"Aussie Rules, OK?"

The 8th chapter of 11 that intertwines with the main cricketing narrative of both the men's and ladies Ashes contests this Summer, the English rain dominates a frustrating day that sees an early morning indulgence of Australian Rules Football, a match report from a local club game of cricket, "Test Match Special" and the one, the only, Jim Maxwell, holding court as only he can, before ending with the impossible mission and a trip to the cinema to aid Tom Cruise in saving the world once more!

This is my fourth self-published book and second on the grand old game of cricket and is linked below together with other ways and means of supporting me, if you are able, to thumb the eye of the traditional publishers who refused to read my original manuscript, an extract of which follows too.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CF4FRKSH

https://www.patreon.com/TheBlackfordBookClub
https://www.paypal.me/TheBlackfordBookClub
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/steveblackford

"As sure as night follows day, yesterday’s mercury busting heat-wave day here in the UK was sure to be followed by today’s torrential rain showers and thundery, lightning streaked storms. There was seemingly no escape save for brief respites in between these storm showers and whilst I watched the early morning rain beat down here in central England, a hundred or so miles away at Headingley in Yorkshire the covers were permanently on and play nigh-on impossible on the 3rd day of the Ashes Test Match between England and Australia.

This is nothing new for a now four decades plus veteran of watching and playing cricket but frustrating nonetheless, evoking memories of skipping school as a youngster because my home county of Hampshire were playing a vital Cup Semi-Final only for the day to be washed out and I, coughing and spluttering, desperately hoping my mother would allow me another day away from the rigours of school work and another day off as with now day following night and the sunshine sure to return, I could now watch the rearranged game the following day.

From a trial for my county at 16 through to playing three times a week to bunking in to my city’s only cricket ground to watch my county, to visiting that very same ground for a fixture on the day a quarter of a century ago when Princess Diana was murdered in Paris, cricket and watching cricket are milestones in my sporting life. Playing for a Sunday league team called “The Zombies” who were all of county standard or a works team on a drizzly, dark and dank Wednesday evening when all we could think of was warming ourselves beside the fire of a local pub and the after match pizza, to stumbling drunk into a pub full of alluring female strippers that weren’t in fact strippers or indeed, as it turned out, female, I have tales as old as time itself when the rain falls and cricket is an impossible mission only fit for Tom Cruise.

But as the rain teemed down the window panes of a Saturday morning when I was excitedly awaiting the latest day of Ashes cricket from Yorkshire I did what any self respecting sports mad man would do, I watched Australian Rules Football instead".

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