The Nurdler » Lords http://www.thenurdler.com Nurdler (n): 1. One who scores runs at cricket by gently nudging the ball into vacant areas of the field. 2. Someone struggling with life\ Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:08:33 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Quote of the day: 1/06/2010 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-1062010-post2181 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-1062010-post2181#comments Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:18:45 +0000 The Umpire http://www.thenurdler.com/?p=2181 “Peter Crouch, eat your heart out” – the ECB blog salutes tourist and celebrant extraordinaire Tamim Iqbal.

Read its full post here.

]]> http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-1062010-post2181/feed 0 Quote of the day: 31/05/2010 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-31052010-post2142 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-31052010-post2142#comments Mon, 31 May 2010 10:13:01 +0000 The Umpire http://www.thenurdler.com/?p=2142 “Someone would have had a word with young Tamim Iqbal a couple of decades ago. ‘You can’t play like that in Test cricket, lad’” – Vic Marks on Bangladesh’s brilliant opening batsman. Is it just us, or is he channelling Boycott there?

Read his full piece on the The Guardian’s Sports Blog here.

]]> http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-31052010-post2142/feed 0 Quote of the day: 30/05/2010 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-30052010-post2138 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-30052010-post2138#comments Sun, 30 May 2010 10:09:15 +0000 The Umpire http://www.thenurdler.com/?p=2138 Test Match Extra celebrates Jimmy's first Test wicket of the summer.]]> “Anderson produced a near-perfect delivery shaping to swing up the hill to the watchful Jahurul Islam only to nip away off the seam and kick to take the outside edge for another Matt Prior catch” – Test Match Extra celebrates Jimmy’s first Test wicket of the summer.

Read its full match report from yesterday’s Test here.

]]> http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-30052010-post2138/feed 0 Quote of the day: 29/05/2010 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-29052010-post2134 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-29052010-post2134#comments Sat, 29 May 2010 09:43:27 +0000 The Umpire http://www.thenurdler.com/?p=2134 “Swann et al have the simple briefing of ‘take wickets, then take more’ on day three, as the hosts look to extinguish Bangladesh’s valiant resistance like a long overdue pin thrust into the side of the Betfair blimp” – Cow Corner’s assessment of the day’s work. Here’s hoping they get on with it…

Read the full review of yesterday’s play here.

]]> http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-29052010-post2134/feed 0 Quote of the day: 28/05/2010 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-28052010-post2125 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-28052010-post2125#comments Fri, 28 May 2010 06:30:58 +0000 The Umpire http://www.thenurdler.com/?p=2125 “We were all thrilled to hear the news of CMJ’s elevation [to MCC president-elect] and I have no doubt he will do a splendid job in his year in office. Although when I saw the present incumbent, John Barclay, on Monday night I did ask if he really knew what he was letting the MCC in for. I warned John that CMJ would clearly be late for most official functions, with the reasonable chance he’d turn up for duty at The Oval rather than Lord’s” – TMS producer Adam Mountford pokes some gentle fun at the unworldly CMJ.

And the whole post is worth a read, as he earlier describes how the latest incumbent of No 10 Downing street seems to think a certain strawberry-blond T20 captain answers to the name of ‘Colin’…

Read the full piece and shake your head in astonishment here.

]]> http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-28052010-post2125/feed 0 Quote of the day: 19/04/2010 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-19042010-post1953 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-19042010-post1953#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 08:37:42 +0000 The Umpire http://213.175.213.22/nurdler/?p=1953 “Usually the drinks waiter is a lowly young hopeful but on this occasion it was the former Test player and captain of the county, Robert Croft. It was a poignant reminder of the passage of time, of how the end of a lengthy career can often resemble its beginning” – Different Strokes reflects on how county cricket can encapsulate a player’s entire career.

Read the full post here.

]]> http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-19042010-post1953/feed 0 Quote of the day: 17/04/2010 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-17042010-post1949 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-17042010-post1949#comments Sat, 17 Apr 2010 07:54:35 +0000 The Umpire http://213.175.213.22/nurdler/?p=1949 “The real highlight was the abuse heaped on some hapless ancient in the pavilion who was holding up play by doddering down the steps. ‘Sit down. Either that or drop dead,’ shouted a stripling in the Grand Stand. A stripling of about 60, that is. Only at county cricket can the middle-aged feel young again” – Stephen Moss soaking up the colour at Lord’s for The Guardian.

Read the full blow by blow account of the day’s county play here.

]]> http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-17042010-post1949/feed 0 A picture that provoked thousands of words – most of them wrong, as it turns out… http://www.thenurdler.com/a-picture-that-provoked-thousands-of-words-most-of-them-wrong-as-it-turns-out-post1826 http://www.thenurdler.com/a-picture-that-provoked-thousands-of-words-most-of-them-wrong-as-it-turns-out-post1826#comments Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:12:20 +0000 The Umpire http://www.thenurdler.com/?p=1826 Could a photograph that helped foster a series of misconceptions about wealth, class and cricket’s role in Britain’s social divide actually have been about something else entirely?

That’s the fascinating premise explored in yesterday’s Guardian by columnist Ian Jack. He takes as his subject an image of five young boys captured outside Lord’s in 1937 at the annual Eton versus Harrow cricket match.

Two of them are Harrovians dressed in top hats, tails and sporting canes and buttonholes, seemingly gazing majestically into the middle distance. (In fact they were waiting, perhaps with some anxiety, for the parents of one of them to arrive.) The other three are considerably more proletarian, and seem to find the posh attire of their contemporaries rather amusing.

It’s poignant enough that this photo should have been taken just three years before the outbreak of a war that would see large swathes of London bombed to the ground and many young men of their age soon to join the armed forces.

Indeed, as Jack demonstrates, at least two of them went on to serve in the Royal Navy – and maybe not the ones you would expect, either – and another in the Royal Corps of Signals. Some of them went on to have long, contented lives and others met with tragedy.

And working out which is which is not as straightforward as looking at the image and guessing.

Jack’s research, and compilation of others’ research, establishes a number of interesting things. They include the fact that the photo was possibly partly posed and not just snatched, the fact that the identities of photographer and alma mater of the participants was not as widely believed, and the notion that the class divide between the two groups of boys was considerably wider than it, in fact, was.

As he points out, stereotypical ‘toughs’ and ‘toffs’ they certainly were not – and their families have not always welcomed the fact they were portrayed in this way in a photo which is still being used as a generic illustration to this day.

And the lesson we took away from this piece was that, while Britain had and still has an unequal and polarised society, it is a much, much more nuanced and complicated situation than the cartoon proposition of this image would suggest.

For if it was that simple, maybe it would be easier to tackle.

Jack says: “As a way of summarising England’s complicated cross-currents of money and manners, it was remarkably binary; as simple a division of English society as that between Lord Snooty and his enemies, the Gasworks Gang, in the Beano’s weekly comic strip (which started – was there something in the air? – in the year after Sime’s picture was first published).

“As a way of describing the boys themselves – their circumstances and position in the hierarchy – it was also remarkably untrue.”

You can read the article and see the image here and read a longer version of Jack’s research in Intelligent Life magazine here.

]]> http://www.thenurdler.com/a-picture-that-provoked-thousands-of-words-most-of-them-wrong-as-it-turns-out-post1826/feed 0 Quote of the day: 22/03/2010 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-22032010-post1810 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-22032010-post1810#comments Mon, 22 Mar 2010 08:50:22 +0000 The Umpire http://www.thenurdler.com/?p=1810 “Calls to the BCCI to seek clarification on this point have proved fruitless, however we have since been advised that Yuvraj will be required to represent India in this tournament, therein leaving us in an untenable position, leading to us make the decision to notify Yuvraj Singh’s representatives that we will not be pursuing our interest in bringing him to Lord’s” – Yuvraj Singh was prepared to play for Middlesex but, in the event, Middlesex was not prepared to sign Yuvraj Singh.

Read the full story here.

]]> http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-22032010-post1810/feed 0 Quote of the day: 18/11/2009 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-18112009-post920 http://www.thenurdler.com/quote-of-the-day-18112009-post920#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:11:05 +0000 The Umpire http://www.thenurdler.com/?p=920 The Guardian's sports blog on the latest cricketing storm in a teacup.]]> “I do wonder whether Lord’s would be so keen to keep its title if it had been founded by a man with a rather less grand handle. Sometimes fate just fits: cricket got Thomas Lord, the toilet got Thomas Crapper” – The Guardian’s sports blog on the latest cricketing storm in a teacup.

Read the full story here.

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