rather humiliating (and painful) start, I manage to get a bat on a few. A gloriously timed cover drive would easily have gone for one, were everyone back on the boundary.
Now, I’m no idiot [Let the readers be the judge of this – Ed] and I’ve taken every safety precaution they’ve offered me – I’m not going to face Test-standard bowling without a helmet am I? So we’ve had to fix my trademark deerstalker on top with gaffer tape. If this unedifying spectacle is putting Lewis off his stride, he’s not showing it. Another ball fizzes past my bat.
In the next net, a chap from Channel 4 has turned up to face Flintoff. He’s a stand-up comedian from Australia and is being filmed facing the English bowlers in an Australian shirt and a “comedy” David Boon moustache. I sense a slight annoyance at the comedy effect being ruined by the hopeless left–hander in the next net, swishing in the air, with a deerstalker taped to his head. Who’s the comedian now, eh? Oh. Then it’s my turn to face Freddie Flintoff. I turn up at his net just in time to see him nearly take someone’s head off.
“You won’t go as fast as that, will you?” I ask as I pad down the wicket. “You’ll go easy on me won’t you?” I ask Fred, who worryingly seems to have found his rhythm just in time for me. “Ho, ho, ho,” he booms. “No.” The first ball is fired in and, instinctively I leave my bat hanging in the air and back away to leg as far as possible – bulging into next door’s net.
As Flintoff stoops to pick up the ball, his eyes fix on me with a look of absolute disbelief at my cowardice. I, however, feel rather pleased with myself for having survived. The next ball is slower and I actually feel I could produce a solid defensive shot at this one. But it does something in the air, or off the pitch, or somewhere, and I’m left groping at fresh air. That seems to have been the one concession to the fact that I’m perhaps the worst batsman he’s ever bowled at, and the next ball is a snorter.
Freddie grins, but even though I haven’t hit a ball, he hasn’t hit me, so I’m calling it a draw. Ball four flies off the pitch and thwacks into my thigh pad, but I get my first bit of bat on it. “That wouldn’t have carried,” I tell him. Flintoff returns a weak smile. I’m now feeling more confident and try to read the next ball. I deduce by his whirling limbs it’s going to be a bouncer and take evasive action. Sadly, it’s his slower ball. I duck to a rather tame full toss, but recover in time to get a bit of willow on it.
The final ball is the fastest thing I’ve ever seen. It rasps past my ear, like a huge angry wasp, before I realise it’s left his hand. I end up ducking and weaving like a hopeless drunk [!- Ed]. “THAT was the bouncer,” he grins. But it’s over. I’ve survived. Freddie gives me a bear-like slap on the back as I come out of the net and I’m aware of a very small woman snapping away at me furiously with her camera.
The touring Bangladeshis are having a practice session on the other side of the centre and she appears to be their official photographer. I’m rather confused by her interest in me but suppose she must have seen something in my batting everyone else missed. So I pose with my bat in the air and give her a few practice swishes. As I walk off to the changing rooms, feeling I’ve done rather well, I hear her ask who I was. When she’s told I work for a magazine, she replies: “Oh no, I just wasted three films on him.”
Which I suppose just about sums it up.
