I was fielding at second slip when the ball flashed through first, Alan at first slip dropped it. I remarked: “Twenty years ago I would have swallowed that.” Alan replied: “Twenty years ago you would have had to, because I was only ten years old.”

After the Rev. David Sheppard had dropped a slip catch of his bowling – “You might keep your eyes shut when your praying Vicar, but I wish you’d keep ‘em open when I’m bowling!” Fred Truman 1963

“If Mike Gatting had sworn at the barmaid and shagged the Pakistan umpire he’d probably be Chairman of selectors now!” Nick Hancock (They think it’s all over BBC TV 1995)

The Lord of the Manor playing cricket for his own club on his own estate dropped a catch at slip; he apologised, then called his butler onto the field of play demanding his spectacles. A few balls later he dropped another catch, now screaming at his butler for delivering not his ordinary specs, but his reading glasses!

Some amusing stories from the Magdalen Cricket Club archives:

One of our players, Gerard, played the ball through mid wicket in the air, the catch went down, Gerard called for a run and would have been run out by miles had the throw hit the wicket. The fielder backing up fumbled, Gerard called once more, both batters now in danger of being run out, Gerard dived, full length for the second time in twenty seconds and peering through the subsequent dust storm found his wicket intact, umpiring at the time, I could not believe the chaos resulting from one batsman who should have been out three times in one ball. I've never seen this happen before or since.

Every Captain's nightmare: We were two players short, looking around it was obvious that another team on the next pitch were being stood up by their opposition, so I approached this West Indian team for two players, "Sure", they said. "What do you require?" Foolishly, I asked for a batter and a bowler. I won the toss and batted, our guest batsman came in with thirty minutes to go before tea, he scratched around for a few overs before I walked down the wicket and informed him that tea was at five o'clock come what may. This man went berserk smashing seventy odd rather quickly. We moved from 150 for 5 to 245 for 5 in about twenty minutes. Embarrassed, I called a halt to the carnage five minutes early. Under the circumstances, I could hardly open the bowling with our guest bowler, could I? I brought him on at third change asking him what field he would like, I was staggered at his request: 4 leg slips! The opposition looking daggers at me were not amused. Luckily, this bowler only took four wickets bowling medium pace off two steps. In the beer garden after our victory, the opposition refused to talk to us; I could not stand it any longer and went to confront them. I positioned myself amongst their players and said: "I could not possibly know how good our guests would be." Some prat from the back replied: "But they were, weren't they? Sadly, we lost this friendly fixture, but how much worse might the outcome have been with an insensitive Captain at the helm.

We were playing cricket one Sunday against a team called West London Deaf; they were indeed all deaf. The trouble started at teatime when the skipper of our opponent’s approached me as home captain, wanting to know why there was no tea laid on. I explained that we were having difficulty with our tea-making arrangements; therefore no teas were available today. He naturally wanted to know why they had not been told, I put down my half eaten food and went to find our fixture secretary; he told me that he had repeatedly ‘phoned their people and got no reply, (not surprising really as they were all deaf). However, I tried to placate the skipper offering to pop down to McDonald’s if they so wished. He was having none of it. I was now sitting by the changing room door feeling sorry for the opposition; I was also becoming extremely pissed off at the constant moaning, which was now becoming personal, saying things like: “You hate deaf people.” What happened next was purely coincidental: I jumped up in a fury at exactly the same time as their skipper walked off through the adjacent door, which was slammed in my face. At this juncture I had in my right hand a half eaten tomato that, in my frustration was hurled at the back of this door; I wasn’t to know that the slammed door would bounce back just enough for the errant vegetable to fly through this small gap hitting the opposition’s departing skipper in the neck! As you can imagine, all hell broke loose; it wasn’t fisticuffs, but very nearly! The upshot was that West London Deaf refused to continue the match, hence the phrase in our score book ‘Tomato Stopped Play!’