My Love of Cricket - It always starts with a game

If football is sport at its most basic, then cricket can’t be far behind. Forget the MCC’s book labyrinthine book of rules; it’s essentially someone throwing a ball and someone else trying to hit it with a wooden plank, isn’t it?

I don’t know when I first played a version of the game. Dad and/or at least one of the cricket-loving Grimble family would surely have been involved, either in a Brentwood or Goodmayes garden, park or on a beach somewhere in southern England. No matter.

 

I just loved having a bat in my hand, and summers would never be the same without games of cricket. Again, as with football, this was to be no portent of a stellar professional career. I was never coached at school and so what meagre innate talent I possessed was never exploited. Instead, cricket merely embodied a lifelong love affair which, despite all the subsequent major format surgery, remains undimmed.

One of my fondest childhood memories is of Sunday evenings in the Seventies. Inspired by watching the climax of whatever John Player League fixture BBC2 had chosen to feature, I would persuade Dad after tea to join me with bat and ball on the back lawn. The ball was a once-pimply little pink sphere with minimal bounce, ideal for playing in such a confined space.

It proved quite a challenge to get it to spit up to bail height, and even more so to restrain ourselves from any deliberate lofted stroke, the outcome of which would at best be a sheepish walk to the neighbour’s front door to request the ball’s return. At worst we’d never see it again. To our credit, we never experienced a permanent loss. Whilst the extremely short boundaries smothered any attacking batsmanship, I must say that I honed my defensive technique. With ball in hand I sometimes experimented with impersonations of leading bowlers at that time such as John Snow, Sarfraz Nawaz and Jeff Thomson, and learned to deliver a high-bouncing googly even with a three-step run-up and uneven 1:3 scale ‘strip’.

Such was my motivation and pre-school energy levels that we’d often play on long into the gloom, the sun having dipped below the bungalows at deep midwicket. If Dad was tired or unwilling, he rarely showed it. Mum, on the other hand, was somewhat less keen on our evening endeavours. Our cricket was a threat to her floral borders, the glass panes of the lounge door and the neat green of the lawn. Even placing a mat within the ‘crease’ couldn’t prevent a tell-tale worn patch appearing by June.

It wasn’t just about our own back garden. I also harbour fond memories of an evening game in the Seventies at Nanna and Grandad Grimble’s home in Great Clacton. Played on a sliver of a front corner garden which bordered quiet residential streets guarded by unassuming retirement bungalows, what passed for the boundary was a very low brick wall. Grooved by countless defensive sessions on our own lawn I was reluctant to go for my shots. Uncles David and Keith were far less restrained! We had a whale of a time which is more than could be said for a few of the grouchier neighbours who resented an assortment of Smiths and Grimbles invading their property to retrieve the ball. Although he consequently fielded a few vocal complaints. Grandad nonetheless recognised that no physical damage was done and so what was all the fuss about?!

Summer Saturdays visiting Mum’s parents often included a walk to the ‘rec’ or short drive to Clacton’s generously proportioned seafront. One afternoon with David and family, our objective of a bucket ’n’ spade session must have been thwarted by a high tide. We decamped to the greensward which separated the busy Esplanade road from the cliff gardens and set up our trusty trio of stumps. Adopting our colourful striped oversized ball, its low bounce and reduced aerodynamic properties making it ideal for such small ‘pitches’, we produced a very entertaining game.

Even the womenfolk, always more reluctant performers, were successfully railroaded integrated into the line-up. This wasn’t only done to reduce our own running around; it was genuinely a case of ‘the more the merrier’. It wasn’t particularly competitive but it wasn’t supposed to be. On that occasion our own enthusiasm and joie de vivre proved infectious. As we drew stumps and collected our discarded jumpers and jackets from the grass, a number of elderly deckchair spectators burst into a spontaneous round of applause. Probably the first and only time I’ve played to a crowd, appreciative or not!

School offered few opportunities to play with a real cricket ball. Summer games lessons were too short to encourage anything approaching a competitive contest; rounders was far more inclusive for all abilities and could fit into a forty-minute session on the field. However, when it comes to sport, teenage boys can be creative. For a few years, the group I tended to hang out with at playtimes would fashion a form of cricket with tennis ball and – innovators, take note – no bat! Three sturdy school cases served as the wicket and runs were scored by kicking. Provided we didn’t inadvertently boot the ball towards the moody gang of smokers huddled menacingly near the fence, we could make sunny lunch breaks pass in no time.

Obviously those with any real talent got to play for the school team and the same was true at university. Of course I wasn’t one of them. I did manage to play a few ‘competitive friendlies’ with work colleagues at Regents Park and Clapham Common. Apart from one stylish lofted on-drive boundary, my shortcomings were glaringly obvious.

Who knows what I could have achieved with a modicum of coaching? Based on my domestic sessions, my batting could have made me another Chris – though infamously dour Tavare, not swashbuckling Gayle. As a bowler, my dibbly-dobbly slow-medium pace efforts may have been suited to Twenty20 had it been invented back then. After all, if I don’t know what I’m going to bowl, how the hell could the batsman?

Family cricketing genes didn’t quite extend to me. Keith, in particular had been a useful player. Representing British Columbia CC, he even played at Brisbane’s famous ‘Gabba’. As ‘keeper, he made two stumpings but was the victim of a dodgy run-out decision, just 93 short of a momentous ton. Ah, such fine margins…. Still, anyone who has a competitive international tournament – albeit for the over-40s - on his CV deserves my respect!

For all those family-related exhibitions, I was mostly content with enjoying cricket as spectator. At first it was purely televisual but once inducted in the exciting world of live cricket, my relationship with the sport intensified. For all .football’s ubiquity and England’s once unassailable summer game exiling itself within the sheltered confines of subscription TV, I’d still pick cricket as my number one sport. To find out why, watch this space...