Hot Town And Its Summer In The City

Summer has kicked off a month early and that means cricket in the sun and rock

Image by Shafin Al Asad Protic from Pixabay

It’s a hot town and summer-like in the city of London as I write this, and although I’m a cool cat, I’m not looking for a kitty because I already have one.

If that first paraphrased sentence makes no sense to you, you’re probably under 65 and not into the music of 1966.

As I write this, it’s a wonderfully sunny and summery 22°C here in this hot town and summer in the city of London, with the promise of 30°C by Thursday. I’ll be in a sweaty Islington Assembly Hall in North London on Thursday evening watching the amazing Jesse Malin live. I hope the AC is working well.

It gets even better for us Londoners because the cricket season has begun. May is the time of the year when the football season winds down and the cricket season winds up. Although there are two professional cricket teams in London, most of us in the east of our hot town summer in the city support a cricket team not based in London.

Why’s that, you may ask if you’re not from England? That would be a fair question, especially once you know that we tend to follow sports teams that represent our local areas.

The answer is that much of East London wasn’t London about 150 years ago, but in the county of Essex, which is the cricket team we support, and our parents supported, and our grandparents, and our great-grandparents. Probably our great-great-grandparents would have too if cricket had been organised that far back,

Whilst they lived in the same general area as where I live now, it wasn’t East London back then, but Essex. And 150 years ago is yesterday in our ancient land.

Ot was probably just green fields, trees and villages 150 years ago. It must have been awful. I much prefer concrete, Islington Assembly Hall, cricket and Jesse Malin concerts.

Although Islington wasn’t always in North London either, but in a county called Middlesex that used to be next to Essex. Unlike Essex, Middlesex no longer exists because hot town London swallowed it all up, including the professional cricket team called Middlesex.

This being England, however, the cricket team is still called Middlesex, the local hospital is called North Middlesex Hospital (yes there is a West and a Central Middlesex Hospital too) and the British Post Office still uses Middlesex in the postal addresses. Even though it doesn’t actually exist any more. But what’s a 150 years but a mere blip in time? I’m sure we’ll get round to the renaming thing in a few hundred years.

Essex still exists, and I live where it used to be, although it’s a lot smaller than it was in my grandparents’ days. That’s because London chewed up the west bit, cut down all the trees, built thousands of houses, laid miles of beautiful concrete and tarmac over all that nasty grass and kicked the cows out.

Anyway, to celebrate the summer-like weather where it’s hotter than a match head (1966 music, remember?), the London, Essex and Middlesex heatwave, the cricket season and that John Lennon thought Buddy Holly named The Crickets after the game, here are four of my favourite songs about cricket.

Yep, we Brits have songs about cricket. We also use a lot of cricket expressions. It’s Not Cricket by Squeeze is not about cricket, though, but uses the British expression it’s not cricket to describe something unfair. We also use on a sticky wicket to talk about a difficult situation, have a good innings to talk about someone having a long and successful life, bowled over meaning to be impressed, to be hit for six to be shocked and to be stumped, which means to be unable to solve a difficult problem.

Howzat by Sherbet

Howzat is the shout cricket fielders make when appealing to the umpire for a batter to be out. For some dismissals, the fielders need to appeal (call out howzat) to the umpire before they can make a decision.

Howzat is a contraction of How’s that?

Naturally, Sherbet were an Australian band and this 1976 song got to №4 in the UK and to №1 in those other great cricketing nations of Oz, New Zealand, South Africa and, er, Israel.

You will often hear this played at cricket grounds during one-day games when a batter is given out.

Cricket by The Kinks

It’s no surprise that the most English of bands made many references in their songs to cricket, the most English of games.

Cricket uses several metaphors based on cricket to describe the challenges of life and the battle against temptation and evil. The Kinks were from Middlesex, I mean North London, and Ray Davies was clearly a cricket fan as he uses terms only a cricket fan would understand to make his points — googly, straight bat, leg break, off spin and of course, LBW.

If you want to know what all these terms mean, let me in in the comments or ask via message.

The Age of Revolution by the Duckworth-Lewis Method

Only Neil Hannon of Divine Comedy would come with a band named after a complicated mathematical formula used in cricket to calculate a target score in a match interrupted by rain.

And only Neil Hannon would combine with Thomas Walsh to make a concept album based entirely on cricket. My kind of musician.

And only Neil Hannon would then perform one of the songs from the album live on BBC TV during the lunch break of a cricket match between England and Australia. Definitely my kind of musician.

The Age of Revolution is about the spread of cricket through the British colonies, which just goes to show what a great institution the British Empire was and how the USA left us a little too hastily as we hadn’t yet invented the game in 1776. You guys missed out. Big time.

When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease by Roy Harper

My favourite cricket song of them all. This melancholic song captures the atmosphere of a village cricket match. The title uses the cricket term, the crease, which is the area of the pitch where the batter stands when facing the bowler. The batter leaves the crease when he’s given out (maybe after a shout of howzat), so the lyrics are also a metaphor for death and for times long past.

Were you bowled over by these cricket songs?

I hope these songs hit you for 6 and that the back of your neck isn’t getting dirty and gritty.