Tuesday 19th June 2007

10 years of Ljubljana cricket club - a retrospective

 Sunday 24th June 2007 sees 2 significant events in the annals of Ljubljana cricket club history. First of all, we have a cricket match at Seebarn in Vienna against United Nations Cricket Club and secondly we celebrate the 10th anniversary to the day of the club's first ever match.

To celebrate this landmark we have held a number of events that we hope will be just as memorable. The first all Slovene national Championships took place with Mežica cc running out winners. Mežica have also hosted Maribor CC in their very first match. Bela Krajina CC has been born (winning their first match against Maribor) and the first "Harvey Norman" Prventsvo v kriketu za osnovne šole (The Harvey Norman championships for primary / elementary schools) has been played out and O.Š Smlednik (whose school overlooks our home ground) defeated OŠ Polje (whose school has our nets). 2 other schools OŠ Nove Fužine and OŠ Danila Kumar were also involved.

On this page we would like to bring you some photos (many unseen before) and thoughts on what the last 10 years have given us.

Backyard cricket Slovenian style. Wherever and whenever we have introduced cricket to Slovenes they have always enjoyed it. Here a pickup game in Konjščica.

 

A tale of two presidents

During a recent visit to Slovenia former club President Roger Metcalfe agreed to answer a few questions from his replacement and current President Brad Eve. Here we see the results in all their glory....

Brad: Roger, could you tell us a little bit about the origins of the club?

Roger: LJCC evolved out of a core of anglophones hanging around Ljubljana who felt like a knock around. I had been lurking around abandoned lots (there were quite a few after the YNA shipped out late in 1991) doing a bit of solo bowling practice against walls, and when I thought it was looking too suspicious I gathered a few others to participate. There were regular Saturday afternoon “odd sports” sessions involving various novelty games provided by the yanks (Dean and Peter A.), mainly in Tivoli, and we also did some cricket. Idriss, the very tall and ebullient Sudanese guy, was shaping up to be quite a Joel Garner.

Greg (Davies) and Fergus (Smith) were also involved, and even Paul Morris showed up. There was also the British money exchange entrepreneur, can’t remember his name, who was a ruthless chucker. And Nachiket (Vaishnu) (aka Notcricket) of course, our very own Tendulkar.

We shipped out to the Olimpija training grounds with supposedly some informal nod from the owners, and after finding some carpet off the back of a lorry we were pretty much set up. The stumps were a cardboard box, if you hit the carpet then the ball bounced fairly truly, and the fencing around made up for the lack of outfielders. There were surprisingly few injuries (my friend George’s mum got a split lip fielding, but that was about it).

The formal start of LJCC actually came about through Dutchman Sander Winkel, working in Ljubljana for the Commission. His brother plays for The Hague CC and they came touring in Austria, so he suggested (through Francis King) that we set up a game. The deal was done in a bravado-filled session in Guinness Pub. The rest is history. Sander W. moved on to Prague, where he played for their team in our glorious victory over them at Valburga.

Brad: How about kit? How did you manage to get your hands on any?

Roger: As for kit, the original odds and ends came from Brighton in my car. The pads, bats, gloves etc. were cast-offs from my old club, the Sussex Ukrainian Cricket Club. The exact origin of the stuff is shrouded in mystery, although tales abound of a certain pile of kit going missing from Sussex University Cricket Club (SUCC) and of remarkably similar kit marked SUCC reappearing in local games, belonging of course to the fortuitously-named Sussex Ukrainian CC.

The only hassle I had transporting this stuff was once when I was stopped by a Slovenian traffic cop, and he was sure the bat was made purely for doing people in.

Brad: How were you able to find other teams to play against in the beginning?

Roger: Getting in touch with other teams in the pre-Google search era was time-consuming, but once The Hague CC came, we learnt of Velden and the Austrian league, whom I contacted, and then I got a list of teams in the region. There was even supposed to be a Mr. Patel with a team in Budapest. I sent out a mailing to all the teams on the list, and heard back from the Austrians and from Lodi and Milan, who seemed delighted to get some new opposition. Greg of course was also involved in much of this and thankfully took on plenty of organising work.

Brad: Finally, could I ask for you to share your best memories of playing for LJCC?

Roger: Best memories of playing for LJCC?

These would undoubtedly include the ‘beauty and the beast’ moment, when Mr. Eve clinically removed the middle stump of the Prague Beast in our game at Valburga. I haven’t seen a stump travel that far in a game of cricket. The whole team was up for a win, we were closing in, the sky was brooding, and Brad unleashes a ridiculously vicious snorter.

‘Beauty and the beast’ (we'll leave you to decide who is who)

And the ludicrous catch by the Fish at Lodi in the 7-a sides. I think he had a fag in one hand as he charged along the boundary, stuck out his other hand and the ball stuck. I don’t think he’d slept the night before.

Other highlights include my pal George (from Brooklyn) playing his only ever game of competitive cricket and taking a marvellous deep slip catch, at which a certain wicket keeper with an OBE ejaculated: “Great catch Bob, or George, or whatever your f***in’ name is!” That was the same game, against the Sri Lanka team at Velden, when their batsmen were trying to get the attention of NASA, and when one sky-high ball, hovering up above long enough for us radio “Houston, we got a problem”, somehow lodged in my hands by the boundary as the opposition fans were yelling “drop it, drop it!”

Or perhaps the delight of seeing Dan Ryan prepare to come to the crease: not one to leave anything to chance, he would produce a pair of stinking old washing-up (I hope) gloves with the finger ends cut off, and place them inside his batting gloves. Presumably to improve grip. Haven’t seen anything about this in the Laws.

Dan Ryan "Oh bollocks - I've forgotten my washing up gloves"

And of course the then president, Milan Kucan, showing up to our first formal game and spending some time fascinated by the finer details of the game, then finally remarking “So why are both teams in white?”

Or families out for a Sunday stroll across the pitch during matches at Valburga, and having to be persuaded that their safety was at risk, especially when Alidzanovic or Fish were bowling.

 

The ones that got away

Over the last 10 years we have posed for, been the subject of or have taken a great deal of photos. We are always looking for more and while doing so, we came across a few that have never appeared on the site (due to being left in cardboard boxes before cheap scanners were available, or forgotten about or just plain lost). Here are the best of the ones that we have just found 

Greg Davies adds just one more tap of the shovel to the pitch after he and a group of enthusiastic volunteers dug the site back in 1998. It is still unknown why they didn't choose to dig it in a straight line.	The magic moment where the first carpet was rolled out and glued onto the pitch. Steve Mayland, Greg Davies, Dan Ryan and Fergus Smith form a committee while Brad Eve pops off to take the photo.
"Watching is boring. Give us a go with the bat." A couple of young spectators decide they want to see what all the fuss is about. Taken in Valburga 1998	Steve teaches more schoolchildren how to bat and bowl. This time the action takes place at Škofija Loka gimnazija
Al Green bowling in the 2nd match we had against the MCC
Dan Ryan bowling vs the MCC in our hastily arranged 2nd match.