A wash out...

Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it's a cricket coach aquaplaning across a cricket pitch!

We were up at 7am and out of the door 45 minutes later for a 2 and a half hour drive to Ramsbottom in Lancashire for an under 13s county cricket match. It was gloriously sunny when we left and was fairly warm and sunny when we arrived. The boys do at least an hour of warming up and cricket exercises before each match so they were all out there in their training kit when the heavens opened.

We usually pitch our chairs, picnic blanket and sometimes even a beach shelter on the boundary of the pitch but luckily today I was armed with my iPod weather forecast and set up inside the clubhouse.

When the rain stopped the players went outside to assess the pitch. Note this is a man thing. The women knew the game was off, the clue was the whopping great puddles!

Someone mentioned how perfect the puddles would be for belly slides and Jake said he was game. I think the coach said something like, 'if you do it, so will I' so Jake went first to rapturous applause, but nothing like the round of applause the coach received! He slid quite a bit further than Jake too. Strangely, from a group of twelve boys, none of the others were tempted. Permission had been granted from the groundsman. Each boy had three changes of clothes. All were in their greens which wouldn't have shown the mud (not that Jake ended up with any mud on him). I'm still wondering whether that makes Jake strange or them? I'd say that children should be children, but that hardly applies to the coach does it?

I wish I knew how to embed a video clip in my posts. These are stills from the video footage which is much more entertaining!

We salvaged the day by stopping off at an outlet centre on the way back and kitting the children out with sportswear for their up and coming cricket weeks. Buying an unhealthy quantity of mis-shapes from the Cadbury outlet and stocking up on family movies for rainy evenings; 4 for a tenner!