Tag: mammals

All Time XIs – Detective Fiction

An all time XI of players who have namesakes in detective stories and a photo gallery.

Today I select an XI of players who are namesakes of characters in detective fiction.

THE XI IN BATTING ORDER

  1. Percy Holmes (right handed opening batter, Yorkshire and England). In most eras other than the one he played in he would have been one of the first names on the England team sheet, especially given what a great partnership he formed with Herbert Sutcliffe. As it was he generally missed out due to the presence of Jack Hobbs. His record for Yorkshire was outstanding, and at the time of his retirement included five of the ten highest individual scores made for the county. His fictional alter ego is of course the one and only Sherlock Holmes.
  2. Herbert Sutcliffe (right handed opening batter, Yorkshire and England). One of the greatest opening batters ever to play the game, and shared 69 first class century opening stands with Holmes. He gets in by way of Magda Josza’s “Sherlock Holmes and the Femmes Fatales”, which features among others Lady Elizabeth Sutcliffe and her uncle Sir Vincent Sutcliffe.
  3. Fred Bakewell (right handed top order batter, Northamptonshire and England). By the time a car crash brought his career to a premature close he had done more than enough to establish himself as a great batter. His fictional equivalent is Diana Bakewell, heroine of the Rachel McLean/ Millie Ravensworth series of London cosy mysteries of which I have read three thus far.
  4. Jack Ryder (Australia, right handed batter, right arm medium fast bowler). One of the finer batters of the 1920s, his credits include a test match double century. He was also a useful enough bowler to occasionally be entrusted with the new ball. His namesake is James Ryder, villain in “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”.
  5. *Warwick Armstrong (Australia, right handed batter, leg spinner, captain). A magnificent all rounder, and a ruthlessly effective leader. The eight successive Ashes match victories he presided over (a 5-0 sweep in Australia in 1920-1, and the first three matches of the series in England in 1921) remains an all time record. His alter ego is Superintendent Armstrong from the Museum Detectives series.
  6. Vallance Jupp (Sussex, Northamptonshire, England, right handed batter, off spinner). In the 1920s he achieved the double feat of 1,000+ runs and 100+ wickets in FC matches eight times in consecutive seasons. I have slipped him in by means of a small piece of sleight of hand – one of The Railway Detective, inspector Robert Colbeck’s colleagues is an inspector Vallence, and by altering one letter I got in a link to my favourite of all detective series.
  7. +Adam Gilchrist (Australia, wicket keeper, left handed batter). |One of the all time greats of the game, although his legacy could be considered tarnished by the fact that a number sides nowadays blatantly sacrifice keeping quality for better batting from the keeper. One of the three students in the Holmes story of that title is named Gilchrist.
  8. Gus Atkinson (Surrey, England, right arm fast bowler, right handed batter). He has had a superb start to his England career, though like too many of his team mates he had a poor time on the recent tour of Australia. Gus the cat is a character in the London cosy mysteries that also gave us a Bakewell.
  9. Don Wilson (Yorkshire, England, left arm orthodox spinner, left handed batter). Though his England record was not great he took his first class wickets at 21 a piece. His alter ego is of course Daniel Wilson, one half of the Museum Detectives.
  10. Ted McDonald (Australia, Lancashire, right arm fast bowler, right handed batter). One half of the first great fast bowling pair to operate at test level along with Jack Gregory, he later became one the spearheads of Lancashire’s most successful ever period. Though I have to add a letter to his surname to do it, I have two very different alter egos for him: Alec MacDonald, one of the few Scotland Yarders Holmes actually treats with respect (see “The Valley of Fear”) and Kylie MacDonald, one of the pair of detectives in the elite NYPD Red unit that features in a series of books with that title, the first six by James Patterson and Marshall Karp, and the seventh by Marshall Karp.
  11. William Mycroft (Derbyshire, left arm fast bowler, right handed batter). Took over 800 FC wickets at 12 a piece in his career. With one Holmes brother sharing his name with an opening batter this XI ends with the other, Mycroft, sharing his name with an opening bowler.

This side has a more than adequate batting line up, and a stellar array of bowling talent – McDonald, Mycroft and Atkinson as front line pacers, with Ryder available as fourth seamer if needed, and Wilson, Jupp and Armstrong covering all the spin bases. I will not do honourable mentions for this one – there are a vast range of possibilities. Feel free to comment with your own ideas.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

Mental Health Day at Watatunga

A look at a fascinating morning and early afternoon yesterday at Watatunga Wildlife Reserve, complete with photographs.

Yesterday four members of the West Norfolk Autism Group went to Watatunga Wildlife Reserve, four miles south of King’s Lynn, for what as supposed to be a get together of people from various charities with mental health connections and Watatunga management to discuss working together and making the Watatunga experience more accessible. As part of this we were to be shown the entire reserve by means of trailer rides.

LACK OF TAKE UP

In the event our group was the only group to show up, and the Watatunga people decided to do only one trailer ride and then we would talk over coffee. The Watatunga experience was thoroughly enjoyable, and we had a very constructive discussion afterwards.

This is an Indian bustard, an even bigger beast of a bird…
…than this, which is a great bustard.
The brindled wildebeest closer to the water than usual for such a creature, because he has made friends with some water buffalo, and although he won’t join them in the water he will go close to the edge when they are in the water.
The brindled wildebeest has a name – William – and a nickname – Willy Wonka. This close up og his head shows the wonky horns that give him his nickname.
Water buffalo doing water buffalo things, with coots in the background.
This is an eastern Bongo – the silvery stripes make it very distinctive.
This is a Cape Eland, the largest of all antelope species.
Possibly the best picture I got of the bongo.
Three species in a single picture – the brindled wildebeest, the Cape Eland and the bongo are all present.
A Nilgai
two male silver pheasants.
The first of two guinea fowl species we would see.

WATATUNGA WILDLIFE

The name Watatunga has two elements, the ‘Wat’ part comes from Watlington, the nearest village to the reserve, while the ‘atatunga’ derives from Sitatunga, which is one of the species of ungulates there. Apart from the water buffalo, which are of course cattle and have horns the ungulates fall in to two main types – antelopes and their kin, which have horns, and deer which have antlers. As well as antlers being in general considerably more elaborate than horns there is a second key difference – horns are for life, whereas antlers are seasonal. This latter explains why William the brindled wildebeest has wonky horns – he took a knock before he was brought to Watatunga, and because horns are for life his horns are permanently misaligned. As well as the ungulates there are some exotic birds housed at Watatunga. The first part of the gallery above included cranes. We will be seeing other species in the second part of the gallery.

This is a roan antelope.
Pere Davide’s Deer
Vulturine guinea fowl.
Javan peafowl – these differ from the Indian variety in that the male and female have the same colouring, and that they are green rather than blue.
The great bustard, ar rest. Your reminder that birds are feathered dinosaurs!
These were not flagged up by our guides, but I reckon they are Egyptian geese.
White stork.
Our transport round the reserve.

All Time XIs – Not Quite Test Class

A twist on one of my regular themes – Pick an XI of players whose averages suggest that they weren’t quite test class but who were nevertheless very valuable to their side.s.

Today in a twist on my usual theme I select a team of players who by their averages seem to fall short of test class but who were hugely valuable to their respective teams. I have allowed myself one sneaky selection who many would say should be disallowed due to the era in which he played, but the other 10 are bona fide qualifiers on my criteria.

THE XI IN BATTING ORDER

  1. John Wright (New Zealand, left handed opening batter, 5,334 runs at 37.82). A couple of runs per innings short of the usual modern day benchmark for front line test batter, but the gritty left hander was a crucial component of the New Zealand sides of the 1980s.
  2. Tamim Iqbal (Bangladesh, right handed opening batter, 5,134 test runs at 38.89). With a left handed sticker as one opener the ideal counterpart to him would be right hander with more attacking instincts, and the Bangladeshi, probably the classiest batter his country has produced to date fits the bill perfectly.
  3. Mark Butcher (England, left handed batter, very occasional right arm medium pacer, 4,288 runs at 34.58). He had a two-phase career, struggling initially but becoming a very important member of the England sides of his day later on. He was the matchwinner at Headingley in 2001 with a blistering 173* as England chased down over 300 in the fourth innings.
  4. *Nasser Hussain (England, right handed batter, captain, 5,764 runs at 37.18). It was he as captain who began England’s revival from hitting rock bottom in 1999, and he was by then a very highly respected batter. His career highlight came at Edgbaston in 1997, when after Australia were shot out for 118 batting first he scored 207.
  5. Clem Hill (Australia, left handed batter, 3,412 runs at 39.21). The sneaky pick – at the time of his retirement he had scored more test career runs than anyone else, and among those who played 10 or more tests only Ranji, with an average of 45 outranked him on that metric.
  6. Mulvantrai ‘Vinoo’ Mankad (India, right handed batter, left arm orthodox spinner, 2,109 runs at 31.47, 162 wickets at 32.32). Fails to qualify as test class in either department, but for all that he was one of India’s most important ever players. He often had to open the batting because there were few Indians in those days who had the technique to cope with the new ball when it was moving, and he also had to bowl huge numbers of overs because India were short staffed in that department owing to their domestic cricket being played on roads – the only two first class matches ever to produce an aggregate of over 2,000 runs were both played in India, and both during Mankad’s playing days.
  7. +Ben Foakes (England, right handed batter, wicket keeper, 1,107 runs at 29.91, 68 catches and eight stumpings). An all time great of the keeper’s art, but many question his place in the side on grounds of his batting. He bats in the top half of the order for Surrey, and there are few if any real bunnies in the Surrey line up, so he never has to try to shepherd them, as happened in the second innings at Ranchi, when he was stranded with only Bashir and Anderson for company.
  8. Jack Gregory (Australia, right arm fast bowler, left handed batter, 85 wickets at 31.15, 1107 runs at 36.96). Was part of a devastating new ball pairing with Ted McDonald in 1920-1, but once he lost the Tasmanian’s support at the other end when the latter moved to England to play as a Lancashire League pro and ultimately for Lancashire his bowling fell away, with injuries also taking toll – a knee injury terminated his career in the first match of the 1928-9 Ashes.
  9. Phillip DeFreitas (England, right arm fast medium bowler, right handed batter, 140 wickets at 33.57, 934 runs at 14.82). On the face of one of far too many England cricketers of that era whose averages were the wrong way round, but his bowling was often valuable for England, never more so than in 1991, in which season he recorded his best ever innings figures of 7-70. He was also a magnificent outfielder, with safe hands and a very powerful and accurate throw.
  10. Nathan Lyon (Australia, off spinner, 527 wickets at 30.35). Bowling average just the wrong side of 30, but this is an off spinner who has played half his matches or thereabouts in Australia, and the record of visiting off spinners in Australia makes pretty grim reading.
  11. Steve Harmison (right arm fast bowler, 226 wickets at 31.82). When he was first called up for England he was wild and wayward, with most of such wickets as he managed to take being caught at deep third man, but he had a great period in the middle of his career. In the first match of the 2005 Ashes he quite literally left his mark on the Australian top three – all copped bruises from him early in their innings.

This side has a solid looking top five, with a good mix of defence and attack, Mankad having the luxury of being in an all rounder’s best position, a great keeper and a quartet of frontline bowlers capable of great things. Gregory, Harmison and DeFreitas should form an effective pace/ seam/ swing trio and Lyon and Mankad are a contrasting pair of spinners. This side, for all that in theory all 11 of its members fall short of test class should be able to give a good account of itself, especially given that they will be well led by Hussain.

I am not doing an honourable mentions section this time, but there was a challenger for Mankad’s slot – Shakib Al Hasan of Bangladesh who averages 39 with the bat and 31 with the ball. I opted for Mankad on two grounds – firstly there is still time for Shakib to disqualify himself (most likely with the bat if he does manage it) and secondly I believe that Mankad would fare better as an all rounder in this XI than he did when having to virtually carry an ordinary India side on his shoulders. Also, though I do not list this as a reason there is another factor – I wanted to take the opportunity to showcase Mankad as a fine cricketer and not just as guy associated with a form of dismissal that for no good reason tends to generate controversy.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off – I have a bumper crop at present, and this gallery could have been bigger had I wanted it to be so…

‘Cormorant Platform’ had a splendid turnout on Monday as these pictures show.
Yesterday was grey and rainy.
An ExCel bus on each side of the road – this is a designated driver change point, necessitated by the fact that the full route between Norwich and Peterborough takes over three hours.
This little critter was alongside Bawsey Drain this afternoon.

Watlington Wildlife

My write up of yesterday’s tour round Watatunga Wildlife Reserve near Watlington in Norfolk.

Watlington, just down the A10 from King’s Lynn, might seem like an unlikely place to see interesting wildlife, but it harbours a secret, accessed by means of an prepossessing looking gravel track that leads to a carpark and reception centre both of which are within eye- and earshot of the A10…

THE WATATUNGA
WILDLIFE RESERVE

This establishment, whose website has the strapline “Conservation Today for Wildlife Tomorrow” is explored by motorized buggy, which means that you need at least one person in your group to have a full driving license (also the walk from Watlington station would take some time and a lot of it is along a busy road with no footpath) and is home to a range of interesting species (birds and herbivorous mammals only).

Yesterday a number of us from NAS West Norfolk got to experience this. We used five four seater buggies and one six seater for our groups, with me sharing a buggy with our branch chair and her son. We had a guide who told us what could be seen. After a stretch along a sand track and then through a tunnel which was ankle deep in water we got to the reserve proper and we were not disappointed – lots of wonderful creatures were indeed on show.

After our arrival back at the reception area I got a lift back to the train station, arriving just in time to catch the 18:23 to King’s Lynn, meaning I was home just before seven.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Even with the difficulties imposed by being in a moving vehicle (with occasional stops, but strictly no getting out of the vehicle at any point) I got some splendid pictures:

I hope you enjoy these pictures of the wonderful wildlife of Watatunga, just as I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the creatures yesterday, even in less than ideal weather.