How did you get into cricket?

[Flem274*]

That series was 2001/02, not 2000/01.

Skippy v Windies was 1999/2000.

Righto.

 

[Ilovecric]

My grand-dad

 

[vic_orthdox]

Cannot pinpoint an exact date, I have been a follower for life. Picture on the wall at my parents place of me at about 6 months of age lying on a bean bag watching Australia play New Zealand on the television.

My first real memory, and series that captivated me was probably the Australian v South Africa double series in 1993 and 1994. Warne starting to make his mark, Donald bowling at high speeds, plenty of high quality cricket.

I'm very similar, pretty much down to the SA summer, although I remember the games earlier that summer with Willy Watson and Danny Morrison bowling at the Australians.

 

[BoyBrumby]

There was a similar thread Matt started not so very long ago.

As I said at the time:

From Top Trumps, bizarrely.

As a kid I used to collect the packs of cards from which one reads out a particular stat in the hope that your card is higher than the other players & I managed to procure (or my mum bought, to be more accurate) several cricket-based packs, including, memorably one pack called Mike Brearley's Batting Aces into which he modestly included himself!

It all sprang from there.

 

[Furball]

No idea really.

I remember idolising Brian Lara during his hot streak where he set the Test and FC innings records, played cricket between the ages of 8 and 12, can remember watching various random cricket occurances like Cork's hat-trick vs the West Indies in 1995, Alex Tudor's 99* vs New Zealand in 1999, Lance Klusener (my first cricketing idol as a result of actually watching someone play) smashing seemingly every bowler he faced to all parts in WC 99, Warne's mesmerising bowling and THAT run out in the 99 semi final, being absolutely gutted that South Africa didn't make it (always hated Allan Donald for his role in that incident), Gavin Hamilton getting a pair in South Africa in 1999/00, a stunning run out in an ODI vs Zimbabwe on the same tour (direct hit from the square leg boundary iirc), loving the Zimbabwe side of Flower, Flower, Campbell, Streak and Olonga, Butcher's great innings in 2001 vs Australia.

However, I still have no idea why I ever started watching any of that in the first place. I've always loved sports, however there's no really strong cricketing influence anywhere in my family. In terms of what really got me into cricket, it's probably the 1999 semi that I first started loving the game, remember making a very conscious effort to watch the South Africa vs England series that winter during the Christmas holidays (had a paper run, so I'd get in about 8/half 8 in the morning and just watch cricket for a couple of hours.)

Properly started following/supporting England in the 2003 home summer with the Test series vs Zimbabwe and South Africa.

 

[Indipper]

Was sometime in 2006. Had watched a programme where the host quipped that the English had no philosophical minds so they invented Cricket to get an idea of infinity. Thought that sounds like a sport to get into. Ashes DVDs helped.

 

[Uppercut]

Was sometime in 2006. Had watched a programme where the host quipped that the English had no philosophical minds so they invented Cricket to get an idea of infinity. Thought that sounds like a sport to get into. Ashes DVDs helped.

Lol. I'm pretty sure you win the thread for that.

 

[Richard]

a stunning run out in an ODI vs Zimbabwe on the same tour (direct hit from the square leg boundary iirc)

Are you sure about that? I remember all the ODIs from that tour very well (still have more of them than not on tape) and there were a couple of excellent run-outs but none that I recall being direct-hits from the deep.

 

[Stapel]

Being bored in the summer of 1993, I switched channels continuously..., and only the BBC had something to show. Not having anyone around to explain what it was all about, it took until 1995 before I found out completely.

Especially the concept of Bowling from theNursery End puzzled me for a while...

When the BBC stopped broadcasting, I stopped watching. Ashes 2005 got me right back into it. Started playing myself in 2006.

 

[NZTailender]

Chris Cairns, mid 90s. He made me want to bowl quickly and smash runs, and I started playing it competitively soon after.

It wasn't until the 2001/2002 NZ tour of Aus that I really started sitting down and getting into it nerdily. Before then I just watched the day nighters on TV, the Test matches loosely when it was too hot to play cricket outside and played a lot of Super International Cricket and Shane Warne '99.

 

[Goughy]

Amazed how few people got into the sport by playing it

 

[Richard]

I was 13 (not far off 14 as I'm a September birthday and the UK cricket season runs April-September) before I played a proper game of age-group inter-club cricket in an organised tournament, though I had played a few hard-ball games on a haphazard basis a year earlier for my middle-school. Obviously I'd held a Kwik Cricket bat against people bowling a Kwik Cricket ball and bowled a ball at people holding a bat for a good few years before then (and indeed a kid's bat and tennis-ball even before that) on a practice basis, and had occasionally trained with a hard ball (never more memorably so than when I had my nose broken by a kid in the year above me called Liam Plunkett). But I'd started to follow the international game seriously before I started playing inter-club cricket seriously.

 

[Craig]

No idea really.

I remember idolising Brian Lara during his hot streak where he set the Test and FC innings records, played cricket between the ages of 8 and 12, can remember watching various random cricket occurances like Cork's hat-trick vs the West Indies in 1995, Alex Tudor's 99* vs New Zealand in 1999, Lance Klusener (my first cricketing idol as a result of actually watching someone play) smashing seemingly every bowler he faced to all parts in WC 99, Warne's mesmerising bowling and THAT run out in the 99 semi final, being absolutely gutted that South Africa didn't make it (always hated Allan Donald for his role in that incident), Gavin Hamilton getting a pair in South Africa in 1999/00, a stunning run out in an ODI vs Zimbabwe on the same tour (direct hit from the square leg boundary iirc), loving the Zimbabwe side of Flower, Flower, Campbell, Streak and Olonga, Butcher's great innings in 2001 vs Australia.

However, I still have no idea why I ever started watching any of that in the first place. I've always loved sports, however there's no really strong cricketing influence anywhere in my family. In terms of what really got me into cricket, it's probably the 1999 semi that I first started loving the game, remember making a very conscious effort to watch the South Africa vs England series that winter during the Christmas holidays (had a paper run, so I'd get in about 8/half 8 in the morning and just watch cricket for a couple of hours.)

Properly started following/supporting England in the 2003 home summer with the Test series vs Zimbabwe and South Africa.

My family doesn't even give cricket the time of the day. If it comes on TV, then it is quickly change the channel to other crap. So by rights I should never be a cricket fan.

 

[Uppercut]

Amazed how few people got into the sport by playing it

Yeah, I think that's probably the case with most sports. I think it's more common to want to play cricket after watching people play on TV rather than the other way round.

 

[fredfertang]

Of course I knew my Dad was a cricket nut - he played every weekend and if there was cricket on the TV I never got to see the kid's programmes but I struggled to see the attraction until one day in late August 1968 - I wandered into the house from the garden just as Basil D'Oliveira bowled Barry Jarman at which the old man did some sort of bizarre war dance and screamed in a wholly unfamiliar stentorian manner "we've got 'em now" - once I realised the world wasn't about to end I sat with him and watched Derek Underwood wrap up that famous victory and I was hooked from then on

 

[zaremba]

I played at school from age 7 or so. My brothers and I would play in our back garden using a milk crate as a set of stumps. But cricket was on my radar before then, because I distinctly remember Tony Grieg being my favourite player and he last played Test cricket when I was not yet 4.

 

[sledger]

Alex Tudor and Vikram Solanki.

 

[honestbharani]

Was about 3 when I was there at one of the greatest tests ever, the tied test at Chennai in 1987. I dunno, was always THE game in the family.. Was playing with a plastic bat when I could barely walk,apparently. I got to know this story only recently: It seems my mom was bowling at my 2 year old cousin when she went into labor and then I was born..


She was bowling leg breaks, btw, and that is so freakingly cool coz that is what I bowl (even though I am a wicket keeper and bowl rarely) .

 

[Furball]

Are you sure about that? I remember all the ODIs from that tour very well (still have more of them than not on tape) and there were a couple of excellent run-outs but none that I recall being direct-hits from the deep.

In the mists of time I might have over exagerrated that one, there was one excellent run out effected from the deep where there should have been an easy second run though - like I said, I'm sure it was a direct hit, it could possibly have been just an excellent throw though.

 

[Pothas]

Alex Tudor and Vikram Solanki.

More Pothas I would say, remeber your Solanki love though, (remember he had double the amount of ODI hundreds as Collingwood at one point)

Cannot remember not loving it, always played with my dad when I was little but first series I remember anything of was 1995 and England v West Indies and have vague recolections of watching Hampshire v Young Australia, in I think 1995 (I saw some young players called Ponting and Gilchrist.)