I've spent parts of my life reading crime novels and playing and reading about cricket.
There is a tangible link - David Steele, the silver haired maestro who battled the Australian pace men in 1975 - he was called crime by his team mates. I have this from the horses mouth of his team mates, one of whom I worked with and another I saw at a windswept Midlands cricket ground the other day.
Crime doesn't pay and Steeley was never known to pay for a round.
Now I know where Crime was brought up - I live there and it's as open and friendly a place as exists on our island. However I come from Yorkshire and there we take paying for drinks seriously. Over the years I developed numerous 'round avoidance' techniques which Crime would have rejoiced to see.
I could get to a bar first but never paid. In Ossett I was a legend.
Here are three techniques.
1)Get in first - at least six strides ahead of the pack and prepare to order, then drop something on the floor, stoop down and rummage for ten to fifteen seconds. The round will have been ordered.
2)If you're at a cricket club, come in with the rest of the boys but discover you've left something in the changing rooms. Make sure you have - give similitude to round avoidance. Come back very quick and take out the wallet in order to pay. The round will be already pulled and paid for.
3)Enter in the group, feel into your pocket and answer your phone. Pretend your wife has called in about something. Protest enough but don't get Hamlet suspicious - make it short. The round will be in.
I have over a hundred others to fit various social situations. They require skill and practice. Steeley must've read the book.
Talking of crime and cricket, another year will pass when I don't fork out £70 for a Test Match ticket. In 1977 I paid £2.50 to see Boycott's hundredth hundred - my kind of price.
I was a student in Nottingham during the Clough era - £5 to sit down against Arsenal.
Vladimir Ashkenazy in Warwick - £8. Now mortgages must be given in indemnity - even Port Vale charge £20.
Seventy is the new ten to my mind. The FA Cup Final was seventy-odd last year. I forked out for that being a constituent of oatcake country. Glyndebourne is seventy-odd - to be at the back! I shall fork out for that as well proving that there is a sort of crime that does pay.
