A fan's eye view of England's Edgbaston excellence

Edgbaston, August 1980: My first visit to international cricket as I joined my Dad and a number of his Rugeley team-mates (I was scorer, so got invited on that basis) on a mini bus to watch England take on Australia in a One-Day International.

I don’t remember too much about the day or the game, other than Geoffrey Boycott was opening the batting (how times have changed now!) and being sick on the way there as I was so excited.

Having checked online this week, it seems the game was a good one - England making 320 for eight from their 55 overs and beating Australia by 47 runs. A century from Graham Gooch and Kim Hughes with a rapid 98 were the standout performances and for the record, Boycott made 78 off 98 deliveries...either way, I was hooked.

Over the years Dad, my brother and myself attended Edgbaston regularly to watch the international games, having been lucky enough to see the likes of Viv Richards make a century, Sachin Tendulkar bat beautifully and Shane Warne and Muralitharan bowl.

This year was the first time I’ve been able to go to watch any of the games at Edgbaston for a couple of years after health problems, and it was a slightly poignant occasion as it was the first time we’d been to a game there since Dad passed away last September.

In addition, I’d not been able to go to The Ashes Test last summer as I was still in hospital – and as it transpired that evening I was rushed into surgery for my third emergency operation. As my brother put it: "I had a great day last year here, but I hope I have a better night and couple of days afterwards – as it was the one time last year we thought you might not make it." With that in mind, we fully intended to have a good day out!

Edgbaston-bound

Catching the train from Wolverhampton into Birmingham New Street station, the first thing that struck us was the very impressive "Grand Central" shopping and food area that greets you on arrival, which seems very fitting for Birmingham’s status as the country's second city.

It seemed rude not to have a spot of lunch and a beer, before following the well signposted route to the shuttle buses for our trip to the ground (excellent value at £5 return). Naturally, as a pair of big kids we had to sit at the front of the top deck.

After a quick pint at the Edgbaston Tap across the road from the ground with a couple of our fellow Penkridge players, the over-dressed Tom Morris and Paul Szewcyzk (no sunscreen despite a bald head),  we headed inside through the Main Entrance, taking the lift up to our seats in the Skyline Terrace. Well, there’s no point in walking up five flights of stairs if you don’t have to...

It’s fair to say the face of Edgbaston has changed somewhat since my first visit to the ground, and nowhere is this more apparent in the excellent new main stand and pavilion. The view from the Skyline Terrace is quite stunning, and with a bar, food stall and toilets all approximately 20 seconds walk from your seat the facilities are excellent as well. There were no real queues to negotiate for anything, and very little cricket was missed during the day as a result.

Sri Lanka's 'workmanlike' innings

After a moment of concern among the spectators in our area when the bar closed briefly (causing more panic than had been seen on the stock market that morning), the game got underway. We were both looking forward to our first "live" view of the new England ODI team, and we weren’t disappointed.

The Sri Lanka innings was probably best described as workmanlike, though at 159 for three with the best part of 20 overs left a pretty decent score looked on the cards. However, the loss of Angelo Mathews, Dinesh Chandimal, Farveez Maharoof and Sekkuge Prasanna in quick succession (the latter to a stunning catch by David Willey) left the tourists grateful to a late rally from Upul Tharanga and Suraj Randiv to get to a reasonably respectable score of 254 at the close of their innings.

One point we both commented on was the difference in how international teams throw the ball in to the wicket-keeper at every opportunity, usually at a great rate of knots - which would surely result in a huge amount of overthrows if done in certain club cricket teams!

As a wicket-keeper, I couldn’t help but feel for Jos Buttler, as a large percentage of these throws seemed to be aimed directly at his feet – real finger-breakers if not taken properly!

The interval saw some Kwik Cricket played by a few local clubs and a "zorb race" between England and Sri Lanka fans - which England won to go 2-0 up in that series. After a spot of lunch (or was it tea?) and a pint we settled down to watch the England reply.

To our eyes the wicket had looked a little two paced during the first innings, so our thoughts were that this might be a challenging total if early wickets were lost. How wrong we were...

England's reply

The batting of Alex Hales and Jason Roy was simply stunning, and a great example of how to build an innings in any form of cricket. The early stages of the innings appeared to be a period of settling in and getting used to the pitch, yet the run rate was still around six an over without any real risks having been taken. Once this period had been negotiated, the stroke play from both became more aggressive and the Sri Lankans had no answer.

While we had both been hoping to see the likes of Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow and Buttler bat, the longer the innings went on we were willing both Roy and Hales to get much-deserved hundreds. Hales won that particular race, then celebrated by hitting three consecutive sixes - the middle one of which landed in the second tier of the pavilion, a huge hit which was well caught be a member of the crowd.

After a brief nervy spell on 99, Roy followed suit to bring up his century with a straight six - the celebration between both openers was lovely to see as they obviously took great enjoyment from the success of each other.

This all seemed to bring the Eric Hollies stand to life, with singing and the sight of several bananas being chased by a gorilla, Pacman chasing the ghosts, a Michael van Gerwen lookalike and the cast of Baywatch all getting into the action!

Shortly afterwards, the winning runs were hit and the game finished. It was a hugely enjoyable day, and we can’t wait for our next visit – a Twenty20 game between Birmingham Bears and Notts Outlaws where some of our juniors from Penkridge will be mascots and providing the guard of honour for the teams.

© Cricket World 2016