Freddie has got Some Chat

After the "game" last week, I was thinking of things that amused me no end around the actual cricket itself. 

Some weeks the cricket itself is the 'thing' - quite often it is the penumbra of things around the cricket that are the 'thing'. What keeps us motivated and coming back for more varies game to game and person to person. 

We have several players who attend games more for a focus on the social, the pizza, the chatter and what not. For some I feel it serves a care in the community type function.

Some weeks, the pre-game high fives, hugs and chatter and catch up's is the most important part of it all for me. It's been a whole week, or a whole winter, and I missed this general atmosphere more in some ways than I missed the game, and the kit I own that is old and doesn't fit anymore.

Some weeks, it's a highly tense, well played game that goes to the wire and gives us all that euphoric buzz that I think only being a part of a team can give you. Other times, we find our entertainment in different ways.

It's the unpredictable nature of any team endeavour that makes this all so inherently uncertain - 11 people turning up determined to have a good time, either through sport, the hilarity that sport creates, or purely by socialising in the sunshine with friends - friendships indeed forged through a common love/hate relationship with this wonderful thing known as cricket.

One part of this is the chatter. Last week had a golden egg of a moment. 

Freddie Meldal is 18 years old, but carries himself with the gravitas of a man more like 30 - confident, fits in with semi grown men with beards and bellies, likable and capable at the same time. He has the air of that one teacher at school that all the kids liked and respected at the same time. And goodness me he has some chat, exemplified by last week. 

Threadgold was batting, and he looked a bit on the scratchy side, accumulating runs without ever looking like he was "in". Freddie was recently 'out' on the side lines, sitting languidly contemplated how he hadn't hit another 50 this week. I don't think Freddie has ever played with Threadgold when the elder man was in his pomp. So Freddie asked, innocently, of the assembled throng, having watched Threadgold swipe and miss at 3 consecutive balls, "Was Dan ever, you know, good at cricket". Cue laughter, Freddie, almost naive in tone then followed up with, "No, I'm serious, you can see he might have been once, I've just not seen it myself". Matt is creasing up, I'm dying, Fraser is finding it all a bit too much. Freddie then said, absolutely pure deadpan, "I meant no offence", and then Dan immediately got out... I mean sport creates some narratives, and Dan could not have heard this, but it was beyond perfect in terms of comedic timing.

Dan leaving the pitch, looking for Freddie

And that, for me, was the best thing about last week. For a man who is 18, lives with his parents, has no job and drives a Kia - he has got some proper moxy.