This is personal. I've played cricket since I was 6 or 7 when my mum would bowl to me in the back garden. Something clicked.
I love the smell of linseed oil (this is what you oil bats with). I miss the sound of leather on willow (bats are made predominantly of willow). I miss the buzz of insects on the lovely green cricket field. I miss the fantastic teas (every club would pride itself on the quality of the teas which was a huge highlight as well as a major factor in how you rated the opposition, definitely it was not skill), I miss the cricket fields themselves: when I was younger, virtually every village had a green in the middle of the village with a church, maybe two pubs, a memorial to the fallen and a cricket field upon which people would play football, hockey or rugby during winter. My cricket club's ground was in the middle of a park. The clubs would rent the fields but the cricket strips themselves would often be maintained by the parkies (sorry, the park keepers).
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| The strip at Cup Match in Bermuda |
I miss the beer afterwards; the jugs if you made 50 runs or took 5 wickets. I miss the fines for transgressions during the match (more commonly these would be on tour). I miss the fact that after 12 hours on a weekend afternoon, the captain would come around and ask for your contribution to the match in the bar after the game was over (ridiculously cheap), most of which would go on beer shared with the other team. I miss the fact that most matches ended in draws (the best matches often ended in draws. Wins/losses were usually more one sided so less dramatic and certainly less enjoyable for one of the teams). I miss the bad umpire decisions (I could go on and on about this). I miss the scoring and the scoring books which required the skill of ... I don't know what the equivalent would be these days. Einstein couldn't have managed, that's all I'm saying. In short, I miss a lot of things.
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| The last match I played with Indy and Dee Dee: I miss this too. |
In March usually, there would appear curious roped off areas in the middle of the larger open green spaces. Within this roped off area would soon appear the signs of a roller and more care from the mower for this was the strip; usually a number of long strips of grass side by side which during the summer will become the wicket upon which matches will be played. Care devoted now is essential for the slightest imperfection could result in the wicket becoming 'sticky'. All cricketers know what I mean for this is the language that all cricketers speak. These are the classic signs of approaching summer in England.
Cricket arrives in early April and leaves with regret in late September or early October, depending on the weather. It should be there now. No, it should be everywhere now in the northern hemisphere.
Our cricket season in Bermuda strictly followed the English season (for no very good reason as the weather outside of this time was perfectly good for cricket. Maybe the clocks going back cut off some time, but it certainly wasn't the weather). This meant that in July and August, if you were unlucky you could stand for hours on end under blindingly cloudless sky in monstrous heat and humidity. Personally, I stopped playing at the weekend in the longer format of the game some time in my 50's after getting out first ball of the match around 12.01 pm (LBW to a terrible decision which made it worse), standing as umpire from the end of the 2nd over for the remainder of the 50 overs (around 3 hours) and then taking my place in the field for another 3 hours whilst our opponents had their innings. I was a basket case by the end of the match. Nobody sympathised.
Moving to only after work evening games (I'd played evening matches since I was in my 20's as well as at weekends), I played until 2017 when we left Bermuda and there has not been a day that I haven't missed it. But, that is due to my choice not through regulations enforced by law (courtesy of coronavirus).
The upside of right now is that the BBC for example is re-running great old matches on both video and radio. The media is writing lengthy screeds eulogising matches, times and players from years gone by.
I read a terrific Guardian piece recently linking great players together throughout cricket's history via the Yorkshire great, Wilfred Rhodes. Mr Rhodes played in one of the greatest of Ashes test matches at the Oval in 1903 when England beat Australia by 1 wicket (this is known as Jessup's match) with the immortal words at the end from Mr. Rhodes being "we'll get 'em in singles". He did.
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| Wilfred Rhodes |
Every cricket enthusiast knows this catch phrase and will use it during their cricket careers, guaranteed. I have used it many times, not always successfully. In fact most often unsuccessfully but then again I wasn't Wilfred Rhodes. Mr. Rhodes played his last test match when he was 52 which was the basis of the story (first class cricketers playing past 50), the year before the incomparable Don Bradman played his first test match in England in 1930, and he had played his first test match in the same game as the great Victor Trumper played his first test match (he was Australian but I won't hold that against him) but more importantly this was the last test match of the even more legendary and incomparable W.G. Grace.
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| With WG at Lords |
And then there are the insane rules... which of course everyone somehow intuitively knows. Or rather they used to. If you read the autobiography of Peter Ustinov (who? shows my age!), he made the wonderful comment that somehow if you went to school in England (he was Russian), you would absorb the rules of the game by osmosis even if you didn't play the game, and be able to talk intelligently about the LBW rule, how many different times a batsman can be out, the amazing varietals of the leg spin bowler in particular the googly, demonstrate with an orange how to swing a new ball, and a whole host of other wonderful arcane cricketing things.
Can other games do this?
How can summer be the same without this wonderful, wonderful game? Let's hope things loosen up before too long.
