Extras

Cricket beer carrying goes up a notch – The Device gets supersized

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Remember The Device?

The Device was created about 20 years ago by Special Correspondent Dad so that he could sidestep the flimsy and unreliable cardboard beer carriers that were handed out at Old Trafford at that time.

Pint-carrying technology has only advanced in two-steps-forward-one-step-back fashion since then so The Device remains the envy of all Test match patrons who behold it.

This week Mike got in touch with us having sighted this beast at Edgbaston.

“Look at this!” he said, understandably and justifiably deploying an exclamation mark. “It’s like The Device squared. If 16/6 was a square. What an effort. Even though it’s only 3/4 full the proponent still complained of the weight.”

We asked Mike for the full story.

Mike said: “This is a random dude I encountered on Saturday and whom I now worship as a God.”

We also showed this to Special Correspondent Dad, who saw fit to question how many of the glasses contained beer.

Update: Special Correspondent Dad later added: “The support of your subjects for The Device is very much appreciated. Obviously people with taste. Besides the prototype, which we use at Test matches, there are a further two collecting dust and cobwebs hanging up in the garage.”

He also had another observation to make about the one pictured above. He said: “At the risk of being churlish about a magnificent structure, the holes are rather too small. The beer pots stand too high on this device making the load a little unstable.”

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12 comments

  1. Those Edgbaston-branded cups, which spectators paid a £1 deposit for, featured images of iconic Warwickshire players.

    We easily identified Dermot Reeve, Brian Lara and Dougie Brown. The other two were not so clear. One was probably Nick Knight. The other might have been Neil Smith (of chundering on the pitch in the World Cup fame).

    1. Those cups have killed off the beer snake!

      Still, a healthy profit can be obtained by collecting as many abandoned empties at the close of play as one can be bothered – the potential returns are almost, but not quite, unlimited.

      I’m fairly certain that all of the Eco-cups in the above photo were at that time being utilised for the transportation of beer.

      1. I never thought of it as a money-making exercise. Although the barman didn’t take my deposit and I kept the cup, so I’m up on the deal already.

      2. Beer Snakes are still alive and well at Old Trafford, for some reason. I have a friend whose kitchen is heavily populated with cups from Cardiff and Bristol, but Lancashire CCC continue to favour the flimsy stackable design.

        The chap at Edgbaston appears to be carrying £12 of merchandise, raising the question of whether his group paid mulitple deposits per person in order to reduce the required frequency of trips to the bar. It also raises the question as to whether bar staff would actually sell 12 beers to an individual, they often have a 4-per-person limit in my experience.

  2. APW is certainly correct that there WAS a four pints per individual sale limit at Edgbaston back in days of yore – not sure whether that still applies.

    I don’t/wont miss the beer snakes.

    But there is something unseemly to me about this gargantuan device. Perhaps it is the jingoistic legend on its surface. Possibly it is the redundant circular slots that make it seem less than satisfactory to me.

    Or maybe it is just its sheer inappropriate enormity…let’s be honest here, who amongst us imagines that the random dude could possibly negotiate the Eric Hollies Stand steps and rows with that payload without losing some or possibly even most of it to “shrinkage” and/or spillage?

    I am a big fan of The Device and sincerely hope that Special Correspondent Dad does not get sucked in to some sort of cervisial arms race. The Device might not be supersized, but it is right-sized.

  4. I don’t like this at all. It looks like an ersatz impractical version of the trusty, packable original created by SCD. If there was packaging involved it would be, ‘Keep Calm and Carry Out’ or some other banality.

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