By Leslie Robins
As a small boy I was mad about cricket, which I considered to be the main purpose of life.
My first games were played with my friend Douglas in a Paddington side street, against a wicket chalked on a grimy wall. We dodged the occasional passing car (this was 1928) and fled the wrath of enraged neighbours when our threadbare tennis balls shattered their upstairs windows.
That same year we paid our first visit to Lord’s, walking the four miles to St John’s Wood, for the admission fee alone would absorb three weeks’ pocket money. The Grandstand and Mound Stand were far beyond our means, but we found a free wooden bench in front of the Tavern. Terrified of losing our precious places we stuck to them all day long, spurning all calls of nature and doing irreversible damage to our bodily functions. We were sustained by some soggy cucumber sandwiches and a halfpenny bottle of Vantas Genuine Lime Cordial, of a lurid colour never seen in nature. Not long ago I came across the scorecard for that match, completed in a childish hand, and a couple of tears stole down my aged cheeks.
One afternoon at school in 1930 the word got round, by some subliminal means known only to schoolboys, that the Australians were practising at the nets at Paddington Recreation Ground, not half a mile away. We could hardly contain our excitement and, at 4 pm, shot out like champagne corks. Yes! – there they were, complete with green caps and baggy trousers. “That’s Grimmett!” “That’s O’Reilly!” Our cup of bliss was full.
Who were they really, those flannelled figures who so captured our fevered imaginations? Members of the Kensal Rise Bee-Keepers’ C.C. perhaps? I’d rather not know.
As the Thirties advanced I joined a cricket club in Harrow. We weren’t much good and lost most of our matches, but those hot summer afternoons, often stretching into twilight, were amongst the happiest of my life.
Meanwhile at Lord’s and The Oval titanic
struggles between England and Australia were taking place and the old mechanical
scoreboards clattered furiously as thousands of runs were amassed. We trounced
them, they trounced us, as the tide of fortune ebbed and flowed. The batsmen
of those days – Hobbs, Sutcliffe, Hendren – were giants among men and went
straight to Valhalla when they died.After the War things went on as before for a while, but then, by slow and painful degrees, the decline of English cricket set in. Test matches lost their sparkle and turned into grim wars of attrition conducted by the likes of Geoffrey Boycott. All sorts of foreigners found that they could defeat us. We were no longer supreme in the game we had given to the world, with all its connotations of sportsmanship and fair play. We suffered the indignity of being captained by a Scotsman.
The game that had once thrilled me to the core now bored me to tears.
Herbert
Sutcliffe
Whose fault is it? I blame the commentators for trying to persuade us that cricket played at a funereal pace is still full of interest if you understand the niceties of it. Here’s the sort of thing we get on Radio Four nowadays:
C: “And he bowls. Gibson plays the ball down to Dobson at short leg. He throws it to Hobson, who throws it to Robson, who throws it back to the bowler. No run. What did you think of that one, Arthur?”Saved by the rain? That’s no way to end a cricket match. And I don’t care what Arthur thinks.
A: “It looked to me as though it swung in quite a bit from the off. There’s still some shine on the ball, of course, and there’s moisture in the air. I well remember…”
C: “Ah! They’re changing ends, and that just gives me time to tell you that Bernard, our scorer, says that when Wilson was dismissed yesterday it was only the third time since 1980 that a left-hander has been lbw to a left arm leg spinner bowling over the wicket. What do you think about that, Arthur?”
A: “I well remember…”
C: “Oh look! It’s pouring down and they’re all scuttling back to the pavilion. England are saved by the rain and can settle for a draw.”
P.S. After this article was written England regained the Ashes, so perhaps a new era has dawned. About time too! But I understand – though I admit I’m hard of hearing – that England’s captain was someone called Johann Strauss. Now I ask you, what sort of English name is that.