New memories and a familiar feeling

by Sam Blackledge

The cry echoed around the Nursery End toilets, bouncing off porcelain urinals. “Warwickshire, la la la. Warwickshire, la la la.”

Trott carried on, oblivious to the merriment. Scratch. Fiddle. Grimace. Flick to leg.

Returning to my seat in the lower Edrich stand, I realised I could relax. The job was nearly done.

 

 

I can’t write about September 4, 1993 any more. Nostalgia is all well and good, but if you keep looking back you might trip over your own feet. A generation has passed; it’s time for new memories to be made.

Journalist Emma John tells of the “coming of age moment” when she crossed over into adulthood.

After years of being taken to cricket matches by her mum, one day she bought their tickets and made the arrangements herself.

Twenty-three years had passed since my first Lord’s final; 11 years since my last. Marriages, divorces, house moves and babies peppered the intervening period, but cricket carried on in the background like a familiar song at a tense family wedding.

 

 

Surrey got off to a flyer, pinging long-hops and half-volleys to the boundary at will. Please not today, I thought. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. We need a win.

With the score on 45, Jason Roy took a couple of steps down the pitch and creamed a short-armed pull. Laurie Evans dived full length to his right and plucked the ball from the air.

We jumped up, cheese sandwiches and Country Slices flying in all directions.

A few minutes later Steven Davies was stumped down the leg side. Sangakkara appeared to be booking in for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but then he edged behind off Hannon-Dalby, sparking the sort of collapse usually only seen on eroding Cornish clifftops.

I’d packed a couple of beers, having carefully checked the Home of Cricket‘s strict alcohol allowance, and produced them when the fifth wicket fell.

I’d even remembered a bottle opener, the sort of detail which would have eluded me in years gone by when I was pretending to be a grown-up.

 

 

Days like this always hit a natural peak. I went out after the match and had a few too many drinks which, mixed with exhaustion and adrenaline, took their toll in a mediocre curry house near Vauxhall.

The high point was probably during the second innings, Trott and Bell strolling towards their modest target, victory all but assured.

I laughed as a familiar feeling returned, like catching a whiff of a long-lost memory. Childhood Christmases; chalk on classroom blackboards; sunny days at the beach.

Later on, picking over how the final was won and lost, a journalist friend told me there had been rumours of disharmony within the Warwickshire camp.

“I reckon you needed that,” he said. I smiled to myself and nodded back. “I think you’re right. We did.”

Where do the facts end and the rumours begin?

by Emily Friend

IT seems everyone has something to say about this week’s unrest across the UK, and thanks to social networking they can say it to all their friends at once. It is a subject that is dividing people and it’s not just journalists who can comment on events, it’s everyone.

But how well informed are the people relaying news via these sites? In some cases these ‘citizen journalists’ may be far more up-to-date than the journalists remotely reporting on them.

In the case of the riots the papers were miles behind the collective internet information bank, not just thanks to the demise of evening editions but also the fact that anybody can share up-to-the-minute information online. Some media commentators have argued that local news websites weren’t up to the flow of traffic and the masses turned to larger sites to stay informed.

Twitter was awash with photos and reports of the latest activity on the streets of London and further afield. A photograph of a woman jumping from a burning building in Croydon was circulated and viewed by millions of people within hours of it being taken. The same photo was used on most of the following day’s newspaper front pages. By the time I saw it in print the initial impact of the picture was gone.

 

As a trainee journalist this era of the ‘internet exclusive’ could either be disheartening or encouraging. I see it as positive development, that I would be capable of reporting up-to-the-minute, exclusive news and photographs to the world via live blogging or social networking. But there is a part of me that struggles with the idea that anybody can contribute to this endless flow of information.

Some of the sweeping generalisations about class, race and even music taste that littered my feeds this week were shocking. As I sat in my bed on Tuesday evening frantically refreshing my Twitter feed to find rumours concerning Guildford, Redhill and Reigate I didn’t know what to believe.

Perhaps I had naively put my trust in previous tweets and reports of events in Croydon and Ealing? Having not seen these events unfold in front of me, or even on the television or in print, I suddenly didn’t know where the real facts ended and the rumours and internet trickery began.

How do we, as readers, choose who or what to believe? What makes a ‘real’ journalist worthy of commenting on these events? Why would Telegraph or Guardian employees be more capable of commenting than any other person witnessing what is going on? I can’t answer these questions, but the riots have definitely played a part in influencing my ever-evolving view of the role of a journalist in today’s society.