Player Profile 2008: Matt Haywood

Name?

Haywood, Matt Haywood.

Nickname?

Nope, nothing springs to mind. Nobody in the club calls me a nickname, no sirree, none.

Where were you born?

Fareham – the jewel in the Hampshire Riviera.

Where do you live?

Haslemere – more season tickets to London sold there than anywhere so we’re kind of important you know.

How old are you?

22 years young.

Make of Cricket Bat?

Don’t believe in material possessions – they only break.

Cricket Bat Weight?

I am partial to a light piece of willow.

Batsman/Bowler/All-rounder?

Sobers like all-rounder, there is literally nothing I cannot do on a cricket pitch. In fact, better than Sobers because I am quite handy bowling right handed as well.

Grayshott Debut?

Ooh a toughie. Probably filling in for the fearsome under-11s of about 1995. The side that brought us such luminaries as Ali Lindsey-Clark, Danny Schwick, and later Grayshott’s favourite burrowing wicket-keeper, Mole himself.

Your Most Memorable Match?

Beating the mighty Churt in the 2005 Broxhead final was quite special, I mean I was humbled just to be on the same pitch as those guys although at the same time there’s that horrible feeling when you realise your heroes are mortal too.

Also a seconds game versus Tilford IIs in about 2002 in which we were chasing about 190. We got to within 20 with 6 or 7 wickets left before finding the most ingenious ways to get out – watching from the sidelines it really was compelling, our collapse had this macabre inevitability about it and batsman after batsman just complied meekly. Anyway, we got to the last pair which I think was Robbo (senior) with Alex Overy, and if David Lloyd had coined the phrase by then we’d have all been starting the cars.

We eked closer and closer – I seem to recall one massive appeal where Robbo blatantly cheated – until we needed about 2 with Alex on strike. He proceeds to unfurl this lovely back-foot cover drive down to the Barley Mow boundary and the victory is ours. For some reason it felt incredibly significant at the time. I guess that’s the joy of cricket.

A game you would like to forget?

Well now. Lets start with the Stevens Cup final of 2003, also 2005, and 2006, not to mention 2008. We can throw in the Medstead of 2002, and 2004, and 2006, and 2008, and we shouldn’t forget the Broxhead of 2006 either.

Beyond those losing finals I’d have to highlight Dogmersfield 2003. Now this is something of a personal gripe so you’ll have to bear with me. First, the context: I had just finished a gruelling week of college exams during which I’d been clinging to the weekend’s game to get me through (yeah I am that sad). It was a glorious day at a ground I’ve always liked etc etc. Anyway, basically I was really looking forward to this game.

I was a bit miffed from the outset when I was relegated from opening the bowling to make way for Mr Wheble – a fine bowler don’t get me wrong but back then I thought I was the guy. Eventually I come on as Nick Hindle is flaying us around. Early on I bowl the perfect outswinger and he edges a regulation catch, chest-high, to a certain Mr Whitley at slip. Well, obviously, that catch is shelled, and so I start to bowl rather faster, soon bowling a perfect bouncer that is fended into the air, arcing impossibly slowly into the gloves of the keeper, Paul Osborn. In the intervening years I have tried in vain to understand why it was that that ball should have fallen through those gloves and landed so serenely on the grass but that is a riddle I don’t think I’ll ever solve. At the time I was not quite so philosophical.

Anyhow, they total over 200, and we are set with a difficult task against Ed Smith and co. Nevertheless, our failure really is spectacular. I was pleased to be given the chance at number 6 – some chance that turned out to be. I strode to the crease with all the confidence of youth at about 20-4 dreaming of a debonair match-winning century. Obviously the batsmen have crossed on the previous wicket because I’m at the non-strikers end, which is nice, as Ed is bowling quite steadily. The first ball I witness is full, and Sim smokes it back at the bowler who flays an arm towards it in a vain attempt to stop it scudding to the boundary. All he succeeds in doing is flicking it onto my stumps whilst I, a naïve eager youth, am backing up and out of my ground. Thus am I run out for a duck, without facing a ball. My pavilionwards trudge is somewhat more forlorn than normal.

To makes matters worse, my spectacularly insignificant innings is made all the more so by the fact it is merely part of a greater horror show, as we slip to 35-9. I think maybe even more embarrassing was the fact it took Mark Sobey and Pete Hannam to more than double our score and confine our eventual losing deficit to 130. Yup, that was a bit of a low – somehow doubt I’ll forget it in a hurry though, isn’t that always the way?

Grayshott’s Joker?

Our performance in finals – not so much our best joker as our best running joke.

Also, Mark Richards seems to think he’s quite funny, which is odd given that he quotes Will Ferrell films and the funniest thing he’s come up with is the word shoehead.

Langy’s stare at an offending fielder is comic genius. It appears threatening but more than anything speaks of his humility, shedding a little light into the hardship he continually endures in putting up with such mere mortals as the rest of the team.

What is your favourite drink?

Since uni essay deadlines kicked in I’ve become a bit of a coffee fiend, at one point unhealthily so. However, I managed to get in under control when I discovered crack.

What is your favourite food?

I do tend to get inordinately excited about any wheat-based product with a bit of bacon in it.

Who do you really fancy?

Nobody you’d know.

What do you drive?

I do a passable imitation of driving a Peugeot 206 GLX, 5-dr 1.4 2001 diablo red, 821.25 kg, tread depth 2 mm, Magic Tree air freshener, citrus flavour.

Who does the Best Cricket Tea?

Lords, I’ve heard.

Do you have any pets?

Two cats call my home their own. Or at least they call the home that I call mine theirs.

What is your Favourite band/type of music?

Anything based around the sound of the lute is simply divine.

What was your ambition when younger?

I’ve always been sadly deficient in the old ambition stakes. I went through a stage of dreaming that one day I’d write a relatively humorous, and failing that concise, personal profile for a club or organisation but that passed.

Favourite Football Team?

Manchester United. And I take that matter quite seriously if you don’t mind so cut out those sniggers.

Anything in your life so far that you regret having done or not done?

Regretting things you haven’t done seems like an existential minefield. A niggling topical, some might say risqué, regret is over agreeing to captain the Shotts in 2008! Oooh, he didn’t did he? No seriously it’s been wonderful.

If you could invite 3 people, dead or alive, to dinner, who would they be and why?

Jesus Christ would be the first name on the list. I’d give him a bit of a Paxman about the old life story. If it stacked up he could justify my decision to go with the couple-of-loaves-of-bread-and-a-fish menu and forgo the wine for the expense-saving water.

I might invite God too (the Christian one that is) so I could do a Jerry Springer and pry into those murky family relations (“So Jesus, did you ever feel like your dad wasn’t really there for you?”).

I guess third would have to be Robert Hubert. Yes, he’s a little obscure and might be intimidated by his big-name fellow diners but what an intriguing chap – he confessed to starting the Great Fire of London by throwing a fire bomb through a bakery window and even though it was proven that he arrived in England 2 days after fire started; that he was never near the bakery in question, which didn’t actually have windows; and that he was disabled and incapable of throwing a bomb, he was hanged for it. That there is an interesting fellow.

What was your last lie?

Perhaps this question should be asked at the beginning of the profile, before you’ve answered any others? Before that it was at work when I said I hadn’t asked for a tea to avoid embarrassment when really I had.

Well if you ask mundane questions you will get mundane answers.

Describe yourself in 5 words

Writes way way way too much. (geddit?)

What’s the best book you ever read?

Although as a rule I don’t really read books I did make an exception for the entire Harry Potter series. The way Rowling negotiates the precarious divide between the plausible and the believable is quite engrossing.

What’s your dream job?

Sometimes I think umpiring international cricket would be a rum do, but more often I conclude writing about it would be better.

What’s the worst place you’ve ever been to?

Hell – I ended up there after missing my turn on the Old Kent Road. It was quite a surprise I can tell you. Bordon’s not lovely.

If you could fly on a magic carpet, where would you go?

Well I guess it would be somewhere that’s not served by any major carriers because that’s plainly the sensible way to go. So I’d have to say the land of Honalee.

If you could go back in history and prevent one person being born, who would you and why?

Maybe Shane Warne. Yeah I know I’m sorry, I’ve just never been a fan of that self-aggrandising little pseudo-prophet.

Funniest Moment on a Cricket Field?

Cagey meets stumps in a Sunday game at Haslemere. Mr Collier dons the sunscreen avec bowling hat, lacking trouser elastic. Ali undone by passing car at Chiddingfold. James Horsman playing. Witnessing one of Langy’s plans go awry (e.g ‘lets see how he likes the yorker’, ‘he’s hooked it for six Langy’). That time the guy headed the ball miles over the boundary in a Grayshott 6-a-side (I wasn’t actually there for this one but it always comes up so I’m just gonna start pretending I was).

Best thing about Grayshott Cricket Club?

The name – snappy, succinct, on-message, and above all, thoroughly descriptive.