CELEBRITY FAN:NEIL HANNON Singer, 39 Cricket
When did you first play cricket?I first played last year. I've never been a player. I'm very much an armchair sportsman. I first started watching cricket quite late as well. I was about 18, 19; I'd just left school. When I was a kid I was just all about music really. I had no time for such flippancies.
But didn't you go to Portora Royal School?They had a cricket team alright but they never invited me. Why would they? I was just this dweeb who spent all his time in the music hut.
What prompted you to get into it later?I was meant to go to university, but I took a year out and I got signed to a record label and didn't go anywhere for a while. To fill the aimless hours – well, aimless weeks, really – I read a lot of very thick books; I watched a lot of very long foreign films; and I found that cricket was perfect for filling in large chunks of the summer.
Why do you like it?It's a very simple game. People go on about how complicated it is; it's not at all. Somebody chucks a ball at you; you try to hit it as hard as you can. What makes cricket different to, say, baseball is the layers of history and complexity and arcane terminology that have become attached to the basic, simple nub of the sport over the 200 years it's been formulated. I love all of that.
I love the fact that the commentators can talk about this tiny gradation in spin on the ball. They’ve got a name for every type of delivery and every type of stance on the crease. It’s a different world; you can envelop yourself in that world. It’s very escapist.
What's your favourite term in the sport?If you're fielding close in, if it's spin bowling, it's quite slow bowling so you can stand very close in to the batsman to attempt to catch the ball. This is "silly point" or "silly mid-on". You know it's a silly place to stand generally. I'm pretty sure that's where it got its name from – you can't be serious; you're going to stand there!
Can you describe the routine for a day at a Test match?I've only been to Tests at Lord's and The Oval, principally because all the people I can blag a ticket off live in London. You aim for 11am, when it starts, but you're usually late. You have to stock up and get one of those handy larger baskets. You must remember to take the newspaper – maybe two papers – because you'll definitely get through it. You bring a nice floppy hat. You can't forget your shades because there's nothing worse than squinting all day. You have to be with good friends. You talk a lot. The conversation always naturally breaks off at every delivery but then you just keep going afterwards. It's a lovely day.
Is cricket elitist?No. It's not seen like that in England or Australia or South Africa and especially not in the Indian subcontinent where it is their biggest sport. I think over here it has a bit of a problem with it being the sport of old England, of the old oppressors.
Who's your favourite bowler?I've always enjoyed watching Muttiah Muralitharan from Sri Lanka. He's the highest wicket-taker in Test-match history. It's an astonishing record, especially for a slow bowler. He was always a figure of much controversy over the years. He's very obviously double-jointed in his elbow so it looks like he's chucking the ball; that he's not bowling with a straight arm, which is one of the tenets of the game. He was always accused – by the Australians mostly because they love to accuse people, I think – of throwing rather than bowling.
What's the most impressive thing you've seen in a cricket match?It has to be when Kevin Pietersen, who's South African-born but plays for England, was about 70 runs into a great innings against New Zealand and he did the most outrageous thing. You can have hook shots, obviously, where you hook it around you where it's going left away from you instead of right, but what he did, because he's a right-hander, he swapped to a left-handed position and did what's called a reverse sweep. Basically nobody else had ever done this. The opposition cried, "Foul!" because they set up their fielding positions for a right-handed batsman so he just decided to become left-handed for a delivery, and he whacked it out of the field. I think it was one of the most extraordinary moments in modern cricket.
