Basic HTML Version
30
By Peter Wynne-Thomas
‘The past is a
foreign country’. No use employing that
quote as a quiz question at The Lovers.Too
easy. However the more I recalled the day
my father and I went to the cricket, the truer
the opening sentence of the novel seemed.
Let’s look at the facts.
An amateur side consisting of an accountant,
two company managers, a school teacher, a
slipper designer, a sheep farmer, a jeweller’s
assistant, a civil servant, an ironmonger, an
assistant manager of an oil company and
a sports goods dealer arrived on the Trent
Bridge Ground to play Nottinghamshire.
Today, if 100 people turned up we would
be surprised - admission would certainly be
free to save on stewards, most of the stands
would be closed for Health and Safety.
Yet my father and I had some difficulty
finding a seat - according to the Wisden
Almanack the crowd on the Saturday
numbered 25,000 and on the Monday and
Tuesday somewhere approaching 15,000.
The figures are almost certainly over-
estimates, because members to any match
at Trent Bridge were not counted until the
late 1970s.
The date at the start of the game was August
6th, 1949. The visiting team was from
New Zealand. I don’t know why my father
came; he’d never been to watch cricket
before, with or without me, and he never
came again. His only comment at the
close of play was: ‘The benches were
hard’. We could have hired two of those
green cushions for 6d, but we didn’t. What
happened to them? Perhaps the British
Cushion Company’s warehouse is still filled
with them.We drove to the ground and had
no problems parking in Hound Road - it’s
definitely a foreign country!
Not being members, we sat in the covered
quadrant of seats which ran from the
double-decker Radcliffe Road to the West
Wing - the latter was members only, though
there was a gateman next to Parr’s Tree and
I think ordinary spectators could pay extra
to sit in theWestWing. In front of where we
sat was maybe four or five yards of grass then
a melee of schoolboys talking, squabbling,
playing cricket with Tizer bottles - glass of
course - and bald tennis balls. The boys
were right up against the boundary rope.
In the grassed area came sundry salesmen
in long white coats - scorecards, ice cream,
newspapers and a comical individual
juggling oranges. Scorecards were essential
- printed and updated at the fall of each
wicket by a man with a proper printing press
in a lean-to shed directly behind our stand.
Trent Bridge was considered by all experts
as a batsman’s paradise, but when facing the
bowling from the pavilion end, the batsman
was looking for a red ball coming out from
a red brick background. No helmets, of
course - in fact my two idols,
Joe Hardstaff
and Reg Simpson never (when I watched
them) wore a cap.
The match began at midday. The umpires,
Harry Parks, the just retired Sussex opener
and therefore well-known, and some
obscure Minor Counties man we didn’t
know, arranged the bails and awaited
the arrival of Walter Hadlee (father of
Richard), easily recognisable because he
wore very ordinary tortoiseshell framed
glasses, and his 10 amateurs. Much more
A Day At The Cricket
Historical Importance
members parked
on the grass in
front of those
stands and
watched the
cricket from
the car
Peter wynne-thomas