THE GOOGLY: Cricket videos of yesteryear have kept me entertained in 2019

HUW TURBERVILL: Jeremy Coney psychedelia, super models of Mike Gatting v Shakoor Rana, and Boonie's 52 tinnies

At school we used to do ‘activities’ on a Friday afternoon.

One term I chose football, and in the summer it was cricket, but for the third we were randomly assigned groups. I found myself doing ‘potpourri’, led by the irascible Miss Mitchell.

No one knew what ‘potpourri’ meant. ‘Odds and s*ds’ best describes it. Basket-weaving was how I was forced to spend one afternoon, until I gnawed my own toes off in sheer boredom.

Anyhow, pot-pourri best describes this week’s Googly column, looking at some off-beat little videos I have collected on my mobile over the year. Don’t be smutty – cricket ones, of course!

I recommend it as a fine way to while away 20 minutes at work in the run-up to Christmas.

First up was a wonderful one I came across on www.theaccnz.com, featuring my favourite overseas commentator Jeremy Coney (I paid tribute to his skills earlier in the year)

^{Jeremy Coney in his coaching video}

This clip of him coaching is extraordinary.

The theme tune is psychedelic, like a children’s show from the 1970s after the producers had been dropping too much acid.

The co-stars are notable too. 

There is the umpire Fred Goodall Esq, famous for denying touring sides lbw decisions even if the ball was hitting middle stump one inch up and the batsman was not playing a shot.

And being coached was a young Chris Zinzan Harris (who has just turned 50 incidentally). Coney praises his “nice shapely looking calves”, and teaches him how to leg glance rather than pull: “This will be the shot that can help you get to 15 instead of nine on Saturday,” he advises. Typical Kiwi understated ambition.

Anyhow, click here to see it. It is superb.

Next up is a wonderful little film from the BBC Archive.

#OnthisDay1987: Calling all Cricket fans! London Plus visited a model-making enthusiast who had created an incredibly detailed representation of the game. pic.twitter.com/HKWbnV0KuN

— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) December 10, 2019

Magazine show London Plus visits a model cricket ground built by Peter Coombs and his son Mark in their garden shed in St Albans.

The game is like Subbuteo Cricket, and was 27 years in the making. The details are extraordinary. There is even a little pad on the finger of the ‘batsman’.

They had more than 100 players, and we see an authentic Mike Gatting have an altercation with a Pakistani umpire in a topical tête-à-tête that recalled the recent events at Faisalabad.

Father and son played one hour a day, and a lamp is programmed to sweep slowly cross the pitch to simulate the sun in a day’s play.

Finally, an old favourite – David Boon’s 52 tinnies on the flight to England for the 1989 Ashes series.

Dean Jones is the narrator, and the detailed account is amusing – especially on how the team drew up a rota for people to sit with him for shifts (five cans at a time). 

Apparently the pilot allowed Boon more time to break Rod Marsh’s record by delaying the landing, doing an extra circle around Heathrow airspace.

Coach Bobby Simpson’s reaction is also amusing. Sitting in business class, when he heard a cheer go up to mark Boonie reaching his half-century he thought it was because he’d won at cards, and said: “Listen to the camaraderie.” Alas the pilot then gave the game away, sending Simpson “purple with rage”!

Enjoy, but don’t be offended, some of the language is a little coarse.