Summer is coming and with it, the sound of leather on willow will echo again through country villages. I'm not really a cricket fan, but I'd rather sit and watch it on a hot day than be anywhere near a football stadium, that's for sure. Here's ten songs about cricket... with no songs about crickets and nothing by Buddy Holly's old band, I'm afraid.
Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy and Tom Walsh from Pugwash (pictured above) recorded two complete cricket-themed albums (or "kaleidoscopic musical adventures through the beautiful and rather silly world of cricket"). Their band was named after a mathematical formula used to calculate cricket scores.
This particular song is about the infamous "ball of the Century" played by Aussie cricketer Shan Warne against English batsman Mike Gatting in 1993.
I took the crease to great applause and focussed on me dinner.
I knew that I had little cause to fear their young leg spinner.
He loosened up his shoulder and, with no run-up at all,
He rolled his right arm over, and he let go of the ball.
I've explained the origins of this song (and its rather odd video) before, in My Top Ten Hairstyle Songs. It's amusing that the video wasn't filmed in either Jamaica or Barbados... but Charmouth, Dorset.
A song about our Number One song today, which also happened to be one of John Peel's favourites. Here Shirley takes the theme of Roy Harper's classic and adapts it into a heartfelt tribute to the legendary DJ.
1. Roy Harper - When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease
Quietly heartbreaking. A song about nostalgia and how it was never quite as good as we remember it. More apt than ever given current events.
When the moment comes and the gathering stands and the clock turns back to reflect
On the years of grace as those footsteps trace for the last time out of the act
Well, this way of life's recollection, the hallowed strip in the haze
The fabled men and the noonday sun are much more than just yarns of their days.
