VIKRAM SETH AND CRICKET

April 2026. Barkisland. West Yorkshire.

As you’ll observe, I don’t tend to suffer from writer’s block, unless I stupidly follow pints of Old Peculier with pints of Wobbly Bob and suffer the consequences.

Vikram Seth is still struggling with his follow-up to the epic “A Suitable Boy“, a novel so good I took two days off work to try and read its 1,349 pages (pages, not words) in 1993, failing miserably.

“A Suitable Girl was announced in 2009 but has yet to be completed. After Seth missed a deadline to submit the manuscript to Penguin Publishers in June 2013, it was announced that the new novel would be published in autumn of 2016.  In May 2015, it was reported that Seth was hoping to finish writing the book in 2016, for publication in 2017. Seth explained that he had missed the Penguin deadline due to suffering from writer’s block as a result of the failure of a romantic relationship. As of 2023 the novel was still unfinished” 

So as it stands his latest work remains “An Equal Music“, now more than a quarter century old,

and one of precious few literary classics referencing Rochdale pubs (the Moorcock, set on the lanes through the south Pennines).

This is one of those areas, dotted with reservoirs and isolated settlements, that you see while zooming along the M62 and realise how little you know about Rishworth Moor, or Rippondene, or Barkisland.

Until now, as I complete West Yorkshire GBG for another year,

with a rural cricket club rather than a Halifax craft bar for a change.

Barkisland is a sprawling village, coy about its population size,

so I’ll guess 1,762.

Two of whom join me in the Cricket Club bar at opening.

Loads of sports bars in the Guide recently, two next door to each other in Dorridge.

It’s slightly disappointing I’m here before local cricket starts, and so can’t give you cliches about “ball on leather” and “stick of rhubarb“,

and it’s a bit “high stool”, but I can’t dispute the quality of the welcome,

or the pint of Mallinsons Superdelic, a cool and rich 3.5+. Are Mallinson back in favour ?

I keep telling myself I should go and watch a soporific day of County Cricket. I follow Northants on local BBC radio, the only thing the BBC do well, and I’ve just listened to possibly the worst team (now Leicester have recovered) post a record breaking score card.

I could go to the County Ground, watch Ricardo Vasconcelos out for 7, and then drink Carlsberg in its homeland.

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Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

33 thoughts on “VIKRAM SETH AND CRICKET”

  1. That is some scorecard!

    I see that Kent were bowled out for 178 in reply. They’ve done a bit better in their second innings, but they need to score another 344 to make Northants bat again, or more realistically, just hope that it rains a lot.

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    2. Yeah that first innings pretty much killed the game straight away 684/2 is just brutal. Once you’re replying to that, it’s basically damage control. Fair play to Kent for digging in a bit second time around, but yeah… at that point you’re not chasing anything, you’re just praying for rain or a miracle.

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      7. That’s a shame.
        I remember Pelsall and District being one of the earlier Branches in the Midlands.
        I can just be seen at the back left of a crowded photo in the Walsall Observer which stated that someone had even cycled from Stafford to attend the Inaugural Meeting. It was the first village branch anywhere with a hope that before long each village would have one, as many did a British Legion club.
        Dwile flonking had become less popular by then but the Pelsall and District Branch held an annual welly wanging contest on the Common.
        We’ll never see times like that again.

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      8. I need to get to Walsall and meet Evo, who was (I believe) local CAMRA chairman recently. There’s half a dozen decent pubs in the town, but they never change so I haven’t visited for a decade.

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      11. Neil, Etu,
        None of us at that packed Inaugural Meeting could have imagined that the Old Bush would end up in that decrepit state during our lifetimes. But it’s not just arsonists who kill pubs, it’s all those who drink at home too.

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  3. Apparently the 4th time the top 4 have scored a century in the County Championship.
    In the absence of Cheshire on page 340, I settled on following Northants circa 1994 on the basis they were a bit unfashionable, like my football team. Not sure I realised how good they were in 1995, but Northants have probably been slightly more successful since…

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  5. I haven’t read A Suitable Boy either, but as a teenager in the mid eighties I was dazzled by his debut novel The Golden Gate. It’s quite a feat to sustain a work of that length entirely in verse.

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  7. Ball on leather ?
    I suppose it’s possible if you’re playing a BDSM XI and their opener gets hit on his jewel-encrusted gentleman’s guard beneath his leather whites but other than that I think leather on willow is the cliché you’re striving for.

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