I was watching the England vs West Indies test match at Lords over the last two afternoons (no surprise there) and every now and again the executive boxes flashed into view. I imagined what would be going on in them and felt jealous. The vast majority of the boxes, of course, would be used for client entertaining. Turn up at the ground a couple of hours before the game starts, have a sumptuous lunch with plenty of ‘refreshments’ and then watch the game whilst being waited on hand and foot and supplied with copious amounts of booze.
More likely than not, when bad light stopped play, as it often does in these early season games, the people in the boxes would then indulge in silly, adolescent behaviour whilst they waited for play to resume, or was that just me when I used to ‘entertain’ clients to Lords?
It’s all part of the deal. Clients expect the best. They expect great food, loads of booze and great entertainment and if the atmosphere is right, they are not averse to letting their hair down. If only their underlings at the office could see what they get up to when let loose on someone else’s expense account. And these people generally are at the top of the tree – you don’t invite the office junior to an event when the cost is likely to be several hundreds of pounds per person.
At IBM, we were lucky enough to have an executive box at Lords, the ‘home’ of cricket. The box was in a great position and was only a couple of doors away from Getty’s box – you know – the famous reclusive Getty. We never saw him – funny that!
Anyway, it was a terrific perk and my sales team and customers loved going there for a good day out even though the early season games were punctuated by bouts of rain, bad light and, I’m sure, snow on some occasions.
Picking the clients to attend on a particular day was a major exercise in planning and diplomacy – there was no point in having a couple of outrageous clients attending with a staid old banker and his wife. That would have been no good at all and would probably have resulted in fewer sales rather than more, which, after all, was the basis of the exercise!
So – we’ve had lunch and masses of champagne. The game has been stopped for bad light. The clients are drinking everything in sight whilst the sales guys are trying to flog them even more IBM stuff. The IBM ladies (wives, girlfriends and fleusies) are entertaining the wives, girlfriends and fleusies of the clients and there’s nothing much to do and then somebody suggests some betting games to liven up proceedings. The ladies have their own games and the men have theirs – usually involving food or drink.
The ladies first – they are allocated a player each and then, eventually when the game restarts there is a vote on which player has the best bum. Yes – really. That’s what they bet on. The lady allocated the player with the ‘winning bum’ won the sweepstake. Very sexist and very silly.
The guys on the other hand were much more cerebral in their choice of games and bets.
Seven guys and seven bottles of beer. One of the ladies places an anchovy in one of the bottles and the guys have to work out which one it’s in – by drinking some out of each bottle. The guy who unfortunately has his Bud ruined by an oily anchovy gets the cash. Very clever eh?
Or there was the sandwich bet. Each guy picks a sandwich (dainty little triangle type) and peels one side of the bread off and then sticks the resulting half to the wall. The guy whose sandwich sticks the longest won the cash in the sweepstake. I found that cheddar cheese and pickle was a good bet!
So we used to have a great time when the play was stopped and once the game had ended we’d all troop into London for dinner and start all over again! Great days – great fun.
For those who don’t understand the game of cricket – here are the rules.
You have two sides.
One side is out in the field and one is in.
Each man that's in the side that goes in goes out and when he's out he come in and the next man goes in until he's out.
When they are all out the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out.
When both sides have been in and out including not outs, that's the end of the game.
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