The Wandering Leggie | An Ode To South London’s Nets

Pictured: The Wandering Leggie comes in to bowl at Peckham Nets // Photos: Tom Powell

I’ve got a niggling pain in my leg, it must be a torn muscle or something. That’s what two hours of netting each evening for seven days straight will do to you I suppose. To be honest, if it wasn’t for the injury I’d probably be netting right now. This article wouldn’t be written.

I just can’t resist it. I love to net. Absolutely love it. The obsession really got going back in March 2020, and we all know what else kicked off back then. Like many others in their late twenties, the arrival of the pandemic saw me furloughed for a few months and I needed things to stay occupied with. I learnt Welsh, taught myself how to tie an array of different knots and then decided to see if, after 15 years of trying, I could finally master the art of leg spin.

“More often than not I’ll just turn up alone, on my bike with a ball tucked in my pocket”

At first, with all sports facilities closed, I had to make do with simply chucking a ball around the local park, looking like someone desperately in need of a dog. Then, on a gloriously sunny July day (which just so happened to be my 30th birthday), the lock on the nets was finally removed – I was even there to witness the occasion.

Now there are things I don’t like about living in London, but what I definitely do like is that there are public nets here, something that certainly didn’t exist for my friends and I growing up in South Wales. I reckon I’ve now got at least seven different parks and seven different nets to choose from, all less than a 20-minute bike ride away.

“I’m just going out for a quick net,” I announce to my girlfriend each evening. I don’t need to tell her, she’ll have already noticed that I’ve changed out of the pyjamas I’ve been wearing all day and into shorts and trainers. “Probably won’t be more than an hour,” I say, knowing full well that I’ve never had a session anywhere near as short as that, not even when it’s been pouring with rain.

Sometimes I’ll meet with my friends, but more often than not I’ll just turn up alone, on my bike and with a ball tucked in my pocket. This, it turns out, has earned me a reputation. Just the other day, I netted with a stranger who, at the end of the session, asked if I’d like to be added to the WhatsApp group his team uses for organising net sessions. I’m now in around five of these.

“Hi everyone, just adding in Will, met him at Peckham today where he was getting some mean revs,” he wrote. I was pleased with this compliment, but a better one was to follow. “Will is known as the Wandering Leggie among my friends,” replied a person named Issac who I can’t recall having met. “We each come across him at a different time, but he always rocks up alone. A fabled character of South London cricket nets.”

Which park I go to depends on my mood really. I’ll head to Peckham Rye’s brand-new set of nets if I’m up for a bit of social netting. It’s usually busy with young professionals; groups of lads who’ll bring a few cans of beer with them, their deliveries getting looser and looser as the evening progresses.

If my bowling hasn’t been going well – two or three too many double-bouncers perhaps – it’s Dulwich Park’s nets that I’ll head to. This is a quieter experience, where I’ll normally be sharing the net with other equally committed netters looking to improve on something, all of us all going about our business silently – too much self-analysis going on in our heads to be sociable.

“City workers, marketers and social media managers are forced to breathlessly race in one after the other, a non-stop barrage”

And then there are Brockwell Park’s nets, which draw in those living in nearby Brixton. In terms of the quality of the nets themselves, these are by far the worst. No stumps, just a big log in one net and a traffic cone in the other, and there’s actually no net per se, just wire fencing that the ball can sometimes ricochet off into people’s foreheads. But I still love going to Brockwell, mainly because there are some real characters. Brockwell’s the kind of place where I’ve seen blokes arrive in their decorating overalls, finish off a spliff and then run in to send down a devastating yorker, knocking over the stumps/cone/log with a thump.

One of my favourite regulars at Brockwell is a huge man called Dennis. He could be quite old, maybe even in his late seventies, but you should see the way he bowls. It’s rapid. Terrifying even. You don’t want to be batting when Dennis is around. And it’s not just his pace, it’s what he makes everyone else do around him. Imagine a West Indian sergeant major commanding a net session. That’s what it’s like. “Rush him, man. Rush him,” he shouts, with the group of City workers, marketers and social media managers forced to breathlessly race in one after the other, a non-stop barrage for the person unfortunate enough to be at the other end.

To avoid having to bat in these situations, I’ve learned that it’s essential that I turn up at Brockwell without a box. When a new batter is required, people will always insist on lending you their pads, but no one wants to lend you their box.

Each net is different, for sure. What I do know, however, is that whichever one I choose, what’s guaranteed is that all I’ll need to do is roll up (quite literally) and ask ‘mind if I join in?’ and I’ll always be accepted gladly.

That’s if both nets aren’t taken up by dads netting with their kids, actually. God I hate it when that happens.