Thread by @AlexMiller91, Today I will mainly be watching the Edgbaston 05 Watchalong thingy. It's [...]

Today I will mainly be watching the Edgbaston 05 Watchalong thingy. It's not from Edgbaston, but here's my little 05 story..

#SkyWatchalong 1/15

I was just 15 and my pals and I were obsessed with cricket. OBSESSED. About a dozen of us played at the same club and throughout the summer holidays between 04 and 07ish if we weren't watching Channel 4 we were in the nets or playing.

#SkyWatchalong 2/15

There was seven or eight of us in the @BenRhyddingCC second team every week. Looking back, cricket wasn't a sport, it was a vehicle to grow up together. We'd have the odd beer, the girls we knew would come and watch. We were little cricket rockstars.

#SkyWatchalong 3/15

And then this series turned up. And suddenly cricket was really cool to everyone else, too. Freddie Flintoff, Warne, Harmison, Ponting, the Yorkshire lads Hoggard and Vaughan. For about five minutes they were One Direction.

#SkyWatchalong 4/15

A few of us had been watching day four of the Old Trafford test and cooked up a plan to head across from where we all lived in Ilkley the next morning. Just 15, we needed to present a water-tight, safety-first plan to our parents.

#SkyWatchalong 5/15

Five of us got the green light. No man left behind? Forget it. We got the 6am train from Ilkley and eventually arrived at Old Trafford to THOSE queues. Devastated.

#SkyWatchalong 6/15

Looking dejected, we wandered around the ground to look for a shorter queue. A kindly policewoman saw us and noticing our plight, called us over.

AND SHE STARTED UP A NEW LINE TO A NEW GATE AND WE GOT IN. I will love that woman forevermore.

#SkyWatchalong 7/15

We were sat below the England changing room window. Vaughan waved to our chants of "Yorkshire, Yorkshire", we got speaking to the older lads around us.

We were at an actual test match without our parents. It was the next stage in our cricket obsession.

#SkyWatchalong 8/15

That day of course was a bit mad. We were old enough to appreciate the brilliance of Ponting's innings, the effort of the England bowlers, the tension of the last half hour. THAT last over.

#SkyWatchalong 9/15

The bit that stuck with me most? As we left the ground players on both sides were having a beer, leaning over the balcony. Shouting up at Adam Gilchrist, a pissed-up England fan shouted something awful about his wife.

#SkyWatchalong 10/15

Some of those drifting out of the ground sniggered. There were shouts of "wheyyy". But Steven Harmison wasn't having it. He went back at this fella and told him it was out of order. After slogging hell out of one another for five days, he had Gilly's back.

#SkyWatchalong 11/15

And that was it. That's how you play cricket. Hard on the field, and respectful of it. Harmison didn't have to do that. All the stuff about the unspoken respect between those two sides was true.

#SkyWatchalong 12/15

We made it back to Ilkley and to those that we left behind were champions. Not many of those lads still play cricket but whenever things like this watchalong are on there's a text or two flies round.

#SkyWatchalong 13/15

I'm not sure that if this series had never happened my obsession with cricket would have remained. Playing that daft sport, making pals through it, growing up through it, it was the biggest constant in my slow trudge from idiot to slightly bigger idiot.

#SkyWatchalong 14/15

So yeah, cricket is ace and the 2005 Ashes changed my life a bit. Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk.

#SkyWatchalong 15/15

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