We came home through Edgworth, driving down off the high moor, through the crossroads, by the White Horse pub, and along by the cricket field. It was Saturday afternoon and a cricket match was in progress. The sun was shining, the day was warm, very warm for mid April, and the cricket field was a beautiful apron of the most luscious green. Against this verdant backdrop the white shirts and white trousers of the cricketers gleamed in the afternoon sun. Dotted around the perimeter of the field, at rest on wooden benches, happy spectators watched the slow rhythmic movements of the players, as positions were taken up, and stances aligned and red ball shined, ready to be bowled. Wicket keeper crouched, batter patted the earth and bowler trotted up to the crease.
It was only a momentary glimpse of village England, as the car came by, but enough to prompt memories and images of other days and other games, happily indulged. There came to mind a game played on that very same sward twelve years before, when John, my nephew, padded up as wicket keeper and covered himself in glory for his team. Visiting my brother and John’s father that day, I sat on one of those benches and watched in happy meditation as the young players contested a keen game.
What a game cricket is! Skill aplenty in bowling, batting, keeping, catching, running, throwing, but never a foul deed or cross word. Nobody gets attacked, either physically or verbally. It is more like a sacred ritual carried out in the sunshine, in stillness and tranquillity. Shouts of ‘run’ and ‘howzat’ puncture the air, and people recline at the edges of the action, content to watch and munch a bite and sip a beer. A code of honour and respect permeates the air, and participants play according to the law and the spirit of the game. No wonder, then, that we describe underhand behaviour as being “not cricket!”
A further memory comes back to me, precisely of the underhand variety. We were children, and playing cricket at our front gate, using an unsprung wooden bat and a tennis ball. My sister, Tricia, a demon of timing, eye and raw power, was batting and was knocking the ball in every direction. We, boys, were not best pleased, as we trekked to the far side of the grassy crescent, to collect these fiercely driven shots. That was when I devised a cunning plan.
Secretly, I changed the tennis ball for an equally grey looking ‘corky’ ball, and bowled that at my unsuspecting sister. It was an underhand delivery in both senses! She belted the object as hard as only she could, but this time the concrete lump of a ball caused painful sensations to run through her hands. She howled in agony. I had ended her glorious innings, but I had not reckoned on the consequences of my stupid action. I was immediately sorry, my sister was in tears, everybody was concerned and the happy entertainment was over. Not cricket, Brian. Do not ever do that again!
Fair play is a wonderful concept, a tremendous reality when we meet it. Contact sports, rugby, football, are less easy to marshall, simply because of their rough and tumble nature, but even there, the sporting person can be distinguished from the thug, and an accident from an intentional foul.
Football was always my favourite game, and still is, and I would sooner go to the Reebok Stadium than to Old Trafford Cricket Ground. But the sight of a village green, and of local people happily gathered to spend an afternoon in the sun is very appealing. I first experienced this ambience in my childhood days, at Atherton Cricket Club. The peaceful serenity of the square, the quiet progress of the game, the silent passing of time, all this has always appealed. Just like my first experience of a bowling green in Astley Park, when I was ten, all grass and greenery and the smell of flowers, the buzzing of bees, and the gently rolling woods over the crown of the green.
It was very fitting then, that on my recent visit to my brother’s house, our old town team had come up the valley to play his present town team. Atherton C.C. were the visitors that day to play Edgworth, and as the sun set and we set off for our supper, a neighbour reported that an honourable draw had been played out in the afternoon sun.
I was very pleased to hear of that result. The place of our early life had played out a draw with the place of our present life. There was a happy symmetry in such a conclusion. In a modern world, caught up in the hysteria of winning and losing, it is a happy and a healthy thing to be out in the sunshine and to contest an honourable draw. That is what cricket teaches.
Live your life as best you can. Give each person their due. Share the day with them, its joys and its sorrows, and when stumps are drawn and the day is done, an honourable draw is secured.
And a pint afterwards…
Erris Poetry 