Sporting Aspects
Going to the Cricket
By. J. P. W. MALLALIEU T T 9.43 p.m. precisely the chairman said : " And now it only remains for me to thank you for yoiir attendance and declare the meeting closed." Then I nosed my car on to the Warwick Road and into The night. In Warwick drizzle on my windscreen obscured the road signs. It also obscured the citizens so that it was five minutes or more before I could find someone to Put me on the road for Ban- bury. In Banbury, as everywhere else from Birmingham to Hampton Court, the garages were closed, so that I lost another fifteen minutes. searching for a taxi-filling station. Thence on I went through Deddington, one of the loveliest of all villages, through Oxford, where my piston slap echoed against the empty High, through, the shadow-darting woods beyond Nettlebed, down into Henley, through Maidenhead and Windsor until at last, precisely at 2.31 a.m., I reached home. It was raining hard. When he woke me in the morning, my son said : " You cannot cut the grass today." I said : " I know I cannot cut he grass today. I did not come home through the night from Birmingham to cut the grass today. I am going to Lord's." Then 1 looked out of the window and saw what, my son meant. It was still raining. By ten the rain had stopped. But rain clouds still swept over the sky, threatening to undo an a minute one hour's good work by the drying wind. I could not face it. Years ago not even cloud-bursts would have kept me away from a cricket match on which I had set lb Y heart. When I was eleven, I hung around the Scar- borough Festival the whole of one day and thought the wait Lwerth while when I had seen the only three overs which were bowled. But today the memory of this and other waits is oppressive. I find no pleasure now in the smell of damp dust; and the touch of clammy concrete repels me. So, as I looked at the sky last Saturday, the decision was easy. Let someone else mope under empty stands; let the two captains, in tell- 'ale mufti, cruelly revive someone else's ebbing hopes with Periodic inspections of the wicket. I will no longer sit in glassy-eyed endurance until the man with the board or, on modern grounds, the loudspeaker sends me shuffling away. There had been no further rain by mid-day, and the high wind was not only drying the turf but was also driving the rain clouds from the sky. Here and there there was even a touch of blue, which so excited my' neighbour that he seized his mackintosh and hurried away to the ground. But the rest of us shook our heads at him and stayed firm. We knew those clouds. We knew the treachery of that sky. The only Play that day, we said, would be bridge in the pavilion. But by two o'clock, when there had still been no further ram, the calmness of resolve was beginning to crack. Some- one put on the wireless to see if there was any news. Another 'bought of ringing up Lord's but did not quite dare. The rest „elf as peered into the sky and said it would rain any moment "%Y. But it did not rain. Instead the sun came out, and at once our calm was shattered. There would be play after pl. What was more, the M.C.C. might catch those Austra- ans on a drying pitch. What Verity had done at Lord's in 1,934, Johnny Wardle would do at Lord's that very afternoon. ,everishly we calculated that we should get to the ground by the tea interval and have at least two hours' cricket. That ,Would be time enough for Wardle or maybe Tattersall to make uaY of the Australians. We scampered for the car. , Then my wife said : " I'm afraid 1 need the car. I've got to take Ann to a party at half-past three. Then there's the week-end order. Further, the cats need some fish. And Ann's got to be picked up again at six." I stared at my wife, to at Ann, stared at the' cats, and all the time I seemed to hear the bell which announces the start of an innings. I could almost hear wickets falling. My wife thought she heard a yin drop. You see, by car I could get to Lord's in fifty Minutes at the outside. By train and tube I should need double that time, and they'd be drawing stumps as soon as I got there. " Ah, well ! I said, or words to that effect.
When we had delivered Ann at her party, collected the week- end order and bought the cat fish, my wife suggested that we went along to Esher, where they play cricket on a green bordered on three sides by quiet roads, where you can park your car, and on the fourth side by the main Portsmouth railway line so that you can watch the trains as well as the cricket. But, though the trains were on, the cricket was not. There were only the ropes, forlornly guarding the square, and a few Small boys idly throwing catches to each other in the outfield.
We went on to Thames Ditton, where they play cricket on another green bordered by trees. The trees were there, but the cricketers were not. There were only the ropes, forlornly guarding the square, and a few old men sitting in the sun. " I should have been at Lord's by now," I said.
Through the bright sunshine, along lanes of flowering chest- nuts, we came back to East Molesey to that little ground with the race-course at one end, stretching away in unbroken green, and the river beyond the trees at the other; and here at last we found some cricket. It was not perhaps very good cricket. The two batsmen poked and prodded as though to say " Keith Miller can try' to land one on Tagg's Island if • he likes, but this is our only ball." Still; it was cricket, cricket in an even lovelier setting than Lord's. The sound of bat on ball, the occasional shout of a batsman calling for a run, the occasional sprinkle of applause for a good shot or a wicket, the sight of the batting side drowsing before the pavilion so soothed me that I almost forgot Johnny Wardle and the havoc he would undoubtedly be creating among the Australians. We opened the sunshine roof, turned our car into a grand-stand and settled on it to watch. At that moment the players went in to tea. • " Don't say it! " begged my wife hurriedly. " Not in front of Benjamin."
Everything now was alive with dancing sunlight—the trees, the fields, the river, the Palace itself; but my look was black and my thoughts blacker. I had travelled half the night when I could have lain comfortably abed, and now, though all the smells of summer were coming through the open windows of the car, though the sun was beating down on our heads, I was miles from Lord's and robbed even of village cricket. I thought of my neighbour sitting in his shirt-sleeves on the free stand and occasionally shading his eyes to see just how far those spinners were tuarning the ball. True, when we bought an evening paper the Stop Press said : " Lord's : No play yet," but it was an early edition; and anyway there had already been enough play at the Oval for all of Warwickshire and most of Surrey to get itself out. At the renewed thought of all that I was undoubtedly missing I cursed again at wives, parties, cats and all other things which stand, on a Saturday afternoon, between a man and his game. I was so consumed with self- pity that I forgot the time and was late in ticking up Ann from her party. Then on the way home from the party I met the neighbour who had gone to Lord's. He looked as though he had spent the afternoon staring into his mother's open grave. His mouth was slightly open, and his eyes were glazed. I knew that look at once. There had been no play at Lord's. I stopped the car and heard the frightful story, how some thirty thousand people had milled about Lord's all day, inside or outside the ground, staring at bleak notices about No Money being Re- funded, enduring the half-hearted speculations of the loud- speaker, reading the small advertisements in the afternoon papers and generally wishing that they had enough resolution to go home. I cheered my neighbour as best I could. " You look very pleased with yourself," said my wife when I got home.
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