My family returned back from Canada in the autumn of 1969. Where I had been an incredibly healthy kid in North America, the damp and moist English winter did me no good whatsoever. In fact, my Godmother cried when she received my first school photo - she thought I looked really ill. Looking at that old photo - I did look really ill...
Because I was only 6½ when we came home, I hadn't really gotten into that much sport. I was terrible at skating so ice hockey - almost a religion in Canada during the winter - was ruled out, so I took an interest in baseball. In the months before we flew back to the UK, I was involved in a local little league. So when I returned to Blighty it wasn't football that I was attracted to, but this peculiar game called cricket - one that my family seemed ill-equipped to explain what it was.
We had moved to Daventry by that time and in early 1970, my mum liked going to Rugby and even Leamington and Coventry, to look around the shops. My earliest memories of living there was going out towards these places every weekend. Therefore, I spent my first couple of years living in Daventry thinking it was in Warwickshire. Subsequently, when the cricket season started, I adopted Warks.
Amazingly enough I can still reel off a host of famous ex-Warwickshire players: Rohan Kanhai, Alvin Kallicharran, Denis Amiss, Bob Willis, Gladstone Small - the list, I promise you, goes on far too long. So, you can gather, despite receiving some ridicule for thinking I lived somewhere I didn't, I stayed loyal to Warwickshire. I never really warmed to Northants, perhaps it was because they've always been perennially crap. Arguably, you could say that I've never been that loyal to the county of most of my life. I used to support Wasps at rugby union, until i saw the error of my ways and I've sort of followed Rushden and Diamonds as my second team since they came into existence during the '90s. I do follow the fortunes of the Cobblers, and I like to see them do well, but, you know...
Anyhow, there have been so real highs and lows with Warks. For much of this season just finished, I would look at the daily scores and after a great start to the season - 2 wins out of 2 - this once mighty team proceeded to lose just about every game that wasn't rain affected. With two matches to go, there was a great chance they would be relegated back to the dungeon of division 2. Then they won the last two games and avoided relegation handsomely; they had done well in limited overs cricket all season, but managed to beat Somerset in the Clydesdale 40 over trophy at the weekend and have finished the season on a high when it could have gone terribly tits up.
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