THE Ship Inn Cricket Club at Elie, in the East Neuk of Fife, is, its captain says—and I believe he is right in saying so—the only cricket club in the world with a beach for its home ground. As someone who has played cricket, with great pleasure, but little distinction, ever since he could stand upright, I knew as soon as I heard about it that I had to see this place. Inquiries, introductions and arrangements were made. Not only would I see the place, I would play a game of cricket with the Ship Inn side into the bargain.
As it turned out, the fixture was versus I Zingari. I Zingari are an interesting lot. The name is slangy Italian for The Gypsies. They are a wandering side, with no home ground of their own, founded in 1845. They are as famous for their facetious rules and regulations (‘That the Entrance be nothing, and the Annual Subscription does not exceed the Entrance’) as they are for their illustrious membership (a smattering of royalty, innumerable aristocrats and several captains of the England team among them).
I Zingari arrived by boat. Of course they did. En route to Elie across the Firth of Forth, they passed the Bass Rock, once an island prison where Jacobites were sent to rot, now home to a vast colony of gannets. The morning’s rain had freshened everything up, the sun had come out, there were puffins galore and dolphins swam alongside the boat. I wondered what the puffins made of I Zingari, whose black, red and gold blazers bear an uncanny resemblance to that bird’s beak.
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