Perfect pitch for a bowling Stone

25-Feb-2013

"Had you been travelling near the village of Cranleigh, about 80km south of London, one Sunday earlier this year, you could have followed the signs to the cricket match and made the most extraordinary discovery," writes David Walsh in the Australian. "For sure, there was much that was familiar from any weekend match: the finely cut grass of the cricket pitch, families picnicking around the boundary, white flannels, the white canvas of the marquees, the ugliness of the ice-cream van. Startling, though, was the familiarity of the faces inside the boundary."

The tall guy with the gentlest batting stroke: wasn't that Mike Rutherford, the guitarist from the old rock band Genesis? And the one over there, standing in the outfield, who looked like he didn't want to age, that was surely Pink Floyd's Roger Waters. The same Waters who once filled us with fight - "We don't need no thought control/ No dark sarcasm in the classroom" - was now playing cricket on a Sunday afternoon with Guy Waller, the headmaster of smart Cranleigh School. In the middle of them all, directing the flow of banter around the wicket, stood Eric Clapton. An earnest cricketer, let us say. But it is the little guy in the gully who rivets you. Bill Wyman, the old Rolling Stone, in his 72nd year and still up for it.

England

George Binoy is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo