penalties away in the first half, Diamond said.We just needed s

In my final year at school I was chosen to open the batting for the Transvaal Under-19 side with a big-hearted kid called Craig Norris from a neighbouring school. We had one mid-week warm-up game against a Transvaal Invitation XI at Morningside before flying down to Stellenbosch for the 1982 Nuffield Week, a tournament for South African high schools.I cant remember exactly what we thought but Im sure we assumed that the Invitation XI would be made up of ringers and sundry club unemployables of good standard. Wed negotiate past the fixture with the minimum of fuss and be on that plane down to the Cape in a jiffy.In those days, club cricket in Johannesburg was properly competitive. Several Premier League clubs employed English professionals like Richard Lumb or Ashley Harvey-Walker, sometimes called Ashley Harvey-Wallbanger by the wits of the local scene. Every so often you would encounter a Transvaal player on a soft club weekend, or a Transvaal B player trying to play their way back into form or fitness.Schoolboy cricket was hard-fought but genteel. You played on good wickets in front of gently appreciative fathers and mothers sitting in deck chairs; you wore your blazer to tea, didnt argue with the umpire, and didnt appeal unless you had a good chance of getting it right. Mostly they were heavenly days.As a younger boy, clutching my precious 12th-birthday bat and standing timidly knock-kneed in my recently scrubbed takkies, I remember listening to Lumb and Harvey-Walker in a daze of wonder. If you were lucky enough, your headmaster might select you to attend one of their precious net sessions on Friday afternoons at Balfour Park. I didnt learn many cricket lessons at these sessions, spending the afternoons in a funk of thwarted desire. Lumb, I noticed, was kitted out with St Peter equipment, down to batting mitts that shaped over his hands like boxing gloves. Only boys with rich parents could afford St Peter gear. The rest of us had to be content with sanding the edges out of our Gray-Nicolls bat (sand with the grain, urged my dad), lovingly applying linseed oil in the long months before summer with a lappie (rag) from the kitchen.Sometimes Lumb spoke about Geoff Boycott - or Geoffrey - his Yorkshire opening partner. It was usually in tones of mild derision, but he always managed to find space in his tales for a sort of reluctant admiration. Then he laughed and shook his big head of hair and went back to the far less perplexing business of leading the fielding drills.Harvey-Walker was a different proposition. He was clipped, speaking in a language I identified as English but only partially understood. We must have seemed retarded because we never quite understood what he was saying but didnt have the courage to ask him to repeat himself. Sessions were conducted in a busy miasma of mutual incomprehension as he clucked at us in his Derbyshire accent, and we did the best we could to act on what we thought hed said. Net sessions didnt run particularly smoothly.It was only when Hugh Page came into the schoolboys dressing room as Craig and I were padding up after we lost the toss against the Invitation XI that we began to realise what we were in for. You might want to wear this, Page said to me kindly as he passed me his helmet, an outsized maroon number with a protruding visor that stretched all the way to the Zimbabwe border. I had never worn a helmet before. Mostly we just wore our caps. If you came upon anyone really quick in schoolboy cricket, you reeled in your shot-making and waited for him to blow himself out. This helmet was large and ungainly, with fiddly straps. It was like batting inside a hollowed-out watermelon. Craig, who was better than me and had played more regularly at a higher level - he was playing in the Transvaal Mean Machine side a year or two later - probably took first ball, but before long I was facing Graham Dilley, then opening the bowling for England.Dilley hammered his front foot down like some storybook Gulliver but also had a back-foot drag, so the two sounds arrived fractionally before his deliveries cannoned into the splice of my much-used old County bat. I hopped about the crease like a scalded rabbit, and didnt score anything in front of square for the first hour as I flicked and glided and nudged.Neal Radford opened the bowling with Dilley, and when he realised he couldnt get me to nick off, proceeded to cheerfully bounce me. The forward short leg probably got in on the action but I was too busy trying to survive to listen very carefully. When Dilley and Radford came off, Page replaced them. He was slippery, darting it off the seam, thudding a couple into Craigs midriff and hurting him on the juicy inner part of the thigh. Alvin Kallicharran watched it good-naturedly from the slips. The wickets would come, his indulgent smile seemed to be saying, it was just a matter of time.After a while their pity hardened. Radford bounced us some more. A Warwickshire professional whose name Ive forgotten started to get lippy. We couldnt have been far from a hundred partnership - Alfred 40-odd - when I spooned an inelegant mistimed drive to mid-off. The Warwickshire pro went off, swearing like a sewer.As I walked back to the pavilion, struggling with my helmet, our coach caught my eye. That wasnt so bad, he said breezily, and I could see the relief in his eyes.Cheap Yeezy Free Shipping .875,000, avoiding arbitration. Clippards deal Monday means all eight Nationals players who filed for arbitration wound up settling before a hearing. Yeezy China . Here are his mid-season NBA awards. 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Irving scored 23 points, Tristan Thompson had 20 points and 10 rebounds and the Cavaliers beat the Denver Nuggets 117-109 on Friday night.Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall praised his senior players after a side short on internationals overcame full-strength Sale at the AJ Bell Stadium.Despite scoring three excellent tries in the 28-13 triumph, the visitors had to put in a stout defensive shift led by their veteran campaigners.It was great because a lot of our experienced players were outstanding today: Schalk Brits, Schalk Burger, Brad Barritt. I could name quite a few of them, McCall said.We were really pleased to pick up the points and really pleased with a lot of aspects of the performance, in terms of the qualities we want to show every week.Our maul defence five metres from our line was outstanding. Its normally a big strength of theirs but Jim Hamilton and the rest of the forwards did a great job.McCall also hailed the performance of fly-half Alex Lozowski, who stepped into Owen Farrells shoes effortlessly. He kicked 13 points and set up the third try seven minutes from time with a superbly instinctive run and offload.He looked really sharp out there, McCall added.He ran the ball beautifully and passed well so hes a good player.We got a couple of long-range tries out there, but we were alive to thhe situation and capitalised.ddddddddddddSale director of rugby Steve Diamond believed that an inability to execute in crucial areas was the reason for their defeat to the defending Aviva Premiership champions.We looked like we tried a little bit too hard and we gave a lot of penalties away in the first half, Diamond said.We just needed some composure. I thought we were beaten by the better side. We trained well all week but we didnt really convert those training sessions into a performance today.Despite admitting that Saracens deserved the victory Diamond did have issues with the London-based outfits second try, which came from a Sharks set-piece on the opposition 22.We didnt overthrow the lineout, it was a set move, it was just that Schalk Brits was five yards offside to intercept, but thats the way things go, Diamond said.We scored against Leicester with the same move, weve just got to apply ourselves and come with the right mentality. One or two of our players are probably thinking that theyre a little bit better than they are at the minute. ' ' '