Shuffling in step with neither John Major's image of warm beer on the village green or Roger Miller's bobbies on bicycles two by two, my love of cricket was never rooted in a yearning for Merrie Olde England. In fact I wonder where its origin may have lain; certainly not in any obvious or even covert skill in the peculiar game or in a profound appreciation of the technical and mechanical aspects of the nation's summer sport. So why have I been blessed, in a passive sort of way, with this particular enhancement of life's rich tapestry?
Sarah Fane was a doctor a long way away, while Christopher Shale was a business consultant and a friend of David Cameron. Keep thinking ....
Cream on green is a gorgeous combination of course but I am not sure that cricketing colour schemes were influential in impressing me at the pre-pubescent stage nor was I aware then of all the life shaping benefits of the sport. Amol Rajan has summed that up specifically if not succinctly, showing why cricket should be at the heart of all human activity: 'Cricket is morally, aesthetically, spiritually, emotionally, dramatically, artistically, physically, mentally, historically, consistently, decisively, dumbfoundingly, globally, unapologetically, unquestionably superior to every other game yet invented.' That'll do for me; 'Steady on old chap' I hear you think.
That for me at any rate is just about enough, enhanced of course by the mystique of cricket's idiosyncratic language. Only the cognoscenti really appreciate the more delicate nuances;
With flipper and googly and sledge
The cherry has just found the edge;
Full toss and leg glide,
Square cut off a wide;
Let dear Duckworth Lewis allege.
Of course so much has been written about cricket in the past century and a half, there is little for me to add. During the pandemic palaver I have read Trevor Bailey's autobiography by night as it translated me into a sublime sleep as his batting did fifty or so years ago and, while seeking to achieve the opposite effect, I have enjoyed books by and about Neville Cardus; they certainly don't make them like him any more. I sense in contemporary commentary description is less lyrical than that of John Arlott and Brian Johnston but the analysis, strengthened by female commentators, has moved into the realms of the forensically fascinating. When it comes to sheep and goats, cricket is a useful bellwether for differentiating between gamesmanship and sportsmanship. I have never felt pride that I attended the same school as DRJardine, Captain of England in Australia in 1932-3 and master practitioner of leg-theory bowling. He must have been the coldest fish ever to bestride a cricket field. Compare his behaviour to that of Freddie Flintoff consoling Brett Lee when the latter's side had lost the Ashes in 2005.
Cricket is a game played anywhere at any time: on the beach at Clacton; in the bustling back streets of Kingston, Jamaica; on any piece of ground that once dreamt of being grass on the sub-continent of India. The beauty of some of the grounds can -- and does -- transport the soul. I have sat entranced at a fair few on the home patch but especially at Arundel Castle, Winchester College and Gordonstoun School. And the game is entertaining partly because it is so silly. I quote from the Times Diary of June 27th 1987 under the heading 'Wide boys': "As my hunt for bizarre cricket matches continues, the strange and extraordinary world of prep school cricket opens up before me. AS-R Pyper writes to tell me of a match between Brambletye and Stoke Brunswick. Brambletye were all out for 15 ' which can be a respectable score in these circles '. Stoke Brunswick replied by losing six wickets for no runs, at which point the opposition bowler became so excited that he delivered five wides in a row. However Stoke Brunswick were dismissed without any further addition to the score: all out for five wides. Mr Pyper, then headmaster of Stoke Brunswick, writes with some feeling!"
In case you are wondering where they are now; Sarah Fine is Director of the MCC Foundation, the philanthropic wing of our leading cricket club. Christopher Shale is sadly no longer with us; he died in a portable lavatory at the Glastonbury Festival in 2011.
If you were born in the late 1940s, many of your literary influences of the next fifteen years were cricket enthusiasts and players. Arthur Conan Doyle, P G Wodehouse and J M Barrie were all avid followers, while A A Milne actually produced a book of poetry entitled 'For the Luncheon Interval'. I quote from the 'Hymn on Tomkins' Action':
Come sing, my Muse, the Saturday supreme
(Nor tarry for another's invitation),
When the Great Man, The Captain of our Team--
Either to hurry up the declaration,
Or since he was a humorist at soul--
Put Tomkins on to bowl.
No breath of wind disturbs the balmy air
.
Our captain, calling "Woman" indiscreetly,
Padded and gloved leads out his side, and there
Disposes of the first man rather neatly.
No other catches coming right to hand,
Follows a lengthy stand.
The batsman hits the bowler where he likes.
To "off" and "on" -- until at last the Great One,
Not realising that indifferent spikes
Alone defer the inevitable straight one,
Looks round the field, and sighs and holloas "Hi!
Tomkins, you have a try."
I will leave the reader, engaging initiative, to find the poem and discover the rest of the story. However, hanging on to Mr Milne for just a minute, I notice that this book of cricket poems was published in 1925, after 'When we were Very Young' and a year before 'Winnie the Pooh', clearly an undiluted diet of childhood fiction was too much for the dear writer. Poor old Christopher Robin Milne, a naturally retiring man, went on to lead a wretched life as the famous little boy, through his schooldays and for ever. I came across him in Dartmouth, where he ran a bookshop, in 1979 when Jenny and I were honeymooning in the delightful south Devon village of Dittisham. I approached him, confident that what he wanted at that moment above all else was to chat to me about being CR but conceit, not for the first or last time, had got the better of me and Mr Milne Junior, experienced in avoiding nosey parkers, disappeared in a trice into the nether regions of his shop with clearly no intention of emerging. So there were no additional cricketing gems from him; I just had to make do with those celebrated, romantic, nostalgic verses of the male, middle class oligarchy, especially ' There's a breathless hush in the close tonight'; poetry to cheer the cockles of every Brexiteer's heart.
I meanwhile must return to the days of my youth, proud of course at the age of seven to have experienced the sacrifice of post-war rationing, with more than a hint of my later trademark of patronising pomposity, I 'assisted' my father in taking the 3rd (lowest) game of prep school cricket. Discipline seemed to me then to be all-important and one day he arrived to hear my saying [ to a group of boys all older than myself ] 'My father likes you standing in a line', a sort of latter day emulation of Jesus at the age of twelve impressing the leaders in the temple with his maturity of thought. Anyway I was just beginning to see the ancient game being played, thought it looked rather appealing and was overtly jealous when my oldest sister, accompanied by a friend [ it may have been Belinda, daughter of Stinker Murdoch ], was invited to go to a first-class cricket match. The young person's idol, Dennis Compton, all Brylcreem and buccaneering spirit, was flashing and slashing at the crease and, despite his dodgy knees, he did not disappoint.
In the summer of 1956 my father insisted on dragging me in from the big outdoors to watch a bowler doing his stuff on the TV. I was reluctant unless it was 'Typhoon' Tyson but I have been forever grateful to be sat down in front of the grainy grey image of a cricket test match from Manchester where a spin bowler called Jim Laker was taking the last of his extraordinary nineteen [out of twenty] wickets in a match. The twentieth was left to Tony Lock and I remember thinking how old he must be as his head was almost hairless. In fact he was 27; hair is funny stuff, isn't it and how strange it is that people spend so much time and money on it. I was privileged during recent lockdown periods to experience some expert wifely cutting of the hair. It was free, quick and just as good as one finds in those professional emporia where you're likely to pick up coronavirus or a tattoo if you're not careful.
In that same year, along with my siblings, I had my portrait painted, for reasons known only to our parents, by Mrs K M Ware, the vicar's wife in Chailey. I still have the cherubic end product; well, no-one else would want it. I hated sitting still and, at the next painting over fifty years later on leaving Gordonstoun, it was much easier as I simply dozed off for indeterminate periods. The young artist on that occasion asked me to include something of appeal to me so I chose to sit holding a cricket ball, which some think is an apple, others a red hot hand grenade. Mrs Ware eventually got on to the same sort of tack as she discovered that, if she switched on the radio commentary of the test match, a crackling but classy rendering, there was a distant possibility that I would remain vaguely motionless and present myself as the charming doppelganger of Little Lord Fauntleroy.
Elevation came next as the operator of the scoreboard [telegraph is the correct technical term], a manual effort of course, for the Seaford Seagulls Cricket Club. This was a gathering of local prep school teachers and friends, playing primarily in the school holidays on the multitude of local school pitches. Many striped blazers and dashingly hooped caps were in evidence, worn not least by the Whitty brothers, father and uncle of the current Chief Medical Officer. The local bank manager, Edward Mallet, was the inspiration behind all of this and his aged, gentle, reassuringly correct father was the team scorer and therefore my immediate superior. I learnt at an early age about the temperamental bladders of older folk as he had to desert his post quite frequently to deal with his urinary responsibilities, delegating to me those concerned with the scorebook. He was a lovely man but I spent not a little time praying that he would soon need to go behind the hedge again.
During this time I was at Dorset House Prep School in Littlehampton [see earlier blog] where in cricket, as elsewhere, I fear I perfected the impersonation of an empty vessel. Despite my developing preoccupation with the summer sport, lying without movement in the pinging heat on a sticky rubber groundsheet, with only the occasional jabbing of a pencil into my fellow's thigh for recreation, was a training in tedium, even when amelioration was provided on the occasion of the annual Fathers' Match a highlight of the annual calendar [ as readers of Decline and Fall will know] in the shape of a paper bag of ripe cherries, their stones providing admirable ammunition for spitting at your neighbour's neighbour. The level of involvement and excitement was instantly raised.
Thinking of that unrelenting heat prompts a digression. I suspect you may not know where the celebrated Agatha Christie film 'Death on the Nile' had its unofficial premiere. Its producer was John Brabourne, son in law of Lord Mountbatten, and very nearly a fatal casualty in the fishing boat bombing off the Irish coast in 1979. When the film was about to be released in the previous year, John, a governor and parent at Gordonstoun School, arrived with a post-production copy of that most stylised movie in his brief case. The whole school, numbering over 400, walked the three miles to the nearby town of Lossiemouth and in a cinema there [now a furniture shop] watched Death on the Nile before it was seen by anyone else; remarkable even in that very different age.
June 1960 saw me, age 12, at Lord's for the first time. My father was assiduous that year in educating me in what matters in life. In February he had taken me to an England - Wales rugby international at Twickenham; we had followed the Boat Race in a launch and now we were watching England mopping up South Africa. The whole thing was over in less than two hours but, in addition to the jaw dropping awe of a first visit to cricket's headquarters in days when sitting on the grass was neither a crime nor a sin, we were treated to an exhibition match in the afternoon. I was sure this was in recognition of my presence but in truth play had to keep going as the Queen was coming to visit in the tea interval. The drama was about as high as normal mortals can sustain as Geoff Griffin, who had taken a hat-trick in England's first innings [a feat not previously accomplished in a test match at Lord's] was no-balled for ' throwing ' by the indomitably grumpy Sid Buller whom we didn't like and thought was a beastly bully of an umpire. [Essential British value: side with the underdog]. Griffin was forced to finish the over bowling underarm, at which point he was no-balled again, now for failing to inform the umpire of a change of bowling style. What a tough game it can be; Griffen never played again and it was a day not to be forgotten, especially as Fred Trueman opened his broad Yorkshire mining shoulders and smote a six on to the pavilion roof.
The early 60s were the vintage years for me. With the national scene dominated, in addition to Fiery Fred, by steady Statham, majestic May, classic Cowdrey, dashing Dexter and energy packed Evans, I was deemed old enough to take myself off on the bus to Eastbourne, Hove and even Hastings. The Saffrons in Eastbourne was my favourite ground because of its informality; the giants, even Sobers in my case, would pose for a photograph and were happy to be bowled at in the nets; Conrad Hunt and Easton McMorris showed scant respect for my plodding spinners. Sussex were a seasoned side with stalwarts Oakman, Suttle, Parks and Cox, gallantly led by Dexter and the Nawab of Pataudi who could still score first-class centuries after losing an eye in a car accident.
My loyalty shifted a smidgen in term time when I was based in Hampshire, especially when they won their first County Championship in 1961 with a side built around the interminably consistent bowling of Derek Shackleton and the clinically punishing batting of Roy Marshall, ably led by the cavalier Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie who fielded at deep square leg so the racing results could be delivered to him between overs.In an age when Rugby Union, Athletics, tennis and rowing were all still completely amateur sports, cricket with its class conscious Gentlemen and Players, amateurs and professionals [the MCC equivalent of ' I look down on him .... '] did at least reflect the stratified nature of British society more accurately.
So how are you getting on with Sarah Fine? To jog your memory she was a doctor, bravely working in the early 2000s in Mujahideen refugee camps on the Pakistan / Afghanistan border when that part of the world was not where you would take your uncle Cyril or your aunt Amanda for a relaxing holiday break. What did Sarah do next?
And Christopher Shale? At the same time he was Chairman of the West Oxford Conservative Association, uncomfortable perhaps in that company and earning some notoriety by turning on his fellow tories and describing them as ' graceless, voracious, crass, always on the take '. His professional work took him frequently to central and southern Africa.
Meanwhile the glory years continued for the young enthusiast. The 60s were an interesting time to be educated. My housemaster, 'Fred' Manisty, modest doyen of codebreaking activities at Bletchley Park, was an expert in railway timetables but not in the first-class averages. 'Podge' Brodhurst, however, was also a man of character who less than twenty years before had produced a full cricket bag on the eve of the siege of Tobruk and got all his fellow soldiers playing on or in the sand. Later he was to reintroduce cricket to Holland on behalf of the MCC. There was no shortage of cricketing analogies in class with Podge and even more with the man encountered on the next rung of the ladder, Hubert Doggart, previously of Cambridge University and Sussex and still [in 2021] the holder of the record score, 215, for a player's first first-class innings in England. Nearly fifty years later, on visiting Hubert in Chichester, I wrote a poem about him; I suspect you've had enough mediocre verse for now but perhaps it may rear its head later.
Both Podge and Hubert worshipped at the temple of Harry (HS) Altham, then long retired as a schoolmaster but still living next to the cricket field at Winchester and author of the first official history of cricket. I keep two letters from him; the first of which was a hand written pass, signed by Harry A as a Trustee of MCC, admitting me to the pavilion at Lord's for the annual match between the Southern Schools and the Rest in 1964. It was a quiet occasion; David Aers, a former pupil of my father's prep school was playing and, entering the valhalla of cricket for the first time was simply for me the most exciting event of my life to that date. I blotted my copy book by taking a cup of tea into the Long Room and decided, as many pairs of eyes of the beady variety homed in on me with contempt before a steward politely ejected me, that I wouldn't make that mistake again. Harry Altham's other letter must wait for a future occasion. He died during my last year at school and a rock solid gentleman, whose influence has endured, walked into history.
I occasionally played cricket at school with the house 2nd XI being the appropriate standard for one of barely discernible skills. Just once it went well; bowling supposed off spinners on the pudding pitch that was Palmer Field, I completed two overs for five wickets and no runs without ever understanding how I had achieved this. I did enjoy sunning myself on Newfield, as the 1st XI ground was known, lifting up mine eyes to St Catherine's Hill in the distance and penning reports on events in the middle for the somewhat highbrow school magazine, The Wykehamist. My style then as now was more than a little bloated and rambling but at least it gave the editors something to abridge.
So it was on to working in the world of prep schools where athletics consumed most of my sporting time and energy although I do remember playing for a joint Stoke House and Brunswick plus Brambletye staff team against the village of Ashurst Wood. I opened the batting with a serious cricketer, Donald Fowler Watt, and by dint of weird fortune, made 32 runs, my highest innings by a long way in any cricket game. I enjoyed taking the Under 10s at St Wilfrid's, Seaford, in 1970 and we boasted an undefeated season although the number of matches probably didn't exceed Monty Panesar's test batting average.
I continued to watch county cricket at Hove and tests at Lord's, where I was elected to membership in 1969. Twenty years on from Laker's 19, I was present when Bob Massie took the last of his 16 wickets in his first test match.
One year I saw test cricket played on four separate grounds but this sadly presaged the chill of my wilderness cricket years which ran from 1980 to 1993. There was just too much to manage; a surfeit of career ladder climbing and a dose, sadly inadequate, of fathering and sharing things with a trio of lovely children. Unconsciously I departed the scene with Boycott, simultaneously emulating Cerberus, Horatius and Leonidas, in his self-centred pomp and Gower, with locks and cover drives flowing in harmony, on the verge of greatness. I returned to find I had missed Gatting and Gooch altogether but perhaps I have never felt heart broken over that. In 1993 someone put a cricket bat into the hands of son Robin and he saw that it was good. So, although by now living in Scotland, he and I made an annual trip to Lord's from our holiday base in Sussex and these too were happy times. I felt sorry that he never got to sit on the grass, although in one match, following a bomb scare, the whole crowd was paradoxically instructed to go and stand in the middle; I regretted not buying a piece of the famous turf when it was being sold as part of a renovation exercise.
I am pleased to report that Robin has gone on to enjoy the game as both player and coach. In 2002 he captained the XI at Gordonstoun, where the MCC play their most northerly regular fixture and, having been elected to membership of that great club a week before the game, was able to ask the MCC captain if he could wear the club colours when playing against them. A decade later he and Rachael produced [that sounds rather too much like rabbits from a hat] two dogs and two daughters over five years. A strapping black labrador was given the name Benaud after that great Australian cricketer and commentator, while a lively cocker spaniel came to be known as Walter, after Wally Hammond, one of England's all-time Titans with the bat. When the first child appeared, she was given the charming name of Willow [ for the uninitiated this is the wood from which cricket bats are made ] and a little later her sister was born and came to be known as Clarrie -- no, not after Mrs Grundy in The Archers but of course after the all beguiling, highly successful Australian spin bowler of the 1920s and '30s, Clarrie Grimmett. And all the while, his wife, Rachael, who surveys the vast dominion of music rather than the field of cricket, had little appreciation of what was going on, bemused that her husband kept proposing these interesting but strangely esoteric names!
By now you're bursting with discerning inquisitiveness to learn more about our two mysterious guests. Your suspense is over. Sarah Fane, having served in a medical capacity on the Afghan / Pakistan border, was invited to go through Afghanistan itself, including areas controlled by the Taliban, to assess the quality of mother and baby services available throughout the country. The work was satisfactorily completed but her real achievement perhaps, as she travelled alone accompanied by just a cricket bag in the back of her car, was the founding and development of 'Afghan Connection', a charity which has as its aim the changing and improving of society through cricket. Twenty years later, miraculously, the charity has founded from a standing start over a hundred schools and 320 cricket clubs playing on 100 very respectable cricket pitches including the Amanullah Cricket Stadium in Jalalabad. Teachers and cricket coaches have been trained; girls have been given the same opportunities as boys; the game and what goes with it have been accepted by the Taliban. Afghanistan remains a troubled country but, as bats have at least to some extent replaced guns, a change has been wrought in society and cricket is now played at an international level. This is remarkable and as you hear of cricket being an elitist, effete upper middle class preserve here in the UK, be aware that some of the improvement of the social and political situation in Afghanistan is down to the potentially unifying and absorbing influence of this rather weird pastime.
Meanwhile Christopher Shale was a successful businessman, founder of Oxford Resources, supplying consultancy in various areas, which took him to central and southern Africa, particularly Rwanda. One of the privileges in my working life was to travel to that country in April 2006 to conduct a reconnaissance prior to a group of Gordonstoun students going out a year later to undertake the first humanitarian and building project by a school from overseas. This was twelve years after the genocide but there was still a feeling of raw trauma in the air. Their holocaust memorial was stark, striking, sickening and unforgettable. We had a meeting with President Kagame and felt an unnerving, eerie force emanate from him as he engineered silent spells in our conversation. The pupils in all the schools we visited were as resilient as they were joyful. It was no less heartwarming that, thanks to the generosity of a Scottish entrepreneur, Tom Hunter, Gordonstoun was able to award scholarships to outstanding pupils following participation in a national competition. Fifteen years later one of the first students to appear is now on the School's Governing Body.
Shortly before this initiative got underway, Mr Shale founded 'Cricket Builds Hope', using the spirit and the playing of the game as a vehicle for positive change in Rwanda. The country had of course been a Belgian colony so there was no tradition of cricket, just one field outside Kigali which had witnessed very occasional games previously but had been literally and awfully a killing field in 1994. Christopher Sale set about raising money and persuading politicians. With ceaseless energy and a tough hide he turned hearts and minds in a pro-cricket direction. Where there had been no legacy of cricket, the young started to play. Sadly Mr Shale never saw his dream realised but in 2017 the ' Field of Dreams ', the Gahanga Cricket Stadium opened, a superb venue for what is now a fully international cricket playing country. With the funds and enthusiasm thus engendered, schools and community centres with adjacent cricket pitches have been built; over 20,000 young people, boys and girls, now play. The transformational impact and the unifying influence have been vast.
So there it is, a story of two of the world's greatest trouble spots in the late twentieth century and cricket has played a major role in taking them from the cliff edge to places where a degree of hope and humanity are evident. Not everything need or should be explained in terms of practical relevance but, should you be so tempted, Afghanistan and Rwanda are powerful evidence why you need never ask ' What's the point of cricket? '
And what are we to think of the modern game? Many of my vintage bemoan the slow demise of five day test cricket and three day county matches, with which we grew up as immutable staples but in truth a hundred and fifty years ago cricket was a one day affair, often just an afternoon occupation [as village cricket has always remained] and perhaps we are returning to that with longer formats a relic of a gentler, more leisurely age. Women and girls now play in far larger numbers at all stages and that is a cause for celebration [and they are numbered now among the best commentators] but it is a sadness, as already mentioned, that in the United Kingdom cricket has slid imperceptibly into a middle class bunfight. As cricket went from schools, from local parks, from terrestrial TV only exceptional youngsters from majority backgrounds get through the qualifying hoops although it is wonderful to see many of middle-eastern and Indian ethnicity playing. Otherwise the old boy -- sorry, old person -- network is as busy as ever, its products competing sometimes to dispense with their classy accents and disguise their origins by developing a C2 nasal twang. Inclusiveness must be the watchword; please may it be a sport not just for the many rather than the few but a game of all the people, by all the people and for all the people, never letting it perish from this earth.
And when the time comes to stick the florin, farthing or groat under Charon's tongue as he paddles me across the Styx to the celestial city, what memories in the sphere of spectating will I take with me from planet earth? Will it be Anthony Hopkins and Judy Dench as Antony and Cleopatra or Joan Plowright as St Joan; or the beaches of Tyrella, Lossiemouth and Lelant; or the rolling hills of the South Downs [NB Long Man of Wilmington]; or Evensong in Queen's College Chapel or the Halle Orchestra in Winchester Cathedral; or Kip Keino running the 5,000 metres or Mary Rand winning Long Jump Gold? I think I shall set aside the almost last words of Harold Pinter: ' I think cricket is the greatest thing that God Created on earth, certainly greater than sex although sex isn't too bad either '. No, I shall however bear in mind a delightful poem written by Michael Laskey which starts ' I shall play cricket in heaven '. I shan't do that as the skill level will still elude me but I shall glance back at Father Time happy to say'I shall watch cricket in heaven'. I will then install myself in the equivalent of the Long Room at Lord's and settle down to watch the magical, eternal spectacle of Gary Sobers catching himself at slip off his own bowling. And as, Like Methuselah, I shall be 900 years old, trips to the loo will be even more frequent than they are here on earth; I shall certainly ensure that all necessary facilities are within comfortable travelling distance, no further than a stroll from the wicket to short extra cover.
27th June 2021
PS Sadly, within a very short time of this blog being published, the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan and the lot and life of women took something of a step back into the dark ages. However, the men's game continues to be played at a high level and some of the women in exile plan that cricket will once again one day take their country by storm.
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