My day as Surrey 12th man
At last! A challenge that doesn’t at its heart have the sole purpose of humiliating, injuring or making me wear a tiny red miniskirt in front of a crowd of baying Essex supporters. The editor must have been having an off day.
In fact, this month’s challenge is a real honour: to be 12th man in a first class game for Surrey. Don’t they have rules against this kind of thing?
I pitch up at the Hobbs Gate at 10.30am on the day of Surrey v Bangladesh A, telling the attendants to let me through: I’m one of the players. They eye me, with my carrier bag of socks, old trainers and packed lunch very suspiciously, but I’m soon through and meeting my team-mates.
It’s really the most bizarre thing. Only a few days ago I was sat in the stands cheering Surrey on in a tight one-day game, and now here I am being introduced to Chalky Thorpe, Solly Salisbury and Saqi Saqlain Mushtaq (who, even more bizarrely, greets me as a long lost friend: “This is Alex Kemp, he’ll be 12th man today.” “Yes I know him, he’s a very good friend of mine” as he shakes my hand for an extraordinarily long time). I feel like one of the lads already.
Then I’m introduced to my skipper, Mark Butcher – playing his first game since the second Test in South Africa last winter. He doesn’t seem overly thrilled at the prospect of a deerstalkered 12th man. Perhaps I should keep in the background.
I soon find out there’s no chance of that. As soon as play gets going, both batsmen start waving at me from the middle wanting bats or gloves or drinks or, in Butcher’s case, updating on the Test score. “Off you go, Twelfthers,” the players watching on the balcony say – I’m rather proud to have been given a nickname already – and I’m off down the stairs and out on to the field, trying not to spill the cumbersome selection of bats and gloves.
The stairs from the dressing room to the pitch at the Brit Oval are crazily long and steep, and the chaps find my wheezing return every time quite hilarious. I’m more interested in having a nose about the dressing room. I note on Alec Stewart’s old locker that he’s written on the door for the next owner: “Remember, it’s an honour to wear the brown cap. Always enjoy your cricket and play with honour and fun”. I set off with real purpose and swelling of the chest next time one of the batsmen wants a bit of tape for his glove.
Saqlain tries on my deerstalker, to general delight. He’s quite a sight. With his huge beard and no moustache he looks like some kind of Victorian country gent. He wears it all the way through lunch, which is a rather lavish and sumptuous affair. I sit next to Thorpe. When was the last time he was 12th man?, I wonder. “Not so long ago actually. Couple of years back, when I was coming out of my ‘bad days’” Surely you didn’t agree to that? “Mate, you’re never too big to take the drinks out…”
After lunch I’m feeling quite full and waddle off to find a chair on the balcony to put my feet up. “Being the sub is a great life” I reflect to the fellas. “I can’t see why any of you would ever want to be anything other than 12th man.” “Those f•••ing stairs, mate” mutters Solly Salisbury, deadpan. I soon find myself on another long jog to the middle.
The afternoon session is long. Very long. Bats and gloves don’t seem to need changing and there are few wickets falling – the usual time to run out with the drinks. There is little to do. “Most cricket is like this,” Butcher – out for 90 – confides. “And people wonder why we like to have a few drinks! But it’s all trips to the gym now during the quiet periods, not card schools.” I ask what it was like when he was 12th man, back when he was starting out. “The old pros would get you doing all sorts,” he says. “They’d get you to go down the bookies for them, take their shoes to the cobblers… It’s all changed though. If I asked one of the young guys to do that now, I’d get a swift ‘FO’…”
Most of the fellas amuse themselves by cutting out fat bodies in bikinis from different magazine, sticking (the absent) Ali Brown’s face on them and decorating his locker with their homemade art.
Eventually Butcher declares and Surrey take the field. Before going out, Butch tells me that I can come on and field later. This is wonderfully exciting news. “We’ll put you in at short leg,” he says, straight-faced. I’m instructed on what the different signs mean (miming a helmet, shin guards etc) “And when I give you the Sherlock Holmes signal,” says Butcher, puffing on an imaginary Holmes pipe, “That’s when I want you to come on the field.” I’m not sure there’s a place remote enough even on the expansive Oval turf to hide Kemp, but I can barely contain my excitement.
Play chugs on though, and I’m only being called out for the drinks. No Holmes signal to be seen. “Do you think I’ll get called on?” I ask Butcher’s father, Alan, who is coach for the game. “You’ll probably get on for the last five overs. But with the fitness you’ve shown going up those stairs with the drinks, I’m a bit worried about you actually…”
I start to limber up. But with six overs left and the hint of drizzle, they decide to call it a draw! I can’t believe my luck.
As we all wind down afterwards with a beer in the dressing room, Butcher senior gathers the lads around. “Right, training on Monday. 10am.” “Me as well?” I ask hopefully. Butcher has a look of pity in his eyes. “Sorry, Al,” he says, breaking it to me gently. “Not this time.”
